ALBANY – Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno’s stunning announcement that he won’t seek re-election in November will create chaos in Republican ranks and unsettle Democratic Gov. Paterson.
Bruno, the most powerful Republican in the state since Gov. George Pataki left office in 2006, has hand-picked the Senate GOP’s top political operatives since 1995 and he named Joseph Mondello, the Nassau County Republican chairman, as state GOP boss nearly two years ago.
That means the New York Republican Party will go into the November elections with its political machinery in the hands of a lame-duck leader.
Bruno’s decision also is bad news for Paterson, with whom he developed a close personal relationship during Paterson’s four-year term as the Senate minority leader.
Some close to Paterson say he had even hoped the Republicans would maintain the Senate majority next year so he could continue his close relationship with Bruno.
Paterson found himself accused yesterday of offering an upstate Democratic senator who barely won a special election in February a lucrative state job in an effort to vacate his seat so that Republicans could recapture it in November.