With Governor-elect Spitzer winning by 40 percentage points atop the Democratic ticket earlier this month, you would think some of Long Island's nine Republican state Senators or Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) might be looking for a new line of work come January.
Yet Island voters re-elected all of the GOP's Nassau-based state Senators (Senators Balboni, Fuschillo, Hannon, Marcellino and Skelos) as well as their Suffolk counterparts (Senators Flanagan, LaValle, Johnson, and Trunzo), a key reason two-party government will still exist in Albany over the next two years. And Rep. King is returning to Capitol Hill, despite an unrelenting campaign against him by a certain daily newspaper. I'll have more on that in a moment.
The Republicans held a 35-27 edge in the state Senate before Election Day, a margin that dropped to 34-28 with the loss of state Senator Nicholas Spano (R-Yonkers). But the GOP's ability to retain its majority in the state Senate is a sore point for much of the downstate media because they're under the misguided belief that the Spitzer administration, working in tandem with a state Assembly that includes 108 Democrats among its 150 members, will be unable to do wonderful things because of Republican obstructionists in the state Senate.
My sense is that the public understands that if Republicans from the suburbs and upstate weren't holding sway in the state Senate, too much power would be centered in Manhattan, home to Governor-elect Spitzer, Lieutenant Governor-elect David Paterson and state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
New York State government is a $113 billion-a-year operation and it ought to benefit all 62 counties. The reality, however, is that a power shift is under way that could favor New York City, as a three-term Republican governor who always managed to win statewide elections without carrying the City, steps down.
At the very least, a GOP state Senate, with nine of its 34 majority members hailing from either Nassau or Suffolk, is going to make sure Long Island's needs are heard in state government's executive branch.
Let me close by returning to Rep. King's re-election, an amazing accomplishment when you consider Newsday threw everything but the kitchen sink at him. The news section hyped a bogus poll that had Rep. King's opponent trailing by only two points (King won by 12 points) and reported nonsense about how the national Democratic Party sensed an upset. Then, timed so that Rep. King's challenger could send out a direct-mail piece with the news, Newsday's editorial board endorsed heartily the Democratic candidate in the 3rd congressional district while twice calling Rep. King 'divisive' in urging his ouster. Nice try, guys. But it failed.
Newsday, apparently allowed to operate free of any corporate constraints, has a history of marshaling enormous resources to get rid of elected officials it doesn't like. In that regard, they are bipartisan. Just wait until you see what Newsday tries to do to the two Nassau County Democratic legislators who broke with their party during a leadership fight about a year ago. Both are up for re-election in November 2007.
