State Sen. Kevin Parker rose to introduce a bill that he said would keep the state’s disabled population safe in the case of another terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

Across the chamber, Senate Republicans were audibly cranky.

“The state would be safer if he weren’t here,” State Sen. John Bonacic muttered as Parker spoke.

Bonacic is not the most partisan of people. He is, perhaps, most famous for being the Republican state senator who called for Joe Bruno to give up his leadership post, or maybe for being one of the few in the GOP conference rumored to have been willing to vote for the gay marriage bill. He has hit his own party on occasion over ethics reform. He sat on the Monserrate investigations committee, and made no bones about praising the chair, State Sen. Eric Schneiderman, for how the process went.

But after the last few weeks and months, Bonacic had apparently had enough. As Democrats scrambled to find enough votes to prevent the first-ever state government shutdown June 14, Bonacic was fed up, and taking it out through wisecracks.  

State Sen. Tom Duane introduced another bill, rambling slowly for 15 minutes. Bonacic huffed out of the chamber.

“Truly an unbalanced individual,” Bonacic said to Republican staffers as he went.

Through the afternoon, Republicans raised their right arms, thumbs down, voting against controversial bills Democrats had brought to the floor. (At one point, State Sen. Marty Golden walked into the chamber with his right arm already raised, just in case a vote might happen to be occurring. “I know it’s ‘no,’ so I walk in with my hand up,” he explained.)

Each time, the bills passed—many of them with 32 Democratic votes in favor, 30 Republican votes opposed, in that familiar rhythm that has, minus the coup, beaten down the chamber over the last year and a half. But as the extender vote neared, the Democrats were short of 32, with State Sen. Ruben Diaz promising to vote against it.. Finally, in the first time since the coup, the Republicans had the power. They could let the Democrats flop. They could show the world the consequences of three months of dithering on the budget. They could stand on principle, rejecting the process and rejecting the revenue.

Except that they could not. State Sens. Hugh Farley and Roy McDonald, who have thousands of state workers in their districts and a tough re-election challenges, knew that they could not risk it.

Bonacic called over to Farley, a four-decade incumbent.

“Farley,” Bonacic said, looking disappointed, “You got to vote up?”

Susan Savage, the much younger chair of the Schenectady County Legislature giving him a tough race this year, was very much on Farley’s mind.

“She’ll go at me one way or another,” Farley replied.

Republican State Sen. Tom Libous, the party’s floor leader and the man charged with running the party’s campaign operations this year, walked over to both senators’ desks, offering to get State Sen. Dale Volker, who is retiring, to vote for the extender instead.

No, both senators said wearily. They would take the vote.

At around 7 p.m., five hours before the deadline, the budget extender came to the floor. Votes were cast.

Farley sat silent. But McDonald, an Albany veteran who sits in the seat that was until two years ago Joe Bruno’s, could not. He rose to list his complaints and hit the Democrats as hard as he could.

“This has not,” he thundered, standing at his seat, “been a good day, a good year or a good couple years for the people of New York State.”





Whatever can be said for the people of New York State, it has been a worse couple years for the Senate Republicans.

The special-interest money that once flowed has dried to a trickle. As of January, the Senate GOP had about one-fifth of the cash on hand as they did at the same point in 2008. In past cycles, the Senate Republican Campaign Committee would blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on television commercials six months before Election Day, or pour money into quixotic long shots on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and other districts where they once had strongholds. The playing field to take back the Senate has narrowed significantly, down most likely to two or three targeted races.

Old allies have fled. The giant field force of 1199 and other one-time staunch supporters have mostly shifted to more ideologically natural alliances with the Democrats.

The Independence Party, which strongly backed Senate Republicans both with its ballot line and financial resources in 2008, has undergone a fundamental shift in philosophy and will support Senate candidates from both sides of the aisle this year, according to party chair Frank MacKay. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a longtime patron, is upset over their failure to provide a few votes to pass gun microstamping and other legislation that excites his personal checkbook.

When they were in the majority, the SRCC operated out of a luxury 20-story building with 9,000 square feet of floor space. In the minority, with the threat of Republican-eviscerating redistricting oblivion looming, a shoe-string operation to retake the majority is being run from the second floor of a modest three-story building a few minutes’ walk from the Capitol, about a third of the size of the old one.

With less than $1 million on hand as of January, Libous has cut SRCC spending to the bone, from $158,000 a month to $48,000. In 2008, Libous did not even know the name of everyone on the SRCC payroll. Now, because they can afford much fewer, Libous can run down the entire list of staff in 10 seconds: three full-time staffers, outside consultant Claude Lavigna, the deputy executive director who does polling, and Judy Crane, the finance director.

In the past, the party hired an executive director, while Republican senators would serve as regional chairs. This year, Libous is doing the job of executive director himself. He cites his background in marketing and his business experience (which includes creating his own brand of hot sauce) as qualifications. Golden remains the point person for downstate operations, while Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos still gets the final sign-off on major decisions.

Skelos sought to put a brave face on the operation’s financial hardships.

“Our donors are now certain that all of our efforts are going into the campaigns and that we’re not wasting any of their money,” Skelos said.

Skelos is a politician so obsessively on message that during a 10-minute interview about the 2010 elections, he used the term “regional balance” to describe the advantages of a Republican majority no less than 10 times. Libous, meanwhile, is more blunt and freewheeling, reveling in good-natured trash-talking and political gamesmanship. Asked to discuss his memories of departing State Sen. George Winner, for instance, Libous reminisced at length about how Winner, the former floor leader for the minority Assembly Republicans, had taught him the parliamentary tricks to pull of the Senate coup.

One of Libous’ toughest tasks this year has been convincing the GOP’s aging members to stick around for one last pre-redistricting push. Libous insists that a number of members, such as gentlemanly four-decade incumbent Owen Johnson, are so infuriated by Democrats’ conduct in the majority that they have been motivated to seek re-election despite their advanced age. The little things vex the most, like the way Democrats sometimes clap or yell after they pass a bill, as if, the opposition seethes, they were at a baseball game.

During the 44 years they were in the minority, Senate Democrats rarely had to take difficult votes. This year, if there is a glimmer of hope for Republicans, it is that over the past two years, seemingly every vote has been tough for the Democrats.

There are so many issues to run on: the MTA payroll tax, the elimination of the STAR property tax rebate, the fee on salt-water fishing licenses, the license-plate registration fee, the millionaire’s tax, the wasted stimulus money, the school-aid cuts, the $13 billion spending increase. The budget, the budget, the budget.

SRCC leadership says the phone rang off the hook with potential candidates.

In the past, Republican candidates have chafed at the level of control the SRCC has exerted on campaigns. This year, that influence is likely to be diminished, if only because it has to be: Albany Republicans have fewer resources, leaving candidates more responsible for raising their own money and paying for their own operations. Still, candidates that get SRCC backing are expected to at least stick to stressing a core set of pocketbook issues, such as job-creation programs, a property-tax cap and a state-spending cap—the kinds of issues SRCC polling shows cut across party lines.

Even as Republican insiders are confident they can pick up a few Democratic seats, they remain weary about what anti-incumbent sentiment could mean for their own members, including Farley, Frank Padavan, James Alesi, Ken LaValle and Kemp Hannon.

Democrats are expected to run on a similar poll-tested message against Republican incumbents as Republicans will run on against them, highlighting the dramatic increase in state spending, much of which occurred under Republican watch.

A series of troubling Siena polls, meanwhile, show that voters upstate are much angrier than voters downstate, and are far more anti-incumbent. The latest, released in mid-June, showed that upstate, where 20 of 25 senators are Republican, only 28 percent of voters wanted to re-elect their senator and 58 percent preferred someone else.

Libous insists that in internal SRCC polls, when the names of the incumbents are actually used, they fare much better. The old rule applies, he said: voters may hate Albany, but they are still loyal to their own longtime representative. Still, he acknowledged that Republicans would have to make a somewhat complicated argument to voters: vote out the incumbent who raised spending, unless that incumbent happens to be a Republican.

“I don’t think when they say ‘Throw the bums out,’ they say ‘Republican,’” Libous said. “But that’s a fair question. I think it’s going to be on us to educate the voters that we have 30 votes, and we need 32.”

They are not just fighting the Democrats. The SRCC has gotten involved in an unusual number of primaries this year. Libous said he personally decided on the tactic, with Skelos’ blessing.

“He and I both believe that in life you’ve got to make decisions,” Libous said. “In the past we didn’t make decisions, we just kind of let things go their way.”

The tactic has been made necessary, in part, by the Republicans’ poverty and the need to ensure that candidates who emerge from primaries have money.

Despite Libous and Skelos’ best efforts to keep everyone around for one more run, four longtime Republican incumbents are retiring: Tom Morahan because of health problems; Vincent Leibell to run for Rockland County executive; Dale Volker, who was facing a tough primary challenge; and George Winner, a 20-year veteran sick of the four-hour drive to Albany and an inability to get things done in the minority.

Volker and Winner’s seats are likely safe, regardless of which Republican emerges. But in the two other races, and in the primary to take on David Valesky, the SRCC moved in early.

In the Valesky race, the SRCC is backing Grammy-nominated concert pianist Andrew Russo, who Libous says has raised $200,000, against Danny Liedka, the mayor of East Syracuse.

Libous is threatening to send staff into the district to help Russo, though Democratic strategists mock the threats, giggling at the SRCC’s fiscal situation. Anyway, Libous said, he is hoping to woo Liedka into running for the Assembly.

In Rockland County, meanwhile, both County Legislator Ed Day and 17-year incumbent County Executive Scott Vanderhoef wanted to run to replace Morahan. Day says that Albany Republicans quietly pressured the local Republican county committees to back Vanderhoef, fearing that Ramapo Town Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence, the former lieutenant governor candidate viewed as the strongest potential Democratic candidate for the Senate seat, would run for the seat if Vanderhoef did not run. (St. Lawrence is now expected to run for Rockland County executive if Vanderhoef wins.)

The move set up a clash with some rank-and-file local party members who say that if county executive’s office goes Democratic, so will the patronage jobs held by local Republicans.

“There was obvious pressure brought to bear from the Senate Republicans on the local Republican Party,” Day said. “Apparently, they saw the county executive branch of government as on balance less important than the Senate.”

After Leibell retired, meanwhile, the SRCC stepped in to endorse Somers Town Supervisor Mary Beth Murphy. She has also won the Conservative line. But these maneuvers have infuriated Assembly Member Greg Ball, who on paper would seem like a perfect candidate for Senate Republicans this year. He is a young Air Force veteran who has strong Tea Party support, attracting some 15,000 people to a tax-day rally this year. He says he has raised $500,000. He is already running television ads.

There is only one problem: Greg Ball.

“We think Greg Ball’s voting record is too erratic. We think his behavior is too erratic,” Libous said.

Ball said that he still holds out hope that the SRCC will see the writing on the wall and work to get Murphy off the Conservative line between now and November. But if Ball emerges from the primary without the Conservative line, Republicans could very well lose the seat, according to both Democratic and Republican strategists.

Ball believes Senate Republicans were caught flatfooted by Leibell’s retirement and picked Murphy without fully understanding the political dynamics of the race. To him, this demonstrated the larger flaw in SRCC thinking this year.

“In Skelos you have somebody whose campaign strategy in 2010 was to find the fountain of youth for a State Senate conference with an average age of about 95,” Ball said. “But 2010 should have been the year the 95-year-olds gave way to the young guns.”





As Lee Zeldin knocked on doors one recent Friday afternoon in Brian Foley’s neighborhood of Blue Point in Suffolk County, he contemplated whether to stop by his opponent’s house and debate him right there.

“Do you think that would be unfair?” said Zeldin, deciding against it. “Maybe he’ll show up at the door in his boxers. That might be unfair.”

Zeldin and his cadre of Tea Party supporters, who seem to protest Foley everywhere he goes, do not lack for aggression. A 30-year-old Iraq veteran, his campaign headquarters is even located in back of an Army recruiting clinic. As he walked between the neighborhood’s picket-fenced homes, American flags hung outside probably about half the houses in the neighborhood.

To Zeldin, this displayed a disturbing lack of patriotism.

“Have you ever noticed how all the flags have disappeared since after 9/11?” he said. “I wonder why that is.”

The young guns did not emerge to replace the older Republican incumbents, but Zeldin is one of a few who have stepped forward to take on vulnerable Democrats. Like Zeldin, they are more Tea Party than Rockefeller Republican. If Republicans do retake the majority, many of these challengers promise they will not revert to the kind of spending or compromises that occurred under Bruno.  

“I think the Republicans under former leadership screwed a lot of things up,” said Assembly Member Jack Quinn, who is running for the seat currently held by Bill Stachowski, who is fighting through a primary of his own. “I’m probably much more fiscally conservative than the Republicans in the Senate right now.”

The son of a popular former congressman in Western New York, Quinn said he has been trained over the past six years in the Assembly to be the principled, loyal opposition. One of several Assembly members who may join the ranks of the Senate Republicans next year, Quinn said he and his upwardly mobile colleagues would bring a type of energetic fiscal conservatism to the Republican conference.

Zeldin and Quinn are seen as the SRCC’s top two priority candidates. After that, the list includes Russo, St. Lawrence County Clerk Patricia Ritchie, who is running against Darrel Aubertine, and a new addition, former New York City Council Member Anthony Como, who is running against Joe Addabbo.

The Democrats have been doing them no shortage of favors, between the mess of the coup and then Monserrate, and then the never-ending, never-orderly budget process. They have infighting of their own to deal with, an enraged electorate and a labor movement that is far from unified in supporting the Democrats—the AFL-CIO is likely to back many of Republican Senate candidates, Libous believes, and the Civil Services Employees Association has already been flyering against Foley and Stachowski.

If there is one major selling point to special interests, Libous said it would be that Republicans would at least be more honest with them than the Democrats.

“They go to one of them and they say, ‘We’ll do your bill.’ And they go to another and they’ll say, ‘Well, I’m not sure we can do your bill.’” Libous said. “It doesn’t work that way in our conference. We hang tight. We’re loyal to each other.”

Skelos, meanwhile, has promised a more open budget process if Republicans regain the majority, the end of “three men in a room.” He said there would be more equal distribution of member items and staff. He pledged to support non-partisan redistricting.

Of course, Democrats made a lot of those same promises not too long ago.

If they do regain the majority, Republicans cannot exactly kick their feet up until the next round of redistricting in 2021. In 2012, Barack Obama will be back at the top of the ticket. They would again carry the burden of actual power. Many of the longtime incumbents will finally be allowed to move on.

Libous, though, said he has put thoughts about the future on the backburner. He is excited that there are any prospects for the future at all.

They may be frustrated and disillusioned. They may be under-funded, and undermanned, and upset. Old allies may have moved on, along with old colleagues.

But thank god for the Democrats, he said. They have given the party of Joe Bruno one last round in the ring.

“A year and a half ago, if you talked to me in February, I’d say, ‘It’s going to be tough.’ If you talked to me after the coup, I’d say, ‘Yep, things are getting good around here,’” Libous said, cracking a grin at the memory. “If you’re talking to me today, I’m telling you: we’re going to come back.”

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ABOVE: (right) The effort is being led by State Sen. Tom Libous, who has himself taken the title of SRCC executive director. (left) Voting “no” has become the resentful standard for an aging conference hoping voters say “yes” to them one last time in November.

Illustration by Chris Duffy/duffydotcom.com
Photos by Barry Sloan