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'Nightmare scenario' in State Senate

BY JAMES T. MADORE | james.madore@newsday.com

October 26, 2008

ALBANY - It's being called "the nightmare scenario": a State Senate unable to work because Democrats and Republicans win an equal number of seats in the Nov. 4 elections.

Such a tie hasn't occurred before in modern New York history but is looking more likely because there are only a few close races out of 62. And if the legislature's upper chamber were evenly split, there's no lieutenant governor to cast the deciding vote in the leadership election in January.

The prospect of a stalemated Senate worries officials here because of the financial crisis. Instead of closing this year's budget deficit of $2 billion, senators could be fighting for control. "It throws the whole Senate into real confusion," said Stanley B. Klein, a political scientist on the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. "Without a leader, it's every man and woman for themselves and that would be absolute chaos."

Both parties foresee victory

Klein recalled 1965, the last time Democrats held sway in the Senate and how their infighting led to a protracted leadership election. Resolution came only after the Republican governor, Nelson Rockefeller, ordered senators from his party to vote for one of the two Democratic candidates.

The Senate's current partisan chiefs each insist they will win a majority on election day.

"We're going to prevent that nightmare because we're going to come back with a larger majority," said Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre). "I'm not even dealing with that hypothetical."

Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-St. Albans) agreed: "I'm not even thinking about it."

The GOP majority has narrowed to one seat after defeats upstate in February and in Nassau County last year.

Gov. David A. Paterson, a former leader of the Senate Democrats, said it wasn't unrealistic to think there could be a 31-31 tie.

"I think it's a possibility," he told Newsday. "I also think either party could wind up with a one-seat majority, which we have now."

During most of his 21 years as a senator, from 1986 to 2006, Paterson said, the GOP majority was so large Democrats had little influence. A closely divided Senate encourages bipartisan compromise.

"It's a nightmare scenario if you are afraid of governance," he said. "But this is democracy, and the people of the state seem somewhat split on who should be running the Senate."

Dual role

Paterson's elevation to governor from lieutenant governor in March created uncertainty about how control of a tied Senate is determined. The constitution makes no provision for electing a new lieutenant governor until 2010, meaning Skelos, as Senate majority leader, also serves as acting lieutenant governor.

This dual role, Skelos has argued, gives him two votes on procedural matters. The constitution is not clear, however, whether the two votes would carry over to the Senate's Jan. 7 organizational meeting when the temporary president will be elected.

Neither Skelos nor his predecessor, Sen. Joseph Bruno of Brunswick, has tried to vote twice and Democrats haven't yet challenged their right. A barrage of lawsuits is likely if the Senate is tied, however.

"There could be a stalemate ... but a short-term interruption in the operation of one legislative house generally does not cause the house of state to fall apart," said Robert Ward of SUNY's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. "But if there were gridlock that went on for months, clearly that would be damaging to the state."

That's what happened 43 years ago when Democrats won a clear majority of Senate seats but couldn't choose a leader. They were split between supporters of then-new U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr.

"We had four or five weeks of total deadlock," said Jerome L. Wilson, a state senator in 1963-66 and Wagner supporter. "The government was totally paralyzed" because the Assembly was bogged down in a leadership fight.