NY incumbent lawmakers see threats to their seats

With New York City tabloid front pages screaming "Throw the Bums Out" voters yesterday threw some scares at members of New York's maligned State Legislature.

Perhaps the most closely watched race was in the Bronx. There, Democratic Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. was badly trailing Gustavo Rivera, as Espada is accused of illegally directing millions of dollars in government grants to his health clinic. Espada also led a coup with Republicans in the summer of 2009 that gridlocked the Senate.

With 14 percent of the vote in, Rivera had 68 percent of the vote.

The first incumbent to fall was state Sen. Bill Stachowski of Buffalo, who conceded by 10 p.m. to Timothy Kennedy, the product of powerful South Buffalo politics.

Stachowski was part of the two-year-old Democratic majority in the Senate marked by turmoil and partisan gridlock.

Stachowski had served in the Senate since 1980 and briefly held up the state budget as he tried, and ultimately failed, to secure a measure that would have given the State University of New York and its University at Buffalo more autonomy.

Polls showed for the first time that New Yorkers who have for decades hated the legislature but liked their own Assembly member or senator, now by a narrow majority think their representative needs to go.