Dems poised to elect Stewart-Cousins as Senate majority leader

ALBANY — Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins is expected to make New York history Monday when she becomes the first woman chosen to lead a majority conference in the State Legislature’s 241-year history.

A closed-door vote in the Democratic conference was planned to choose the majority leader for the 2019-20 session beginning Jan. 1. There were no serious challengers to Stewart-Cousins, 68, of Yonkers, who has been one of the most widely respected figures in Albany for years. She led Democrats to the majority in the November elections after the Senate had been controlled by Republicans for most of the last half-century.

“We will finally give New Yorkers the progressive leadership they have been demanding,” Stewart-Cousins tweeted on election night, where Democrats won more seats than they had projected publicly.

Her conference needed to win a net of one seat in the Nov. 6 elections, but came away with at least a solid 39-24 majority. One of the many close races is still under a recount, where Republican Sen. Susan Serino had a narrow lead over Democrat Karen Smythe in the 41st District in Dutchess County. And conservative Democratic Sen. Simcha Felder of Brooklyn, who has conferenced with the Senate GOP majority, hasn’t yet said if he will rejoin the Democrats.

The new Democratic majority will take up several issues long blocked by Republicans, including updating the decades-old state law making abortion legal in the event that the federal statute under the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision is overturned.

Democrats and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who campaigned hard for the first time this year to flip Senate control, also want to strengthen gun control laws, end cash bail and legalize marijuana. Other measures are likely to include strengthening transgender rights and eliminating the “LLC loophole” in campaign finance law. The loophole allows companies to create limited liability companies to make nearly unlimited campaign donations and avoid the $5,000 limit for donations by corporations.

The most difficult issue of the year could be a move to a single-payer health care system, a kind of Medicaid for all New Yorkers, which critics say would greatly increase taxes. That issue could reveal the divides within Senate’s Democratic majority, because Democrats owe their majority to wins in suburban districts, including on Long Island, where taxes are already among the highest in the nation.

The Assembly’s Democratic majority is on board with many of these proposals.

“We are going to make … remarkable change,” Cuomo said Tuesday. “All those issues that have been bottled up for years that the conservatives would not pass by ideology … We can now get all those things done and that’s what’s going to be the main story of the session.”

For Stewart-Cousins, controlling legislation in the oak-paneled chamber with ornate mahogany carvings, Italian marble and a soaring ceiling above red-leather seats is a long way from her beginnings.

She was born in New York City public housing and worked in marketing, taught English and was a newspaper reporter before she became a speechwriter and entered politics. In 2004 she ran for the State Senate against a nine-term incumbent, the popular and powerful Republican Sen. Nick Spano, and the soft-spoken newcomer was given little chance of winning.

“We weren’t thinking about her winning,” said former Gov. David Paterson, who was the Senate minority leader at the time and directed the Democratic campaigns. “She loses by 18 votes and I blamed myself for this. I still do.”

Republicans, he said, led a much more thorough challenge of ballots in the recount than the Democrats and got a judge to reject more Democratic votes than Republican votes.

“So now I am intent on evening the score here and we ran her in 2006 and she won,” Paterson said in an interview.

“She is such a breath of fresh air,” he said. “I think Andrea Stewart-Cousins is one of those people who adversaries adore as much as her members and I think that’s the kind of personal integrity she has.”

Winning is one thing, governing is another, as a mostly different bunch of Democrats learned when they won the majority in 2008 only to lose it two years later. Stewart-Cousins will have to lead a conference long dominated by New York City liberals, but who now share the majority with more moderate suburban Democrats, including six of Long Island’s nine seats.

“The fear was that it would be a few suburbanites with the backs against the reality is different,” said Sen. Todd Kaminsky (D-Long Beach), the senior majority member of the Long Island delegation.

“I think Long Island is going to be in for a good legislative session and a very productive one,” Kaminsky said in an interview. “I have tremendous confidence in her.”

By Michael Gormley

michael.gormley@newsday.com@GormleyAlbany

Michael Gormley has worked for Newsday since 2013, covering state government, politics and issues. He has covered Albany since 2001.