the albany project

A pretty damning account of Dem election performance as regards the State Senate from the New York Times.

Republicans Keep Control of the Senate in New York

The Republicans, who hold a 35-27 majority over the Democrats, said last night that Mr. Spano was the only endangered incumbent, despite the Democratic sweep of statewide offices with a ticket led by Eliot Spitzer and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“This is working a miracle, if you think about what happened here in this state,” said Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the majority leader. “We’re going to have representative government, checks and balances, and a two-party system,” he said.

For Democrats who have long sought to take control of a Senate in New York that has seemed stubbornly out of reach even though the state has 5.5 million registered Democrats and only 3.1 million registered Republicans, 2006 proved to be a squandered opportunity.

Some Democrats believed that too little was done on Senate races to take advantage of a year when their party got almost all the breaks on the rest of the statewide ticket. Republicans, by contrast, worked feverishly to protect their majority. For the Republicans, it was a critical fight: since many of them had already written off the governor’s race, they concentrated on the Senate hoping to retain a power base in Albany.

Controlling even one house of the Legislature, they knew, would effectively give them veto power over much of what goes on in the state: they would have to approve all of Mr. Spitzer’s budgets, agree to his legislative proposals, and even give their approval to many important construction projects and grand plans around the state.

Given that prospect, the Democrats did relatively little to try to take the Senate. They put some of their star power behind their State Senate candidates — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Spitzer stumped for Ms. Stewart-Cousins — but did little to share the wealth that poured into the campaign coffers at the top of the ticket. Republicans, by contrast, raised money at a furious clip for their Senate candidates.

The New York State Senate Republican Campaign Committee raised more than $7 million this year, taking in more than $1 million in the past two weeks. The Democrats raised less than $2 million for their campaign committee this year, according to campaign finance reports filed with the State Board of Elections.

And Republican senators bombarded their constituents with mailings noting property-tax rebate checks that they made sure arrived this fall and all the pork they were able to dole out to their districts by virtue of controlling the majority.

Neither house in the State Legislature has changed hands in three decades. The odds are stacked against change, because of district lines drawn to protect incumbents and the huge fundraising advantage they enjoy.

But in a year that some knew would be a rising Democratic tide, relatively few resources were thrown at lifting the smallest boats: the state’s Democratic Senate candidates.

Pathetic. There are only two conclusions to draw here, neither of them good for state Dems. Either the state party committees are grossly incompetent or they either perfectly OK with the status quo.

My money is on the latter.

Posted by downtown on Thursday, November 09, 2006 at 8:07 PM | Permalink