It’s hard to fathom New York tilting even further against taxpayers. But it could happen — if November’s elections lead to Republicans being shut out from leadership in the state Senate.
Remember, all our state’s top offices (governor, comptroller, attorney general) are today held by Democrats. The Assembly has been in the Dems’ hands since the dawn of time, and is sure to stay that way.
Here in the city, we have one of the most left-wing mayors in history, accompanied by a Democratic-run City Council that has also lurched further left. Almost all other offices are also held by liberal Dems.
New York’s sole check on absolute Dem power is the Senate leadership, now shared between Republicans and five breakaway Dems. Together they have helped Gov. Cuomo check spending and kill some of the more extreme tax and spending proposals popular among the left.
But today, the five GOP-allied Dems are expected to rejoin their party-mates. So if the Republicans can’t pick up a Senate majority in November, Albany is likely to become a completely solid one-party town.
Some are salivating at the prospect. Take the state teachers union: In this month’s primaries, they spent a mountain of money in the GOP race to ensure Sen. Mark Grisanti was defeated by the weaker Republican candidate, Kevin Stocker.
The idea was to make it easier for the Democrat in November. Concealing its identity, the union spent $300,000-plus on ads attacking Grisanti for — get this — not being “conservative enough.”
Publicly, of course, it endorsed Marc Panepinto, a Dem convicted in 2001 of election fraud.
We’ve had our differences with Senate Republicans, who should be fighting even harder in Albany.
But New York is already one of the most anti-taxpayer, anti-business states in America. As even some centrist Democrats would tell you, GOP leadership in the Senate may be the only thing keeping this state from heading over the cliff.