Judge certifies Amedore’s 37-vote victory over Tkaczyk in SD-46: http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/173857/judge-certifies-amedores-senate-win/
Tkaczyk will appeal, of course, but if you read the judge’s opinion (included at the link) it doesn’t sound like she’ll be aboe to get too many additional ballots counted, much less enough to make up a 37-vote deficit.
So with Amedore winning and that one conservative Democrat from the “Super Jewish District” (Simcha Felder) joining the Republican caucus, the GOP has a majority even before those 5 members of the “Independent Democratic Conference” vote for Skelos.
Now the state Senate needs to make some changes to the constitutional amendment setting up independent redistricting and approve it with such new language so that the exact same amendment is not adopted by both houses for a second straight term, meaning that it will not be sent to the voters. And given that the state House likely won’t adopt a modified amendment, that would mean that going into the 2014 elections Democrats who want to adopt that amendment will need to get both houses to pass it with identical language in both the 2015-16 term and the 2017-18 term (or in both in both the 2017-18 term and the 2019-20 term), and then have the voters approve it, for it to be in place for post-2020-Census redistricting.
Cuomo will claim that Republicans went back on their word to adopt an independent redistricting panel, but Republicans could claim that they merely improved the language of the amendment and that it was the Democrats who refused to adopt it. If the Republicans keep control of the Senate after te 2020 elections, the party would then have a seat at the table for redistricting, and would be able to protect their Senate districts (and stop Democrats from gerrymandering congressional districts) for another decade.
Anyhow, that’s what NY Senate Republicans would do if they had balls. And given that doing this would be for their personal benefit, yhey might just do it.
Excellent!
And yes they’ve got to kill that redistricting thing. We know what “fair non-partisan” lines will likely look like.
Thanks for the info.!
Hooray Amedore!
Also, I heard Mike Huckabee say Cuomo was discussing about confiscating guns.
Did you hear? Tkaczyk got the steal. 19 votes. Disgusting. They always find juuuuuuuuust enough.