Democrats Take NY Senate For First Time Since New Deal

[babylonsister]

Democrats Are Poised to Control Albany

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and DANNY HAKIM
Published: November 5, 2008


Propelled by a surge of new voters, Democrats won a majority in the New York State Senate on Tuesday, putting the party in control of both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office for the first time since the New Deal.

Democrats turned out in historic numbers from Buffalo to Long Island, overcoming a vaunted Republican political machine to oust two senators whose combined years in office spanned more than half a century.

According to unofficial results, Democrats captured 32 out of the 62 seats in the Senate. The shift marks the end of an era for New York Republicans, whose control of the Senate had come to depend on a bloc of senators, some in their 70s and 80s, who had put off retirement to help preserve the party’s majority.

On Long Island, Senator Caesar Trunzo, 82, who has held office since Richard Nixon was president, lost by 17 percentage points to a Democrat, Brian X. Foley, the son of a candidate whom Mr. Trunzo beat in the early 1980s.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/nyregion/05york.html?hp