http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/10/8553964/polls-republican-senate-challengers-double-digits?top-featured-2Original article paywalled. Excerpts are posted from the author (Jimmy Vielkind)'s Twitter account.
- Sen. Ted O'Brien (D-Rochester) trails GOP challenger Richard Funke by 25 points. Funke 57, O'Brien 32.
- Sue Serino leads Sen. Terry Gipson (D-Poughkeepsie) 52-40
- Cecelia Tkaczyk (D-Duanesburg) is the closest: she trails George Amedore 52-42
Original content from me below.
The New York State Senate has historically been gerrymandered to give the Republicans an edge in the chamber, as opposed to the state assembly, which is gerrymandered likewise to favor the Democrats. The three seats in question were generally swing districts that had previously, thanks to tradition and incumbency, been Republican seats until 2012. Riding Obama's coattails, the three went to Democrats.
Gipson won 2012 as a result of a vote-split. Neil DiCarlo, who challenged then-incumbent Stephen Saland in a primary in 2012 over his support of New York's "Marriage Equality Act" and lost, remained on the ballot as the nominee of the Conservative Party, splitting the conservative and Republican votes, allowing Democratic challenger Terry Gipson to slip through. Logic would indicate that, especially in a midterm with fewer voters, and a gubernatorial race where the passion in most of upstate seems to be against Cuomo's SAFE Act, the seat will revert to Republican hands.
In O'Brien's district, he won the 2012 election for an open seat after the previous incumbent, Jim Alesi, resigned in a wave of scandal (suing the owners of a home he illegally trespassed upon the moment the statute of limitations expired on his crime; he also voted for the MEA), defeating Sean Hanna. Of any of the three districts mentioned, O'Brien's was the one the Democrats probably had the best chance of holding onto in 2014, given that it has some urban flavor to it. Yet Rich Funke is a popular local newscaster and has the benefit of name recognition among the low-information voters.
The Tkaczyk district was originally created to be slightly Republican leaning when the state added a Senate district due to population changes; thus, it had no incumbent. Tkaczyk, a boilerplate Cuomo progressive, very narrowly defeated Amedore, then a member of the Assembly, for the open seat—after Tkaczyk commissioned a recount and Amedore had already been seated in the chamber. Given the political climate, as previously mentioned, favors the GOP much more, Amedore will likely be justified in running again for the seat.
The State Senate is currently composed of 63 people, divided into 33 Democrats and 30 Republicans. One of the Democrats, the conservative Orthodox Jew Simcha Felder, caucuses with the Republicans. A group of five others, the Independent Democratic Conference, broke off from the Democratic Conference in 2011; they have run the chamber in coalition with the GOP since the 2012 elections, preventing the Democratic Party from enforcing their majority. Both the SAFE Act and MEA were passed under this coalition. Cuomo, while initially supporting the coalition in pursuit of his property-tax cap (property taxes in New York are among the highest in the country), pledged support for reuniting the two Democratic factions as a condition for getting a third-party endorsement for his re-election run in 2014. Yet that will likely require the Democrats to either sweep all three seats listed here or sweep two of the three and win an open seat on Long Island that had previously been held by the GOP. That seat is also leaning toward the Republicans.
A further note: Siena is traditionally the most pro-Democrat pollster in the state, so this is not good news for the Democrats.
