by J. Myrle Fuller
December 17, 2019
This morning, Rich Funke, a Republican member of the New York State Senate, announced he would not be seeking re-election. Funke, a popular former sportscaster in Rochester, had been elected to the State Senate in 2014. On its face, Funke's retirement might not be so shocking; he cited his belief in term limits as his main reason for leaving. More skeptical leftists might have suspected he was hiding some sort of scandal (there is no evidence of that).
What made Funke's retirement notable is that it is in the midst of a wave of coincidental retirements in the upper house of the state legislature. Funke is the ninth member of the caucus to announce his retirement or resignation in 2019. All have been from upstate New York. Most have been from Western New York, from Rochester westward. Among the others:
The whole exodus began after the 2018 elections. In that year, the Democrats trounced the Republicans to retake the chamber and establish one-party rule in the state. While this was not the first time the Democrats had secured the chamber, which had historically been gerrymandered to favor upstate (while the Assembly was correspondingly gerrymandered to favor New York City), the landslide was particularly heavy: previous attempts by the party were thwarted when defectors chose to form a coalition with the Republican leadership. The 2018 primaries ousted the coalition members as well, leaving a monolithic Democratic majority unwilling to compromise.
The losses forced a reckoning for a party long viewed to have weak and ineffective leadership. Ed Cox, the party head, was forced to resign. Senate Republican Leader John Flanagan, a Long Island resident, did not. So Catharine Young, who represents Southwestern New York, challenged Flanagan for minority leader. The party retrenched, and Flanagan (who himself ascended after the corruption conviction of Dean Skelos and the death of second-in-command Tom Libous) won 14-9. Young was stripped of her committee assignments and was forced to resign this past March. Since then, several other members of the caucus—decimated from a 32-seat majority before the 2018 elections to 23 afterward—have headed for the exits:
* George Amedore, who represents a district in suburban Albany.
* Bob Antonacci, from Syracuse, who is seeking a judicial seat. Antonacci's tenure was particularly short-lived, as he had only been elected in 2018.
* Betty Little, perhaps the most surprising, a longstanding fixture in the state Senate whose seat is in the lower Adirondacks
* Michael Ranzenhofer, whose district is in Buffalo
* Joseph Robach, who represents another district in the Rochester area
An additional resignation will likely occur as two of the three remaining Buffalo area Republican senators, Rob Ortt and Chris Jacobs, are both seeking a Congressional seat, vacant since the resignation and conviction of Chris Collins.
Most of the retirements have stopped short of a complete resignation, as Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo has frequently stalled when a vacancy has appeared in a Republican district. He waited eight months—when the law requires 70 to 80 days—to hold the election for Young's seat. (George Borrello, another Republican, won the seat with only token opposition.) Yet to say this mass resignation is business as usual is, while an expected attempt to save face, a dubious claim at best. This is an exodus. It is not just a vote of no confidence against the Senate Democrats and their iron fists, but against their own party's downstate machinery.
Incoming state party chair Nick Langworthy has said he will nominate replacements for those who are resigning. This independent would advise him not to. The best way to delegitimize a state government that has repressed the party's base by strangling its economy is to not run anyone. Let the seats sit vacant, let the Democrats have their say. And in 2020 when they gerrymander upstate interests into oblivion as they promised in 2010 (which led to their drubbing and the last firm Republican majority in the chamber to date), they can safely say that New York no longer has a little-r "republican form of government" required by the constitution.
That may be the only realistic way real reform can be achieved, and upstate saved from the hands of a tyrannical Democratic majority that cares nothing about them since they do not need our votes. Before 2018, most people in the state had majority representation in at least one of the two legislative chambers. Now, whole swaths have voices that cannot be heard.
Why legitimize that?
* Disclaimer: I reside in the state Senate district represented by Borrello and formerly by Young.
This essay has been revised to reflect the continued presence of one western New York Republican state senator, Patrick Gallivan, who has vowed to seek re-election.
