Republicans Elect Skelos Senate Majority Leader

ALBANY — Senator Dean Skelos of Long Island is the new majority leader of the New York Senate, replacing Senator Joseph Bruno.Republicans met behind closed doors and voted in their new leader this afternoon, one day after the 79-year-old Mr. Bruno announced he would not seek re-election. Mr. Bruno took control of the Senate in 1994.Mr. Skelos is 60. He was born, raised and educated in Nassau County’s Rockville Centre.It’s unclear what Mr. Bruno’s plans are for the remainder of his term.***ALBANY — Senator Dean Skelos of Long Island was expected to be elected leader of the Republicans’ tenuous majority in the Senate today following Joseph Bruno’s surprise announcement that he will resign as majority leader after 13 years, according to Republican senators briefed on the move.RELATED: Bruno Will Step Down in Albany | Albany Sunset.“We got through a session, now is as good a time as any to move forward and my concern has been that we have a smooth transition,” Mr. Bruno said today. “I can’t think, really, of anything else I could do, being here.”“It has been some journey, some run, some ride,” he said.Mr. Skelos’s closest rival, Senator Thomas Libous of Broome County, will be deputy majority leader of the conference, which is dominated by upstate senators, according to the senators who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the vote hadn’t yet been taken.“My interest is in the Senate majority,” Mr. Libous said. “We’re all focused in coming back in the majority (after the fall elections) and I think we will pick up a seat or two.”That might be more likely with the transition that began with a closed-door meeting Monday night among senior senators. It was then that Mr. Libous agreed not to fracture the conference by making his own run for the powerful leader’s post that comes with a $41,500 stipend on top of a legislators’ base pay of $79,500.The Republicans now have a 32-30 majority, which could evaporate if Bruno also resigns as a rank-and-file senator before his term ends December 31.Mr. Bruno, 79, said he hasn’t yet decided if he will fulfill his term in the Senate. He told reporters that two years ago he and his family, while his wife was terminally ill, decided he wouldn’t seek re-election. But he changed his mind when he realized it could mean Republicans would lose the Senate majority, their last bastion in New York state government.A political scientist of the State University of New York at New Paltz, Gerald Benjamin, said a vacuum like the one created by Mr. Bruno usually results in bickering and jockeying for leadership positions “before the body is cold.”But Republicans, after losing a half dozen seats in the last several elections in the increasingly Democratic state, have a more immediate threat: Survival.“There is no better gambler in this business than Joe Bruno, but as Kenny Rogers sang, you gotta know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em,” the state Democratic Party Chairwoman, June O’Neill, said. “Joe Bruno looked across the table and saw we had a royal flush. The question now for his colleagues is: Is it time to walk away or time to run? We’ll be curious to see who else decides to join him in the retired legislators section at the Saratoga Racetrack.”Republicans tried to spin Mr. Bruno’s decision as an opportunity.“We’ll be fine,” A Schenectady County Republican who joined the Senate with Mr. Bruno 32 years ago, Senator Hugh Farley, said. “I think we’ll be re-energized.”“It’s a challenge this year,” Mr. Benjamin said of a Democratic takeover. “I think it’s just a matter of time after this year.”The leadership change could jeopardize some major post-session issues because tentatively planned special sessions for July and the fall may never convene, unless there is also support among the Senate’s Democrats. Governor Paterson’s property tax cap proposal and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s proposals to ease unaffordable heating fuel costs this winter could languish.Last week, Mr. Bruno warmed to the idea of a tax cap pushed by his friend, the Democratic governor. It was, for a moment, a turning point for the measure supported by 74 percent of New Yorkers in a recent Siena College poll.As for other effects on New Yorkers, the new guard isn’t expected to change legislative procedure much, despite years of criticism by good-government groups that Senate rules are too secretive and limit participation by Democrats.Mr. Skelos, 60, has been in the Senate since 1985 and is steeped in the ways of power Albany, including the authority of strong majority leaders to determine what bills even get to the floor for debate. His expected election in a closed party conference would mean the Senate majority leader, the Assembly speaker, the Senate minority leader, the governor, comptroller, and attorney general will all be from New York City or its suburbs.Mr. Bruno, 79, is from upstate’s Rensselaer County and has held the leader’s job since 1995.But he was an exception, wielding great power from an upstate base in Rensselaer County, which has just half the population of Staten Island or Buffalo.Mr. Benjamin noted Republican George Pataki and Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt were among the few governors from outside New York City’s boroughs or its suburbs and few legislative leaders were from upstate districts. The late Seator Warren Anderson was majority leader for 16 years from his Broome County-based district, which Mr Libous inherited in 1988.“You don’t just replace (Bruno) with someone,” the director of the Quinnipiac University poll, Lee Miringoff, said. “He’s much bigger than that … to the degree he provides a lot of leadership and cohesion, they lose that. That’s not good given the predicament they are in.”Long term, Albany’s notorious rule by three men in a room — the governor and Senate and Assembly leaders private negotiating budgets and major legislation — will see the biggest change since 1995. Mr. Miringoff notes that’s how long Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver have filled two-thirds of that triumvirate, and even Messrs. Spitzer and Paterson were well known factors when they joined.The system has long been criticized as placing too much power in the hands of three people — and the lobbyists who have their ear — in what becomes a trade off of unrelated issues to seal a big deal.“Whether you can change the dance by replacing two out of the three remains to be seen,” Mr. Miringoff said.As for Mr. Bruno, the former Army boxer known for being gregarious and hard-nosed, today was a rare day where he had trouble controlling his emotions.“It’s bittersweet, it’s sad and it’s happy,” Mr. Bruno said of his decision, choking back tears at a news conference today. “It’s tough,” he barely got out before he left the podium at his news conference.He denied that the decision had anything to do with a two-year old FBI investigation concerning his outside business interests and associates. He also said he’s not ill and has no fear of losing the Senate majority.“My life has not been about one of fighting and just running away. It’s been to fighting to the end to victory and to winning. And that’s how I live my life,” he said.

Republicans Elect Skelos Senate Majority Leader

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