WASHINGTON — In a New York state Senate long dominated by a Republican majority, the Democratic conference has traditionally wielded little power. But while they often complain about a lack of influence in legislation and the budget, Democratic lawmakers have equal access to at least one standby of political office: the camera.

The 29-member caucus, it turns out, has its very own staff photographer.

That position has been spotlighted by a lawsuit now being brought against the former Democratic leader of the state Senate — and the state’s current lieutenant governor — David Paterson, by a photographer who claims Mr. Paterson, who is African American, fired him because he is white.

Mr. Paterson denies the accusation, but the case underscores an element of the New York State Legislature that sets it apart from other bicameral governing branches around the country: the sheer scale of its bureaucracy.

The Empire State’s Legislature employs more people than any other state legislature in the nation.

The state Assembly and Senate totaled 3,428 staff members during its busiest period in 2003, the most recent year for which the National Conference of State Legislatures has employment data. That number is nearly 500 more than the second highest state, Pennsylvania, and it’s more than 45% more than either California or Texas, the two most populous states in the union.

As minority leader in the state Senate, Mr. Paterson oversaw a central staff of 143 employees, a number that does not include the dozens of people that work for committees and for individual senators in their Albany or district offices. In the United States Senate, by comparison, the central staff of the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, comprises 28 people.

The number of employees for the Senate Democrats in New York, however, is paltry compared to the size of the Senate Republican apparatus, controlled by the majority leader, Joseph Bruno. More than 530 central staffers work under his charge, creating a gap that Democrats often point to as a reason why they have remained in the minority for so many years.

The staffing level for New York’s state Senate dwarfed its counterparts in other populous states.

In California, each party employs roughly 50 people in the state Senate central leadership and caucus staff, a spokeswoman for the Senate president said. In Florida, the total figure for Republicans and Democrats combined reaches to about 200, a spokeswoman there said.

“Wow,” said Dick Dadey, the executive director of Citizens Union, a New York-based watchdog group. “I have to admit a level of surprise at the comparison with other states.”

Officials in other state minority party caucuses said they managed to get by without the nearly 150 people that New York’s Senate Democrats employ, even if it meant fending for themselves when it came to photography.

“We don’t have one person that serves as a staff photographer,” Thomas Collins, a spokesman for the Republican leader in the California state Senate, Richard Ackerman, said. “We have one camera that we throw to one another as events come up. Generally, it’s whoever is available to take pictures.”

For official functions in the Capitol in Sacramento, lawmakers can use a central Senate photographer. “I’ll call over and say, ‘Senator Ackerman needs some pictures,'” Mr. Collins said.

The process is similar in the Florida Senate, where a spokeswoman for the Senate president said the two parties have shared a photographer without incident. “We’ve never had any complaints whatsoever,” the spokeswoman, Kathleen Mears, said. “There’s never been a partisan issue with that.”

In a New York legislative culture steeped in partisanship, the hiring of separate staff photographers for each party is but one colorful symbol of a system that approaches a kind of political segregation between Republicans and Democrats. “They don’t quite have separate lavatory facilities, but the minority and the majority don’t share of lot of overlapping staff,” the legislative counsel for the New York Public Interest Research Group, Russ Haven, said.

Indeed, it was political loyalty more than any other factor that Mr. Paterson cited in a sworn deposition as his reason for replacing the Senate Democratic photographer, Joseph Maioriello. Mr. Paterson had ascended to the leadership post in 2003 after a bitter fight in which he had challenged the incumbent Democratic Senate chief, Martin Connor. In his deposition, he wrote that because Mr. Maioriello had been Mr. Connor’s photographer, his loyalty was “in question.” “I perceived a need to have someone in that position whose loyalty to me was not in question,” Mr. Paterson wrote.

Mr. Maioriello, who earned $34,000 a year in his position, is seeking $1 million in punitive damages, claiming he was told that Mr. Paterson would want a photographer “of color.”

Mr. Paterson’s successor as Senate Democratic leader, Malcolm Smith, has retained a staff photographer, but a spokesman, Curtis Taylor, noted that he has decreased the size of the central staff to 135 from 143. “Looking at Senate operations and trying to create better levels of efficiency, Senator Smith decided to bring in less staff,” Mr. Taylor said.

The photographer who replaced Mr. Maioriello was paid $48,000 a year, according to court documents in the lawsuit.