Simcha Felder On Hot Seat As New York Democrats Win Special Elections
State Senator Simcha Felder Image by New York State Senate
By Dave Goldiner April 25, 2018
Sen. Simcha Felder may be on the political hot seat from now till November.
The Brooklyn senator says he will stick with New York Republicans, even as Democrats won special elections that make him the sole vote keeping all branches of state government from being controlled by Democrats.
“It’s my obligation to avoid a … political battle that will only hurt my constituents and New Yorkers,” Felder told the New York Times. “Political gamesmanship must not be allowed to … push this institution into turmoil.”
Democrat Shelley Mayer led by an insurmountable 58-to-42% margin with nearly all precincts reporting in a Westchester district while a Democratic candidate was sweeping to victory with over 90% of the vote in a Bronx seat.
Those results will leave the chamber split 31-31, with Felder holding the deciding vote.
Felder, who has won his district in the heart of Orthodox Brooklyn running on both the Republican and Democratic lines, has long caucused with Republicans.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is a Democrat and Democrats hold a comfortable majority in the assembly, meaning the Senate is the only body preventing Democrats from enacting a wish-list of legislative priorities.
Up until recently, a separate group of “independent” Democrats also sided with the GOP. But they buried the hatchet and rejoined the party leadership.
That leaves Felder as a reluctant kingmaker. His power — and the pitfalls that it entails — came into focus when he singlehandedly held up the state budget to extract concessions around the way the state regulates Orthodox yeshivas.
He did win more lenient treatment, but also drew unwelcome attention to the issue of substandard education in Jewish schools and criticism for his own role in pushing an unpopular special measure to benefit the ultra-Orthodox.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
