Key Orthodox Pol Loses Power As NY State Senate Swings To Democrats
State Senator Simcha Felder Image by New York State Senate
By Aiden Pink November 7, 2018
With Democrats poised to retake the New York State Senate, the key swing vote in the divided chamber, Sen. Simcha Felder, appears to have lost all his leverage.
Republicans had controlled the Senate by one vote thanks to the support of Felder, a registered Democrat who tended to vote with Republicans. But the liberal party picked up multiple seats on Tuesday, meaning that Felder, who represents the heavily-Orthodox Brooklyn neighborhood of Boro Park, will no longer have the power to shape important pieces of legislation to favor his community, as when he held up earlier this year until Governor Andrew Cuomo agreed to soften government oversight of yeshiva schools.
Cuomo had warned Felder of this possibility. “Let me say that the Democratic Conference will not need you in November the way they need you now,” Cuomo wrote to Felder in an open letter published in April, urging him (unsuccessfully) to rejoin the Democratic caucus. “I believe there will be additional Democrats who win and are seated for the next legislature. You have said that you act in the best interest of your constituents. For their benefit, now is the time that matters.”
The capture of the Senate means that the Democratic Party controls the governor’s mansion and both chambers of the legislature, easing Cuomo’s path to pass more laws as he contemplates a run for president in 2020.
Julia Salazar, the social justice organizer who defeated an incumbent in her Brooklyn Democratic primary despite criticism within segments of the Jewish community over numerous inconsistencies in her biography, also cruised to victory.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
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
