Some key Senate Democrats, shocked by the apparent victory of Republican David Storobin in last week’s special election in Brooklyn, are privately conceding they have little chance of retaking control of the Senate in November.
“I’m not optimistic, and what happened in Brooklyn, which is so heavily Democratic, suggests we just can’t get our act together,’’ was how one Senate insider put it.
Senate Democrats, who regained the majority in 2008 only to lose it two years later amid scandal and charges of incompetence, are heavily in debt, divided along racial and regional lines and, as of last week, more on the outs with Gov. Cuomo than ever.
And that’s just for starters.
They also face the virtual certainty that a renegade group of four Democrats known as the Independent Democratic Conference will vote for continued GOP control of the Senate if Democrats defy the odds and ultimately win a narrow majority in the November election.
“Call him, Deputy Majority Leader Klein,’’ quipped a prominent Democrat as he suggested the reward that Sen. Jeff Klein of The Bronx, the IDC leader, would likely receive for siding with the GOP.
Senate Minority Leader John Sampson (D-Brooklyn) last week inexplicably finished off any chance of receiving help from Cuomo in the elections when he called the governor’s Tier 6 pension-reform measure — backed by Mayor Bloomberg and many top Democrats — “an assault on working men and women of New York state.’’
