... Stewart-Cousins, Hassell-Thompson and Thompson. In addition to those 20, the two leaders of the Democraticconference, John Sampson and Malcolm Smith, are supporting the bill. That leaves 10 votes needed and a lot of uncertainty. In May, Nate Silver whipped the votes for marriage equality. He found what we know: This is an uphill battle. There are at least two definite no votes in...
From NBC's Ken StricklandDemocrat Russ Feingold (WI) today suggested there is a "significant" number of Senate Democrats with concerns about the administration's plan to increase troops in Afghanistan. Feingold, a staunch opponent of sending more troops, addressed his Democratic colleagues today during their weekly Tuesday luncheon. "I was just in a Democraticconference...
Update: The Senate will not go into session tonight, and will reconvene at 10 am tomorrow. A senior Democratic Senate aide just told me that the New York State Senate will be voting on marriage equality, mostly likely either very late tonight (the Senate goes back into session at 9 pm) or tomorrow. As expected, the vote will, at some point, follow the passage of the long-debated deficit reduction...
Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos was just on Talk-1300 AM, where he told Fred Dicker that his understanding, based on conversations with Senate DemocraticConference Leader John Sampson, that there was a three-way agreement last night which has since been broken by the governor. Skelos poked the Democratic leaders for excluding the Republicans from yesterday’s closed-do0r...
... David Paterson had already pledged to do unilaterally. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate DemocraticConference Leader John Sampson delivered the message...
The Senate just gaveled in and, given the ongoing absence of a deficit reduction deal, gaveled right back out again. Rank-and-file lawmakers are awaiting news from the executive mansion, where DemocraticConference Leader John Sampson and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver met with Gov. David Paterson this afternoon. The word of the day - as it has been for the past three weeks - is "optimism."...
... worth of cuts in the $2.8 billion deal floated today by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate DemocraticConference Leader John Sampson that includes a $391 spin-up of federal education aid to prevent cuts in the current year. (That's a win for the Legislature, which dug in its heels to shield the school districts and powerful teachers union, but also something of a Pyrrhic victory,...
Gov. David Paterson sure knows how to bring people together. Senate DemocraticConference Leader and Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos say that they stand together against Paterson’s budget proposal and the notion of giving him the power to cut the budget himself. Both men say they may work on “improving” Paterson’s deficit reduction plan or perhaps [...]
Talk about a political odd couple. Senate DemocraticConference Leader John Sampson and Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos, who will battling it out for control of the chamber next fall, agree on just about everything these days. They're so close, they even finish each other's sentences. The Brooklyn Democrat and Nassau County Republican have put politics aside to form a partnership...
