State Senator Serphin R. Maltese at his campaign headquarters in Queens Tuesday night. The Republican senator, a 10-term incumbent, lost to Joseph Addabbo Jr., a Queens city councilman. Photo: Uli Seit for The New York Times
Propelled by a surge of new voters, Democrats won a majority in the New York State Senate on Tuesday, putting the party in control of both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office for the first time since the New Deal.
Democrats turned out in historic numbers from Buffalo to Long Island, overcoming a vaunted Republican political machine to oust two senators whose combined years in office spanned more than half a century.
According to unofficial results, Democrats captured 32 out of the 62 seats in the Senate. The shift marks the end of an era for New York Republicans, whose control of the Senate had come to depend on a bloc of senators, some in their 70s and 80s, who had put off retirement to help preserve the party’s majority.
In Suffolk County, Brian X. Foley, a Democratic town supervisor in Brookhaven, delivers a victory speech after defeating Senator Caesar Trunzo, a Republican who has held office since 1972. Photo: Melanie Fidler for The New York Times
On Long Island, Senator Caesar Trunzo, 82, who has held office since Richard Nixon was president, lost by 17 percentage points to a Democrat, Brian X. Foley, the son of a candidate whom Mr. Trunzo beat in the early 1980s.
In a poignant appearance in a small hotel ballroom in Holtsville, N.Y., Mr. Trunzo received a standing ovation from his fellow Republicans, many of whom have never known a time when he did not dominate the local political scene.
“I’m very proud of my record, I’m very proud of all that I have done,” Mr. Trunzo said. “The people have spoken.”
One of Mr. Trunzo’s colleagues, Senator Serphin R. Maltese of Queens, 75, conceded defeat to Joseph P. Addabbo Jr., 44, a Democratic city councilman, in one of the most expensive and contentious state legislative races this year.
But the elation felt by party leaders Tuesday night was tempered by lingering questions about the allegiance of four Democratic senators from New York City who have so far refused to rule out crossing party lines to support Senator Dean G. Skelos, a Nassau County Republican, as Senate majority leader.
The four Democrats — Pedro Espada Jr. and Rubén Díaz Sr. of the Bronx, Carl Kruger of Brooklyn and Hiram Monserrate of Queens — have said they might not back Mr. Smith.
In a statement issued late Tuesday night, Mr. Skelos stopped short of admitting defeat, suggesting that he and his fellow Republicans would make an aggressive play to the wavering Democrats.
“While our numbers will be fewer, our voice will grow louder, and we will continue our fight to maintain balance and ensure an accountable government that represents all of the people throughout every region of the state,” Mr. Skelos said.
But Senator Malcolm A. Smith, the Senate Democratic leader, declared victory nonetheless and pledged he and his colleagues will get to work immediately.
“After 40 years in the wilderness, we are now in charge of the New York State Senate,” Mr. Smith said at a party in Midtown Manhattan.
Losing the Senate deprives Republicans of their last outpost of power in New York and marks a profound shift in political power away from rural areas and Long Island and toward New York City, Buffalo and other cities where Democrats dominate. If Mr. Smith is elected majority leader, then all of Albany’s “three men in a room”— the governor and the Senate and Assembly leaders — would hail from New York City.
Another long-serving Republican previously thought to be safe, Senator Frank Padavan of Queens, remained locked in a surprisingly tight race with his Democratic challenger and could face a recount or court challenge.
Republicans held on to an open seat in the Buffalo suburbs, where hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent by the two parties, unions and independent groups. But elsewhere upstate, two Democrats considered vulnerable, Senator Darrel J. Aubertine and William T. Stachowski, won by small but comfortable margins.
All around the country, Democrats turned out in record numbers to vote for Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate. That appears to have bolstered Democrats in relatively obscure State Senate races, where Democratic workers had spent weeks calling voters to remind them to vote all the way down the ballot.
The Democrats last won a majority in the Senate in 1964, but held it for only a single fractious year. Many Senate Republicans have only known life in the majority, and some may choose to retire rather than serve in the minority. Political donations of special interest groups will swing heavily to the new majority caucus, and unless Republicans retake the chamber in 2010, Democrats would control the redrawing of district lines.
"If the Democrats control redistricting, the Republicans are in the wilderness for decades," said Gerald Benjamin, a professor of political science at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
But the Democratic victory on Tuesday will complicate the coming budget negotiations. Gov. David A. Paterson has called a special session of the Legislature for Nov. 18 to help close an estimated $1.5 billion budget shortfall for the current fiscal year and get an early start on next year’s budget.
Even before Tuesday, Republicans had suggested that they were digging in for a fight over state aid to schools and other budget items, refusing Mr. Paterson’s request for a list of proposed cuts to spending. But as a lame-duck majority, they would have little incentive to agree to painful cuts now, when they could easily pass the buck to Democrats after the Senate is reorganized early next year.
With the Democrats winning control of the Senate, some of them acknowledged Tuesday night that their party will bear sole responsibility for the heavy burden of taming and running New York’s traditionally dysfunctional state government.
“There will be no excuses,” said Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson, a Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester County. “We’re going be expected to take all those ideas we’ve talked about and make them happen. People are expecting us to change paradigms.”
