Democratic State Committee members urge breakaway Senate Dems to rejoin their colleagues

For the first time, the State Democratic Party is officially criticizing some of its own party members for forming a partnership with Republicans to run the state Senate. Zack Fink filed the following report.

Meeting in Albany, members of the Democratic State Committee passed a resolution urging breakaway Democrats to rejoin their colleagues and form a Democratic majority in the state Senate.

"We just felt like enough was enough," said Rachel Lavine of the New York State Progressive Caucus. "We had asked them to come back, and we said if they aren't going to come back and caucus with the Democrats in the New York State Senate, then they shouldn't run as Democrats because they are not acting like Democrats."

Right now, even though they're in the minority, Republicans control the state Senate with a coalition that includes Brooklyn Democrat Simcha Felder and eight members of the Independent Democratic Conference. But if all Democrats were to come together as one conference, the party would control the Senate.

"The fact that the state party has stepped in to say this is the official position of New York State Democrats is significant, and hopefully it will lead to a reconciliation that allows us to actually have the Democratic majority that people voted for," said state Senator Michael Gianaris of Queens.

Party officials acknowledge the vote was largely symbolic.

"This is an issue for the Senate chamber. So it's hard for anybody not in that chamber to sort of have an impact on how that chamber decides to organize itself," said Basil Smikle of the New York State Democratic Party.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the IDC responded, "The reason why the Democratic Party is losing across the nation and at home is that they are coopted by a small band of misfits who continue to talk to each other in echo chambers and refuse to acknowledge that the party of Roosevelt, Kennedy and Clinton no longer has the ability to communicate with working-class voters. We will see you at the polls."

If the Democrats in the state Senate were all to come together, New York would become the seventh state in the nation to have the Democratic trifecta, meaning a Democratic governor and both houses of the legislature controlled by Democrats. By comparison, Republicans have 25 states with Republican governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures.