Tilt of state Senate rests on her shoulders

On Board Online • January 28, 2013

By Cathy Woodruff
Senior writer

The election of an upstate school board member to a new state Senate seat has cemented an unprecedented power-sharing structure in the chamber.

Democrat Cecilia Tkaczyk (pronounced “ka-chick”), a Schenectady County sheep farmer and vice president of the Duanesburg school board, eked out a slim 18-vote victory over Republican George Amedore, a home builder who gave up his 105th District Assembly seat to run for the 46th Senate District seat. The new district was created in last year’s redistricting process.

A suspense-filled legal battle over contested ballots lasted more than 10 weeks after Election Day, and the last 99 votes were tallied on Jan. 18.

Tkaczyk’s election brings to 33 the number of Democrats elected to the 63-seat Senate, which normally would provide a controlling majority. But because the chamber’s 30 Republicans have accepted Brooklyn Democrat Simcha Felder into their conference and crafted a power-sharing agreement with the five-member Independent Democratic Conference, neither party has outright control of the Senate.

The so-called majority coalition forged by GOP Leader Dean Skelos of Long Island and IDC Leader Jeff Klein of the Bronx allows the pair to trade off duties as temporary president of the house. The Senate’s 27 “mainline” Democrats are led by Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Westchester County, and Tkaczyk is a member of that group.

Skelos and Klein struck their coalition deal while the outcome of the Amedore-Tkaczyk race was still up in the air and the safety of the previous Republican majority was cloaked in doubt.

Tkaczyk began her campaign last summer with a petition drive to run as a Democrat and on a ballot line she dubbed Save Our Schools. She stressed public school issues, particularly funding fairness, in her platform and throughout the race.

“Upstate rural and small city schools need a voice in Albany,” she said when she launched her campaign.

The last ballots in the 46th District race were opened on Jan. 18 following a series of court rulings regarding challenged ballots. A state Supreme Court justice certified Amedore as the winner by 37 votes in December, but a panel of appellate judges ruled on Jan. 9 that another 99 votes should be counted. The state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, declined to consider reversing the Appellate Division decision.

Though Democrats outnumber Republicans in the new 46th Senate District, Tkaczyk’s victory was considered an upset because the district incorporates portions of Amedore’s former Assembly district and because the lines were tailored for him by Republicans who carved out the additional seat.

The district includes all of Montgomery and Greene counties and portions of Schenectady, Albany and Ulster counties.

Tkaczyk, who served on the Duanesburg school board for five years, joins new Assembly member Patricia Fahy, a former Albany school board president, among freshmen legislators this year. Fahy, a Democrat, represents the 109th District and succeeds longtime Assembly member John “Jack” McEneny, who retired.

In addition to her work raising Jacob sheep with her husband, Eric, and rearing their 13-year-old son, Tkaczyk has worked as a legislative analyst, specializing in housing policy, in the Senate. She was executive director of the Neighborhood Preservation Coalition of New York State for nearly 10 years, and was statewide advocacy director for the Supportive Housing Network of New York.

She has a bachelor’s degree in agricultural science from Rutgers University, is a member of the Duanesburg Volunteer Ambulance Corp. and is vice president of the Golden Fleece Spinners and Weavers Guild.