announced Monday<\/a> he will not return to the Legislature \u2013 joining a growing list of lawmakers who have decided to leave Albany after the end of the year.<\/p>\nGianaris, who was first elected to the Legislature at age 27, will continue to serve as deputy majority leader until his term expires at the end of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been an incredible, positive force in this chamber,\u201d Stewart-Cousins said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stewart-Cousins and Gianaris have served in Senate leadership together for over a decade \u2013 back when Republicans controlled the upper house. Democrats have controlled the chamber since 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe and I started our leadership journey together 13 years ago with the idea of taking the Democrats out of the wilderness and putting us in a position where we would be able to stand in front of you all and talk about policy and our priorities and actually get them implemented,\u201d the Senate leader added.<\/p>\n
Stewart-Cousins, likewise, has led Democrats in the Senate since the party took the majority in 2019. Current chamber rules do not allow one lawmaker to hold the leadership role after more than eight years, meaning Stewart-Cousins\u2019 tenure is up in 2027 unless senators change the rules.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a conversation for after budget (during this year\u2019s legislative session) \u2013 this is a conversation that will happen after elections,\u201d Stewart-Cousins said. \u201cOnce the elections happen, then we will know who, because nobody today can vote for what happens next year, nor do they vote for changes in rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senators would be required to vote to adopt rule changes at the beginning of the 2027 legislative session. It would not require a bill.<\/p>\n
Stewart-Cousins would not say if she plans to push for a rule change to allow her to remain the Senate\u2019s temporary president.<\/p>\n
Sen. Jamaal Bailey is widely considered a top contender to succeed Stewart-Cousins as majority leader, three senators and two other people familiar with the dynamics told City & State. Westchester Democrat Sen. Shelley Mayer is also on the shortlist, multiple senators said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear who could be tapped as the next deputy majority leader to succeed Gianaris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York state Senate Democrats do not plan to change leaders or the chamber\u2019s leadership rules before the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1414,9,11,10,49,51,50,2327],"class_list":{"0":"post-130073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-campaigns-elections","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-new-york-state","13":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-state-news","15":"tag-news-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}