WASHINGTON — Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Board Chair and New York Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins accomplished a historic feat: uniting the diverse Democratic caucus in the New York Senate. After flipping the chamber blue in 2018, Leader Stewart-Cousins led the caucus to victory again in 2020 by creating a supermajority.
Aside from electoral wins, Leader Stewart-Cousins overcame institutional divisions to build a cohesive, productive legislative caucus. POLITICO’s Bill Mahoney highlighted Leader Stewart-Cousins’ impressive ability to bring Democrats together and make progress on key issues such as police reform, abortion rights, and voting rights.
POLITICO: How Stewart-Cousins tamed New York’s most untamable Democrats
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Democrats from Franklin Roosevelt to Robert Kennedy have tried and failed to turn the Senate into a driver for progressive ideas in the country’s most historically significant Democratic stronghold. But as Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins’ first term as majority leader draws to a close, it’s indisputable that the Senate has become just that for the first time in generations.
There have no public indications of major infighting over the past two years. And the chamber’s Democratic conference has been a key player on policy changes on subjects such as abortion, rights for undocumented immigrants, and criminal justice reform — and if there’s any doubt that these measures have been nationally significant, each has been explicitly lambasted by a Republican president, Donald Trump.
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