After losing 3 GOP seats last election cycle over their support for the gay marriage bill, Dean Skelos should have learned that being a rubberstamp for Cuomo isn’t smart.
Well, he didn’t:
“Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos said that while he found Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin’s comments on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s legislative tactics “inapporpriate” he did say that the chamber may have acted too quickly on the sweeping gun control law last month … “I understand the concern about the use of the message of necessity,” Skelos said at a news conference. “As I reflect back, perhaps we did act in haste and you’ll see that there are going to be amendments to fix some of the mistakes, but I also think that that type of language is inappropriate.” …”
Yeah, well fuck you.
Having a power-sharing agreement with the IDC, at first glance it might have been plausible to believe that Skelos was simply unable to block the gun bill from coming up for a vote. However, there’s the matter of who is controlling the Senate:
“… While much has been made of the unique structure at the top of the Majority Coalition, including the shared and coequal role played by the IDC’s Jeff Klein and GOP leader Dean Skelos, it’s interesting to looks at the makeup of Senate committees, which are in almost all cases dominated by Republican majorities, even if the IDC and the mainline Democratic members voted en bloc on a given issue … In total, the 31 Republican conference members hold 242 committee posts (7.8 per senator), 166 for the 27 mainline Democrats (6.2 per member), and 34 for the five members of the IDC (6.8 per lawmaker) …”
So, had Skelos’ not immediately caved, there’s a chance the Cuomo bill could have at least been stalled in committee for awhile to allow opposition to build. Skelos did not want that.
The end result? A 15-point approval drop for Cuomo and who knows how much for the Republicans.