State Senate co-leaders Dean Skelos and Jeff Klein apparently did not mind (too much) the composite photo featuring half of each of their faces that ran in the Jan. 7 issue of Crain’s New York Business, under the headline “And they called it Skleinos.” The two have agreed to be interviewed by journalists before an audience at an extended Crain’s Business Breakfast Forum Feb. 6. (The two interviewers will be Crain’s assistant managing editor Erik Engquist and Ken Lovett, the Daily News’ Albany bureau chief.)
It will be the Senate leaders’ first such event since they struck an unprecedented power-sharing agreement late last year, before the final results of the November election were known. Until now, the Senate has always been controlled by one party or the other, although there was a brief period of tumult in 2009 when both parties claimed to have the majority.
An ad promoting the Feb. 6 forum says Messrs. Skelos and Klein will “discuss details of how the Senate’s Republican-Democrat power-sharing agreement will be executed and what happens when the two Senate presidents disagree.”
The agreement, so far, has worked out well for both men. Had Mr. Skelos waited for the results from the election, he might well have found himself in the minority, as New York voters elected only 30 Republicans to the Legislature’s upper chamber. Mr. Skelos recruited Democrat Simcha Felder to his conference, but the Democrats still had 32 other party members elected, enough for a majority and the spoils that come with it.
But five of those Democrats are members of Mr. Klein’s breakaway caucus, the Independent Democratic Caucus, without which neither the regular Democrats nor the Republicans have the 32 votes they need to run the chamber.
