After Attacks, Dems Push Stewart-Cousins for State Majority Leader

 Andrea Stewart-Cousins

By Ross Barkan

It was an amusing spectacle for anyone well-acquainted with the bewildering nature of New York State politics. A slew of heavyweight Democrats clustered together next to a statue of Harriet Tubman in Harlem to demand that one of their Democratic own, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, finally become the majority leader of the state senate.

The rally on Monday, organized by Harlem’s new state senator, Brian Benjamin, was held in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a racial remark made by a man who might be New York’s most influential donor, the billionaire investor Daniel Loeb. The politicians and various activists took turns assailing Loeb — who had said in a Facebook comment that the African American Stewart-Cousins was doing more harm to children of color than the KKK because she is an opponent of the expansion of charter schools (Loeb later apologized and deleted the post) — and also decried a group of Democrats who have spent more than four years sharing the majority in the state senate with the GOP.

The hot afternoon on West 122nd Street was illuminating for a few reasons. For one, it brought together some big names in New York politics — Charlie Rangel, Hakeem Jeffries, Letitia James, Scott Stringer, Adriano Espaillat, and Yvette Clarke — who could all agree that the Independent Democratic Conference, the rogue group of eight Democrats who help Republicans control the state senate, needed to end its dubious power-sharing alliance.

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Source: The Village Voice (via The Empire Report)