This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Down ballot from Governor Kathy Hochul’s dominant re-election win and Mike Lawler’s loss to Cait Conley for Congress, Democrats’ gains could shift the balance of power in Albany in ways that remain to be seen. Wins in the state Senate will restore Democrats’ veto-proof supermajority, which they’d lost after 2024, and the party made gains in red districts that were not thought to be competitive. 

Democrats’ anticipated 111 Assembly seats will be their most ever in the 150-person body, according to Speaker Carl Heastie, while the party’s Senate majority will be its largest since 1846, Politico reported.

Here are some takeaways from Tuesday’s legislative races.

Over a dozen Democratic flips — plus one for Republicans

En route to their two-house supermajority, Democrats flipped at least six Republican-held seats in the state Senate and at least seven in the Assembly.

Three more races were uncalled by Thursday afternoon and could yield additional Democratic pickups. Democrat Ian Phillips’s lead over incumbent Republican Assemblymember John Lemondes in Central New York is probably insurmountable, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard. Democrat Ryan Taughrin led Republican incumbent Patrick Chludzinski for an Erie County Assembly seat, while Republican state Senator Jake Ashby was just 177 votes ahead of Democrat Devin Lander in the Capital District, with thousands of mail ballots left to count.

Republicans did manage to flip one Democratic-held seat: the GOP’s Michael Gentile beat Democrat Jonathan Lipe by 5 points in a Mohawk Valley Assembly district that includes the cities of Utica and Rome. (Incumbent Democrat Marianne Buttenschon is retiring.)

Democratic victors were quick to acknowledge that the national environment propelled them to victory.

“The reality is that if you had a ‘D’ next to your name, it was a good year to run,” said Joe Rand, who easily defeated Republican incumbent Bill Weber in a Rockland County Senate district that Trump won by 11 points. “I’d like to attribute it all to my prowess, but I am aware of the fact that there were other factors that went into it.”

Christopher Murray, who upset Republican state Senator Anthony Palumbo on the East End of Long Island, has been joking that “Donald Trump was doing his best to elect me.”

“Just going door-to-door or talking to people, I had never seen that type of anger toward one party or the other in my lifetime,” he said.

New faces

The defeated Republicans included notable names: Jim Tedisco, the legislature’s longest-serving sitting member, lost his Saratoga-area Senate seat to challenger Sarah Rogerson, ending a 44-year legislative career. Alec Brook-Krasny, who has represented South Brooklyn on and off since 2006, was defeated by Chris McCreight in a rematch from two years ago — one of four Democratic flips in the borough.

Turnover will be high: at least 51 new members will arrive in Albany in January, or nearly one-quarter of the 213-person legislature. That’s double the 24 freshmen who were elected in 2024.

Among the retiring members are heavy hitters like Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris and Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes. Some new committee chairs are expected to be named in the coming weeks — including, potentially, a new leader of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. Current Chair Liz Krueger has suggested she might change roles as she recovers from a stroke she suffered in the spring.

Don’t count on veto overrides

On paper, Democrats’ new supermajorities give them the power to override potential vetoes from Governor Hochul. But there’s no indication that Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie or Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins are itching to use that power — the legislature has not overridden a governor’s veto since lawmakers repudiated Republican Governor George Pataki on several budget measures in 2006. Heastie has referred to an override as a “nuclear option.”

“I do not believe the power dynamics change at all with the governor,” said state Senator James Skoufis, who feuded with Hochul last year before reaching a truce months later.

Supermajorities could still strengthen the legislature’s hand when negotiating with the governor, or force her to use different tactics.

Growing pains

The bigger Democratic conference could cause its own frustrations for rank-and-file lawmakers. One Albany veteran noted that individual members could have less money to spend on “legislative adds” — the funding that lawmakers tuck into each year’s budget — since the pie will need to be divided among more members, unless the overall pot of money is increased.

Other resources are similarly scarce.

“There’s only so many committee chairs to go around,” Rand said. “As you marginalize the Republicans even more, the ability to influence legislation is a little bit diminished because there’s so many more of you in the room.”

It’s less clear how the gains will shift the legislature’s ideological makeup, with various groups claiming victory. The Working Families Party, which allows Democrats to run on its third-party ballot line, grew its ranks of endorsed candidates from 28 to 34 in the Senate and 52 to 65 in the Assembly — outnumbering the GOP in both chambers.

“Albany is becoming a two-party town where it’s the Democrats and Working Families Party,” said Cori Marquis, the WFP’s deputy state director.

Candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America will nearly double their ranks from 9 to 16 next year, after DSA-endorsed candidates dominated their primaries in New York City and upstate.

“You’re going to have the DSA tail wagging the Democratic dog,” predicted John Faso, a former Republican Congressman and Assembly minority leader, who noted that the group’s push to tax the rich will be center stage in Albany in 2027.

But the scope of Democrats’ victories could also dilute DSA’s influence within their party’s conference, blunting the impact of their victories.

“If anything, DSA’s increased size may reinforce the governor’s mindset that she work to maintain a more balanced approach to policymaking,” said Skoufis, a populist-leaning moderate.

Samantha Kattan, a DSA member elected to fill Congressmember-elect Claire Valdez’s Assembly seat in Queens, argued that even some of the more moderate winners supported the group’s goals on issues like taxing the rich.

“Ultimately, it is more helpful to have a larger Democratic majority,” Kattan said.