Freshmen set out to prove themselves in 9th S.D., 20th A.D.

For the first time in nearly three decades, the residents of the 9th Senate District and the 20th Assembly District will have freshmen legislators representing them in Albany, with the re-election of Sen. Todd Kaminsky (D-Long Beach) and the election of novice lawmaker Melissa “Missy” Miller of Atlantic Beach.

Kaminsky represented the 20th A.D. for nearly a year and a half before defeating Chris McGrath in an April special election to fill Dean Skelos’s Senate seat. Skelos, a Republican, served 30 years in the Senate before being convicted of federal corruption charges in 2015.

As a freshman in the Assembly, Kaminsky set a record for the number of bills passed by a first-year legislator — 19. As a Democrat, he had the advantage of being part of the majority. Now, in the Senate, he will be part of the Democratic minority.

He understands that Senate leaders face difficult decisions about what bills will come out of committees and be introduced on the floor in a brief amount of time. Yet Kaminsky believes that persistence in battling for the legislation he sponsors pays off. “You have to be relentless,” he said. “When I’m with the leaders, I’m always talking about getting money for 878” — the Nassau Expressway — “for Sandy victims and for our schools.”

Miller, a Republican, will be in the minority in the Assembly. She is succeeding not only Kaminsky, but also longtime Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg, who served for 25 years before retiring in 2014.

Running on her strength as an advocate for her special-needs son, Oliver, and for medicinal marijuana, Miller said she left her ego at the door a long time ago. “I don’t care who gets the credit — if it’s an important issue, I’ll make sure it gets heard,” she said. “If a Democrat gets the credit, so be it.” 

Though he is representing the same Senate district, Kaminsky believes he will not be tainted by the Skelos scandal. “My election and re-election shows that people want real ethics reform and want people in Albany who think of the people first, not themselves,” he said.

The State Legislature reconvenes in January, and Kaminsky said he wants to help ensure that Nassau County and the Town of Hempstead clean up what he called the “tax mess” in Valley Stream and other communities, where residents were hit with huge increases because of action by the town’s Industrial Development Agency. He also seeks to create ethics reform laws and to quicken the process of obtaining money for storm resiliency projects.

According to Larry Levy, a political analyst and the dean of Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies, Kaminsky will have a leg up on other first-year legislators thanks to several months of experience he gained after winning Skelos’s seat.

“Todd is a freshman-plus,” Levy said. “He already knows where the men’s room is, where the meeting rooms are, and he already has an organizational relationship. It’s not like he’s going up without any experience or agenda or people to guide him. I have no doubt that as a smart politician he’s going to try and find out where his district is on important issues, and far more often than not, go with the people who elected him.”

Levy said he expects Kaminsky to make his mark in criminal justice and ethics, partly because of his law background and partly because of the special election circumstances in which he took over Skelos’s seat. “Even if he wasn’t succeeding somebody who was convicted, it’s his natural space as a federal prosecutor,” Levy said. “These are the things that he knows, the things that he has done.” 

Miller, Levy said, represents a fascinating new political phenomenon. “I’ve been covering politics on Long Island for 39 years,” he said. “I know a lot of the players. I know a lot of the wannabes. But I know nothing about Missy. That’s what makes her victory somewhat delightful for political junkies … here is a self-described stay-at-home mom with a professional expertise in the nursing and social services area, who literally came out of nowhere in the political world to run a race that probably no one else wanted to run, and won.”

Levy said that Miller’s election was particularly interesting because she won easily in a district that went heavily for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. “You can’t say that these were coattails she rode, as you could [in some districts] where the president-elect ran very strongly,” Levy said. 

“It will be interesting, bordering on fascinating, to see how she makes her way and what political alliances she makes. Will she be another Denise Ford, who gets along with people on both sides of the aisle? Will she be another Carolyn McCarthy, who for many years kept her Republican enrollment even as she caucused with the Democrats? … How will somebody with no political experience handle not just politics, but policy? I think this is wonderful. She goes to Albany as the quintessential citizen legislator,” Levy added.