By Najib Aminy

As Barack Obama closed in the 2008 Presidential election, Brian X. Foley (D) defeated New York State’s 36-year-incumbent senator Caeser Trunzo (R) in the Third State District. Foley’s win over Trunzo secured a democratic majority in the state senate leaving democrats in complete control of New York State for the first time in forty years. Foley, the former Brookhaven Supervisor, ousted Trunzo recording 61% of the votes.

“I’ve seen better days,” said an exhausted Nate Marks, spokesman of the Trunzo campaign. The Republicans not only lost the Presidential election but also lost a significant amount of seats in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. With a democratic run New York government, Marks said that it is too early to speculate what will happen to New York and its residents. Fighting what he called “an uphill battle,” Marks said that Trunzo may look to relax after his loss, adding that Trunzo has served 45 years in public office.

In his concession speech, Trunzo pointed to Long Island Universities hurting his campaign due in part to their large efforts of registering student voters who, according to Trunzo, said practiced line voting. Nate Marks, a spokesman for the Trunzo campaign, said that he felt many voters were “swept up with the whole Obama change thing and ended up voting democrat all across the board.” Trunzo said he felt that many of these student registered voters were drones voting democrat and not looking into the issues.

With 40,000 newly registered voters in the third district alone, Marks said that it will be interesting to see what will happen to policies such as higher education. “The Republican party showed that they did a lot for education here in New York. Senator Trunzo was an original supporter for TAP and fought for a better education system.”

Calling it a great race, Ibrahim Khan, spokesman for the Foley campaign, said that morale was high for any democrat. “There was a lot of focus on changing the White House. We focused on changing the State House, its programs and policies, on helping working families and not corporations,” Khan said.

With a democratic government running New York State, the current financial situation plaguing New York and SUNY may be altered as well. “The days where higher education is the first thing that is cut is now over. Gone are the days of the antics of the Republican party,” said an enthusiastic Khan.

In response to hearing about Trunzo’s comments about students voting blindly, Khan said that many of the supporters he was working with were actually college students and knew about what was going on.

Current State Senator Trunzo will convene with the New York Legislature on November 18 at Governor Paterson’s request to deal with the worsening New York State budget scenario. Foley is to be sworn in to duty in January.

Will James, Ross Barkan and Joe Incantalupo contributed to the reporting of this article.