Westchester GOP Nominates Scarsdale Resident for Senate Bid

Scarsdale resident Bob Cohen was nominated by the Westchester County GOP Monday night to run for a seat in the State Senate that covers large parts of the county. He'll face off in November against 13-term Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer, D-Port Chester.  

Cohen, who owns a Manhattan real estate and construction firm, is running for the 37^th District seat on a platform of lowering property taxes, scaling back regulations on businesses, and cleaning up the "dysfunction" in Albany – the same laundry list touted by most other Republican candidates around the state.

"As I've been walking door-to-door and talking to our neighbors, both Republican and Democrat, they all seem to be saying the same things: taxes are too high, businesses and jobs are being chased out of New York, Albany is dysfunctional, and it's time we get some new people in elected office," Cohen said after being nominated at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in White Plains.

At a campaign kickoff last month, Cohen said that if he's elected he will advocate for term limits, non-partisan redistricting, repealing the MTA payroll tax, and reinstating the STAR program, in which homeowners received rebate checks for property tax payments. The program was axed last year.

Cohen tied the decline of the Empire State to an entrenched incumbency – including Oppenheimer – and continually harkened back to a time, 26 years ago, when New York was an affordable, prosperous place. Oppenheimer has been in office for 26 years.

"Sadly, 'Empire State' has become an empty slogan better fitting our license plates," he said.

But Oppenheimer spokeswoman Debra Lagapa said that for most of those 26 years, Democratic senators had been laboring under Republican rule.

"A lot of the dysfunction and lack of progress [Cohen] cites happened when his party was in power," she said.

To be sure, many of the latest ethics scandals out of Albany have involved Democrats, including Governor David Paterson and his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada, Senate President Malcolm Smith and former Comptroller Alan Hevesi.

The GOP held a majority in the Senate for all but a couple of years between the 1930s and 2008, when the Dems won a two-seat majority. That was threatened when a coalition of Democratic senators, including Espada, threatened to switch parties last summer in an apparent power grab.

This year, amidst a global recession and a $9 billion state budget gap, there is widespread speculation that the GOP could take the chamber back. Every seat in the Legislature is up for grabs this fall.    

"Westchester is ground zero if we are to take hold of the Senate this year," said County GOP Chairman Doug Colety.

Republicans are looking to take not only Oppenheimer's seat, but also that of Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, whose district includes most of Yonkers and other towns and villages on the Hudson.

Oppenheimer hasn't officially kicked off her campaign yet – incumbents usually start politicking over the summer – and Lagapa wouldn't comment specifically on Cohen's proposals. But she did point to a number of the senator's initiatives and her powerful position as head of the Senate's Education Committee.

The former mayor of Mamaroneck has pushed for school districts to consolidate many services, including paperwork and purchasing. She's also promised not to approve any legislation that imposes unfunded mandates on schools and advocated for the repeal of the Wicks Law, which requires school districts to hire multiple contractors for building projects.

Cohen has been active in Scarsdale, where he serves as a volunteer firefighter and sits on the Scarsdale Forum's Zoning and Planning Committee. He and his wife, Barbara, have two daughters and a son.

The 37th Senate District covers Scarsdale, where Cohen has lived for 20 years, Harrison, Mamaroneck, North Castle, New Castle, New Rochelle, Ossining, Rye, Rye Town, and White Plains.