Cohen Concedes to Oppenheimer

Bob Cohen of Scarsdale called a press conference at Republican Headquarters in Mamaroneck on Monday December 6 to announce that he was conceding the race for the 37th district NYS Senate seat to incumbent Suzi Oppenheimer. Only 500 votes apart on a total tally of over 90,000 votes, Cohen came within a half of a percent of winning the election in this heavily Democratic district.

With his wife Barbara at his side, Cohen announced that he had just called Suzi Oppenheimer to congratulate her on her victory in a well-fought campaign. He said, “ I am proud of the race that we ran, though I wish the outcome was different.” He thanked the Westchester Board of Elections for their tireless work in counting 8,000 paper ballots and said that even though the election was extremely close he would not ask for a recount as it would be expensive and taxpayers would have to foot the bill. He thanked his supporters including The New York Times, The New York Post, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, County Executive Rob Astorino, the volunteers and his wife Barbara and their three children.

He urged legislators to work in a bipartisan fashion to solve the state’s problems and said the close election was a vote for change. Cohen added that the election was one of the “most amazing experiences” of his life and that he would not have traded it for anything.

The Cohen Oppenheimer race was hard fought and the stakes were high since it was one of the races that would determine which party would control the State Senate. Cohen ran as an agent of change and reform -- and tied his fate to the hope that the district’s voters would view Oppenheimer’s 26-year tenure in the State Senate as enough. Oppenheimer touted her newly assumed chairmanship of the Senate Education Committee and her role in the state’s win of $700 million in federal Race to the Top money for state education programs.

The Democrats had a 2:1 voter registration advantage over Republicans in the district – but the Oppenheimer camp clearly saw Cohen’s campaign gaining traction and went starkly and fiercely negative, sending out mailers and running television ads that smeared Cohen, falsely labeling him a "slumlord." The Westchester County Fair Campaign Practices Committee cited the Oppenheimer campaign for her false advertising, and some observers believed that this tactic backfired on Oppenheimer and enabled Cohen to surge towards the end of the campaign.

Yet even though Oppenheimer has won, she will give up her Education Committee chair as it appears that the other two close senate races have been won by the GOP, giving them a 32-30 seat advantage.