Marisol Alcantara. | Facebook Alcantara, proud progressive, explains alliance with IDC

ALBANY — Two months ago, Marisol Alcantara, a longtime union organizer and activist, traveled to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia as a proud delegate for the super-progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Now, after winning a four-way primary on Tuesday night, Alcantara is poised to become the sixth member of a moderate faction of breakaway Democrats who share power with Republicans in the New York State Senate.


For anyone who questions how a Sanders delegate could come to align with upstate Republicans, Alcantara cited a meeting with Senator Diane Savino, the outspoken Independent Democratic Conference member from Staten Island.

“I reached out to everybody in the Democratic establishment, and then I met with Diane Savino, who was a labor person just like me,” said Alcantara in an interview on Thursday afternoon. “Diane offered to endorse me and to help me, and with all the things they have done that are beneficial to our members, I thought it was a great idea and it was a great working relationship.”

Alcantara — who will replace outgoing Sen. Adriano Espaillat — said she had worked on the push for a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave in her capacity as a union organizer for the New York State Nurses Association, and she credits the five-member IDC for being able to push those measures through a Republican-controlled Senate that was cool to those issues.

Alcantara’s deep ties to labor earned her the support of liberal unions like the Hotel and Motel Trades Council and NYSNA, some of whom had invested heavily in 2014 in an unsuccessful effort to help mainline Democrats reclaim control of the Senate.

Since then, the IDC has solidified its central role in the Senate, and, with the help of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has helped push through some liberal priorities.

John Samuelsen, the president of the Transit Workers Union Local 100, which endorsed Alcantara prior to her announcing that she would be joining the IDC, called the breakaway faction a “stabilizing force in Albany that’s able to exercise a positive influence on the Republicans.”

Alcantara also drew support from a handful of proudly progressive elected officials.

Public Advocate Letitia James, a darling of the liberal Working Families Party, celebrated Alcantara's victory in a statement on Tuesday night, along with Councilmen Ydanis Rodriguez and Ritchie Torres.

“If people feel it’s inconsistent, they can shove it. I don’t care,” Torres told POLITICO New York on Wednesday.

“She’s a community activist, she spent her life as a community activist, as a labor activist, as a Bernie delegate—Marisol and I were the few Democrats to support Bernie Sanders. … So as far as I’m concerned, she has a rock solid progressive credential,” Torres said.

James cited the "gender imbalance" in the Senate in her statement congratulating Alcantara, and Torres pointed to her ethnicity.

“I consider it an outrage that there is no Latina in the State Senate,” he said. “Our representative should be representative of the city and its full diversity and I think with the election of Marisol, Latinas have a seat at the table. It’s personal to me because I’m a product of Latinas.”

Alcantara, who is nearly assured victory in the heavily Democratic district, would be the first Dominican woman to serve in the State Senate and the first Latina to serve since 2004.

She would also be the first woman of color to join the IDC, which currently consists of four white men and Savino. (Former senator Malcolm Smith, who is black, joined the IDC in 2012 shortly before he was arrested on federal corruption charges.)

The caucus leader, Sen. Jeff Klein, has been coy about how the IDC might align itself in the upcoming session, and Alcantara said she that conversation has yet to happenbetween she and Klein.

However the IDC positions itself, Alcantara said she still considers herself a "mainline Democrat," who supports left-leaning, progressive issues and broke rank with her local party establishment to support Sanders.

"I am who am," she said. "I have always been independent."

--additional reporting by Gloria Pazmino

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, this story initially stated Alcantara would be the first person of color to serve in the IDC. She would be the first woman of color.