2012 New York State Senate election
The 2012 New York State Senate elections were held on November 6, 2012 to elect representatives from all 63 State Senate districts in the U.S. state of New York. Primary elections were held on September 13, 2012. Democrats won a total of 33 seats for a three-seat majority. Democrats gained seats in Senate Districts 17 (where Democrat Simcha Felder defeated Republican incumbent David Storobin), 41, and 55 (where Ted O'Brien defeated Sean Hanna to win the seat vacated by the retiring Republican Sen. Jim Alesi), and won the election in the newly-created Senate District 46. In Senate District 46, Republican George Amedore was named the winner and was sworn in as a senator. However, a recount revealed that Democrat Cecilia Tkaczyk had defeated Amedore by 18 votes; therefore, Amedore vacated the seat (becoming the shortest-tenured senator in modern New York history) and Tkaczyk was sworn in. Of the four Republican state senators who voted for the Marriage Equality Act in 2011 (Sens. Roy McDonald, James Alesi, Mark Grisanti, and Stephen Saland), only Grisanti was re-elected in 2012. On December 4, 2012, it was announced that Senate Republicans had reached a power-sharing deal with the four-member Independent Democratic Conference (IDC). Together,