For Democrats, the New York Senate was the place where their favorite legislation came to die. The State Assembly, controlled overwhelmingly from Democrats from New York City, would draft legislation and pass it, but then it would get stuck in the Republican-led State Senate.

Democratic lawmakers are eager to change that pattern in 2019, when they take control of the Senate for the first time in years, and both legislative chambers, and the governor's office, become blue.

"We've been trying to do election reform forever," State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins told WNYC's Jami Floyd. "In Florida, they were able to ban bump-stocks — we haven't been able to do that. There are a lot of things that people expect for New York to be [a leader] on, and we're certainly going to be moving those forward."

Sen. Stewart-Cousins, who represents southern Westchester, will likely become the senate's next Majority Leader and the first woman to hold a leadership position in Albany. The legislative session will begin in January.