In the gilded Victorian lobby outside the State Senate chambers, Alessandra Biaggi waited to be sworn in. She greeted supporters who made the trip to Albany just to celebrate her achievement.
“I just sat there in awe,” she told one, recounting the morning’s first meeting of the new Democratic majority. “I’m not one who’s usually at a loss for words, but wow.”
Many in the State Senate’s large freshman class had improbable paths to Albany, but maybe none more than Biaggi. The 32-year-old from Pelham defeated incumbent Jeff Klein, a popular veteran who was one of the most powerful people in the statehouse.
“I didn’t go into it thinking, ‘I’m going to win.’ I thought it was possible,” she said. “But I knew it would to take a significant amount of effort, because it’s like David and Goliath.”
It didn’t hurt that she came into the race with instant name recognition. Her grandfather, Mario Biaggi, represented the area in Congress in 1969 to 1988, and though he resigned after a corruption conviction, many still fondly recall him.
Government corruption, though, will be a top target of the new state senator.
Biaggi will chair the Ethics and Internal Governance Committee. Under the Republicans, the committee met once in eight years. The Democratic leadership has already changed the committee’s status to make it play a more active role in reducing Albany’s culture of pay-to-play.
“We have to set the tone at the highest level that certain behaviors aren’t acceptable,” she said. “If we have an ethics committee that is strong, that meets regularly, I think we’ll be in a much better place.”
It’s a sign of the political moment – the dismay among local Democrats about Washington, coupled with a new optimism about Albany – that Biaggi has inspired a group of accomplished outsiders to join her crusade. Her team includes a physician, a Broadway producer and a tech startup marketing executive.
“Things are not great across the country, across the state, and you have to be involved,” said Dr. Andrew Mutnick, a pediatrician and medical school dean who’s “putting medicine to the side” to be Biaggi’s chief of staff, after helping first recruit her to run and then leading her campaign.
“The opportunity came up to take all of the energy, to take all of the hard work and now actually follow through,” he said. “To be a part of this, where things really seem possible – it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and there was no way I could pass it up.”
Surveying what lies ahead, he and Biaggi anticipated a steep learning curve.
“It’s absolutely exhilarating and terrifying at the same time,” she said. “It’s hard to figure out even which hallway to walk down.”
She said she will rely on her willingness to work hard, her ability to plow through tasks “literally one inch at a time” and the wisdom of her more seasoned teammates and political allies to figure things out and eventually make an impact.
“I keep reminding myself hard work has never failed me before,” Biaggi said, "and I have surrounded myself with people who have been here before” in addition to all her fellow novices. “That is probably the most invaluable thing, because they know how to navigate not only how to get bills through, but also what hallways to turn left and right down.”
She then got on line to enter the Senate chamber and get sworn in — by both the state’s highest judge, Janet DiFiore, and by her father, Richard Biaggi.
She joined 14 other newcomers who gave the Democrats their most solid majority in decades, and the first ever to be led by a woman— Andrea Stewart-Cousins, from Yonkers, the district adjacent to Biaggi’s.