Shelley Mayer is ready to lead the DSCC

After a long – and very successful – nearly 16 years of leading the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, now former-state Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris has passed the torch to state Sen. Shelley Mayer. He leaves big shoes to fill. Gianaris took over after a rough election cycle in 2010 that saw Democrats lose a short-lived and contentious majority in the chamber, and went on to orchestrate his party’s return to power in 2019.

Mayer, a close ally of state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who is also from Yonkers, joined the state Senate that same year. She won a 2018 special election to elevate herself up from the Assembly, and attributed her resounding success in part to the assistance she got from the DSCC and Gianaris. Now, Mayer is ready to take over for Gianaris and support others the way she said Gianaris helped her.

Whereas Gianaris was focused for many years on simply winning an outright majority for Democrats, Mayer’s immediate focus is on gaining back the party’s supermajority it lost in after 2024’s elections. She spoke with City & State about entering the new role, her plans for November and working with Gianaris on his way out. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Is serving as Democratic Senate Campaign Committee chair something you wanted to do before you got the call, or was it something of a surprise when you got selected?

I’m very appreciative of the majority leader for picking me. I am a person who has been deeply involved in Democratic politics for my whole life, and this is a very natural development for what I care about and what I have spent my time on. I’ve been a Democratic district leader, and I’m first vice chair of the Westchester County Democrats. I support and nurture new candidates all the time at home, including trying to take over some Republican-led communities I represent with fantastic Democratic candidates. So this is something that I thought played to my strengths, and I’m glad the leader sees it as doing so. I’m very interested in making sure we have new exciting candidates, and I’m also very comfortable with places outside of my district. My husband is from Niagara County and I spend a lot of time outside of downstate New York, and this job will allow me to really focus on the parts of the state that we need to win.

What is your vision for the DSCC?

My first vision is to continue the extraordinary success that (former state Senate Deputy Majority Leader) Mike Gianaris had running it for all these years. Building a supermajority – which we’re very close to, and I’m hopeful we’ll get back to – and building such a strong base of really committed senators from all over representing both geographic and demographic diversity. I’m just going to continue down that path, bringing my own style and approach of what I call “big tent Democratic politics” to the table. But I’m building on an incredible record that Mike Gianaris and the DSCC staff have had for the last multiple years, including my race in 2018, which was a pivotal race in getting the Senate Democrats to take back the majority.

What does the transition period look like so far? Gianaris’ last official day with the Senate was Aug. 6, but there’s a little bit of a transition period?

Well, I’ve jumped in full force starting on (Aug. 10), when this became effective. Sen. Gianaris has left the Senate, but he’s going to continue as a consultant to the DSCC, and I’m relying on his good judgment and expertise in doing this. It’s a lot to take on in one fell swoop, so we’ll be working very closely together with a very exceptional staff. I’m extremely impressed by them – they basically ran my 2018 race, which was a sort of a vicious race for my seat, and we’re going to build on exactly what they’ve done. I’m going to continue to work closely with Sen. Gianaris and the team there for now, and just move ahead. We have great candidates. We have to keep raising money and make sure the campaigns are run effectively and speak to the constituents on the issues that matter, and I’m very confident we can do that.

What about your experience in Westchester will help inform your work in this new role? Westchester is still downstate and has been pretty Democratic for a while, but it’s a very different area than where Gianaris is from in Queens.

Like Sen. Gianaris and all my colleagues, each of us really knows our communities. I know all the different towns, villages and cities. I know the ones that are run by Republicans where I have good working relationships with the leadership, but I’m politically involved with candidates who are trying to win and become the supervisors of the town and judges. I’ve been very involved in the congressional races right now. (The 17th Congressional District) is very important to defeat (Rep.) Mike Lawler, and I’m very committed to Cait Conley and am already heavily involved in that race, so I have a strong feeling. Over the years that I’ve been involved in the Legislature – I started with Bob Abrams during his work in Albany over 40 years ago – I have been involved in electoral politics throughout the state, so I’m familiar with rural communities. I’ve worked on races in both rural and suburban areas, and in the city of New York and other cities.

The other question here is who will take over for Gianaris as deputy majority leader in the Senate. Are you interested in potentially taking that position? You’ve been very close with the majority leader for a long time.

I am totally immersed in this job. We have so many great candidates that we are working on, and every one of them deserves literally hours of my attention to make sure that we are attentive to the needs of their district. I’m very, very involved in that. I’m totally focused on that and not on what comes next, but yes, I have a wonderful relationship with the majority leader. We both have been through Yonkers politics together and campaigned together. She’ll make her decision when she feels the time is right, and I’m not focused on that at all.

What are the next couple months ahead of the election going to look like as you settle into this new position?

I look forward to meeting all of our new candidates personally, and hopefully having an opportunity to go to their districts and get a good feel because we are really about results for working people. That’s what I do as a senator and have spent my career doing, and I know that’s what our candidates want to do. I want to make sure I have a good feel in helping to shape these campaigns. … We’ve got to obviously raise money. That’s important, and I’m going to continue to do that, have a very open door, as I always have had. I’m going to assist in making sure we have the resources we need, working with the campaign teams on the actual candidates, and then obviously our marginals. … Having been involved in ground campaigns and field campaigns all my life, I have a very good feel of how many doors you have to knock, how many bagel stores you have to stand in front of and how many people who have to disagree with you. These are things that are really bread and butter in campaigns, and I feel quite well versed in that stuff.

In your conversations with Gianaris so far in his advisory position, has there been any particular piece of advice that he’s bestowed upon you that you’ve found particularly helpful so far?

Well, I appreciate that he relies on me to trust my instincts and experience, and he’s been very clear with that. I’ve learned a lot from him, and I think we are very good partners in many ways. I respect his knowledge, his experience and his incredible success – he was instrumental in my run in 2018, after which we took the majority in 2019. So we have a history together. I think he trusts my judgment, but I’m going to go affirmatively to him and ask his advice repeatedly. I’m very happy that he’s going to stay on in a consulting role, and that will not only help me but help us win, and then actually do the work. It’s really about the work. Politics is all for the ultimate end of producing results for the people we represent, the people of New York.