In the end, voters seemed to return a mixed verdict. Todd D. Kaminsky, a Democratic Assemblyman and former federal corruption prosecutor who billed his campaign as a mission to clean up Albany from the inside, had a slight edge in the race for Mr. Skelos’s former State Senate seat on the South Shore of Long Island; his win could help Democrats wrest control of the Senate from Republicans.
But in Mr. Silver’s old Assembly district in Lower Manhattan, voters chose Alice Cancel, a Democrat, who eked out a win over Yuh-Line Niou, a Working Families Party candidate who had pegged Ms. Cancel as a creature of Mr. Silver’s machine.
If Mr. Kaminsky’s small lead over Christopher T. McGrath, the Republican, holds up, the Democrats would take a numerical majority in the State Senate, which Republicans currently hold by the leanest of margins. But true Democratic control of the chamber depends on several other factors, including whether a group of five breakaway Democrats, who have often aligned with Republicans in recent years, will agree to rejoin the fold.
