State Senator-Elect Cecilia Tkaczyk (D-NY)

Progressive Democrat Cecilia Tkaczyk has been elected to the New York State Senate over former Assemblyman George Amedore (R), after a successful court challenge led to the counting of 99 previously uncounted ballots from the November elections. Amedore, a wealthy real estate developer, saw his 37 vote lead become a 19 vote loss as the ballots were counted Thursday and Friday.

Tkaczyk ran a strongly progressive campaign in the Albany-area district, emphasizing her support for public education, LGBT equality, equal pay for women, reproductive choice, environmental protection, and campaign finance reform. Though she was heavily outspent by Amedore, she benefited from outside spending by supporters of public financing for candidates. In a December op/ed, she observed: “If I do get sworn in, I’ll know my support for public financing is a central reason I won the job.”

Amedore, on the other hand, was a strong conservative who opposed marriage equality, abortion rights, equal pay for women, and increasing the minimum wage. He consistently opposed campaign finance reform as an Assemblyman and attacked the idea of public financing of campaigns.

A coalition of Republicans and Independent Democrats share power and jointly control the 63-member Senate. But with Tkaczyk’s newly-determined victory, Republican Conference Leader Dean Skelos will have a minority of seats — strengthening both the influence of the five-member Independent Democratic Conference and the likelihood of progressive legislation passing the body. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver are both Democrats.

The legislature is expected to take up campaign finance reform this session. LGBT advocates are also hopeful that the long-delayed Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act will finally be enacted to provide employment protections for transgender New Yorkers.

As President Obama slowly releases his appointments for his second term, a trend is forming. The people nominated so far include Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary, John Kerry for Secretary of State, John Brennan for CIA Director and, just today, the press got word that Jack Lew is the choice for Treasury Secretary. The trend? White men.

Now, the advocacy group Women’s Media Center is formally asking Obama to consider more gender diversity in his appointments. Today, it launched a petition calling on Obama to consider a woman for the slot of the Federal Communications Commission Chair. The petition points out a shocking statistic: In its almost 80 years of existence, a woman has not once headed up the commission:

There has never been a female chair of the Federal Communications Commission – the independent agency that oversees America’s telecommunications and media policy.

The FCC is supposed to represent the American public. Half the public are women. It’s long past the time to close the gender gap in our nation’s leadership and in the media and telecom industries’ leadership, where only 28.4% of TV news directors were women in 2011, according to the Women’s Media Center’s 2012 Status of Women in the U.S. Media Report. And the post atop the FCC is one of the most important opportunities available to raise the bar for representational diversity and decision-making in the media and telecom sectors, which are the infrastructure of this generation and of the future.

Even in his first term, the Obama administration’s record on female appointments was not nearly as stellar as one might hope. The New York Times reported just yesterday that, “male appointees under Mr. Obama outnumbered female appointees at 11 of the 15 federal departments, for instance. In some cases, the skew was also deep. At the Departments of Justice, Defense, Veterans Affairs and Energy, male appointees outnumbered female appointees by about two to one.”

The appointments thus far also demonstrate a lack of racial diversity, as well. The only person of color whose name was floated for a new appointment in a top-level position in the next cabinet — Ambassador Susan Rice — was quickly driven out of the conversation by a right wing smear campaign.