On Monday, State Senate Democrats announced what had seemed unthinkable just a few years ago: they had achieved a supermajority.

With at least 42 Democrats guaranteed to serve in the State Senate in January, lawmakers will have a veto-proof, two-thirds majority in both chambers for the very first time in New York's history.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has clashed with more liberal members of the State Assembly and Senate, making a ritual of shooting down a host of bills at the end of each year.

But there are now enough Democrats who can join together on their own, without Republican help, to override a gubernatorial veto. And there are more Democrats to theoretically provide a cushion if the State Senate, which had been more beholden to moderates in marginal districts, decides to advance ambitious if controversial legislation, like single-payer healthcare for New York, more criminal justice reform, and far-reaching tenant protections.

“New Yorkers have not only chosen to return to a Democratic Majority, but they’ve chosen to return a super majority,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said at a press conference on Monday. “And we will assert ourselves accordingly.”

A Democratic supermajority will also control the parameters of the decennial redistricting process, which will allow them to reshape districts that had been gerrymandered for Republicans who controlled the Senate as recently as 2018. With Republicans effectively denied input on redistricting, Democrats are expected to cement their gains in two years through more normalized district lines.

Most pressing, however, is new revenue for New York State, which could face a $60 billion shortfall through 2022 due to the impact of COVID-19. Cuomo, a centrist who has repeatedly panned the idea of tax increases on the rich, is hoping President-elect Joe Biden and the next Congress can pump federal bailout money into the state.

Assembly and Senate Democrats fear federal money won’t be enough and are hoping the new supermajority can strengthen their hand in a fight with Cuomo to hike taxes.

“The absolute worst thing we can do in times of economic turmoil is cut services to the bone,” said State Senator Michael Gianaris, a Queen Democrat who is the deputy leader of the chamber. “Those who are wealthy have become even more wealthy during the pandemic and should be asked to do more to help us get through this crisis.”

In recent days, perhaps recognizing the political shift, Cuomo has signaled a new openness to tax increases. “If we don't get funding from Washington, there will be an income tax increase,” Cuomo said in an interview with WAMC's Alan Chartock on Monday, though he dismissed proposals to target wealthy New Yorkers as “political.”

State Senate Democrats don’t want to wait that long. Biden wouldn’t take office until January 20th and there is no guarantee, depending on the outcome of the Georgia Senate runoffs, that Democrats will control the U.S. Senate. Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, has been hostile to bailing out Democrat-run localities. In the meantime, the city’s hospitality, tourism, and restaurant industries are reeling, with more losses forecasted for the winter.

The nature of the revenue raisers the Senate and Assembly Democrats agree to remains to be seen. There are more than a dozen proposals circulating, from a revival of the stock transfer tax to a new wealth tax to a tax on expensive second properties. A repeal on lucrative tax breaks for mega-yachts and private airplanes could be in the offering.

Collectively, the taxes could raise billions. Cuomo has warned the rich would leave the state if taxes are raised, though increases have come during economic downturns in the past and evidence is inconclusive about whether such a capital flight would take place.

For now, Senate Democrats appear more likely to take on less complicated and straightforward tax increases on millionaires, which are broadly popular among lawmakers. One possibility could be legislation that creates a temporary surcharge on individuals earning more than $5 million to help fund K-12 and public higher education.

Beyond taxes, a larger, more emboldened Senate Democratic majority could push for policies that may have stalled in past years, like the legalization of marijuana. In 2019, Democrats took full control of the chamber for the first time in a decade and passed a raft of legislation, some of it with little input from Cuomo.

State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a Bronx Democrat who has been critical of Cuomo, said her priorities in the new year would be hiking taxes on the wealthy and setting aside money to assist the renters who could be caught in a coming tidal wave of eviction proceedings.

“Low-income New Yorkers do not have the savings to start back-paying all money they owe to landlords,” Biaggi said. “This can have a catastrophic impact on our economy.”

Cuomo still has the power to work against these proposals if he chooses to. Veto overrides won’t be easy, particularly with a few Democrats, like Brooklyn’s Simcha Felder, who have not embraced progressive policies in the past.

“The way that state government really works is through the budget, all the main things are done in the budget,” Cuomo said on Monday when we asked him about the Democratic gains in the senate. “Supermajority or not, it doesn’t really make a difference.”

Going into Election Day, Senate Democrats had heavily out-fundraised Republicans but were contending with multimillion dollar outside expenditures against certain candidates. Ronald Lauder, a billionaire who is close to Cuomo, and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association each funded television advertisements attacking select Democrats for supporting bail reform last year. (Democrats, in turn, had assistance from an unlikely alley: StudentsFirstNY, a charter schools group that had traditionally backed Republicans.)

Democrats had the disadvantage of competing in districts largely engineered to preserve a Republican majority that was crushed after the 2018 elections. At the same juncture, though Cuomo has rarely used his own financial war chest to help Senate Democrats, most of the major interest groups in the state, including large labor unions, backed Democratic candidates in this cycle.

Though Democrats suffered down-the-ballot nationally, the New York State legislature appears to be a major exception. Most incumbents held their seats while others north of the city, in the Hudson Valley and further upstate, were flipped into the Democratic column. In the Rochester area, three Democrats took over seats formerly held by Republicans.

Jeremy Cooney, one of the new Rochester-area Democrats, is hoping the supermajority can eventually lead to the fulfillment of far-reaching policy goals, including statewide single-payer healthcare and a pilot program for universal basic income [UBI] to help those struggling during the pandemic.

Cooney is hoping for a pilot program in Monroe County, which he will represent in January.

“UBI could be one of those policies that could help close the gap,” Cooney said.

Additional reporting by Jen Chung.