ALBANY, N.Y. — Amazon has a market value of hundreds of billions of dollars, the support of New York’s governor and mayor and an army of lobbyists devoted to its plan to build a second headquarters in New York City.

But that plan could be derailed by one man: state Sen. Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority leader of New York’s state Senate, who represents the Queens district where Amazon wants to build its new home.

Through a confluence of timing, electoral successes and old-fashioned politics, Gianaris, one of the deal’s most outspoken opponents, is uniquely positioned to stand in its way: On Monday, the new Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, nominated him to serve on the Public Authorities Control Board, a little-known state board that must approve the Amazon plan.

Any of the three voting members of the board has the power to veto the plan, cementing Gianaris’ position at the center of the furor over Amazon.

The nomination also made evident the dramatic recent change in his political fortunes: Gianaris, once a longtime but largely powerless antagonist to some of Albany’s most influential players, has become one of the Capitol’s central figures.

Gianaris waved off the idea that the Amazon controversy had helped his political profile. “I would prefer if this never landed on my desk,” he said Tuesday.

He insisted that his opposition was grounded in a commitment to fighting economic inequality: “This is an inflection point about the direction of our country, and how we handle one of the greatest issues of our time.”

His stance against giving Amazon as much as $3 billion in state and city incentives for the company to create 25,000 to 40,000 jobs in Queens was backed Tuesday by Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire and potential presidential candidate who contended that Amazon chose New York for reasons other than “the tax breaks they got, which I didn’t think they needed.”

But it is also undeniable that Gianaris’ opposition to the deal has won him progressive accolades at a time when the demographics in Gianaris’ district are rapidly changing; it overlaps with the district that U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won last year.

Gianaris, a Harvard Law School graduate and the son of Greek immigrants, has also long been viewed as someone eager to pursue higher office, and some of his opponents, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, have accused him of placing political gain ahead of good government.

“I think it’s unfortunate that the Senate is playing politics here,” the governor said on WNYC radio when asked about Gianaris’ nomination. “Yes, it’s great politically to oppose the Amazon deal. ‘It’s Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people, why are we giving him a break?'”

That is exactly Gianaris’ argument, though he denies any political motivation.

“There are certain people who are very focused on dealing with the unfairness of income inequality,” the senator said. “There are others who are more worried about the wealthy and making sure we accommodate them. And they’re going to be on the other side.”

But Gianaris also offered few specifics on what a victory for his side would look like.

While he has called the current deal “unacceptable,” he has also said he does not want to force concessions from the company, instead pushing to scrap the current development plan entirely and to start negotiations anew. His office has sent out flyers telling Bezos to “stay in Seattle,” but Gianaris said Tuesday that he does not oppose outright the idea of Amazon coming to Queens.

He has previously said the company should build its headquarters in Manhattan and subsidize affordable housing in Queens instead; but when asked about that proposal Tuesday, he said it was too early to say what kind of arrangement he would ultimately support.

Cuomo, with whom Gianaris has been embroiled in a long-simmering feud, would not say if he would reject his nomination to the state board.

But the governor’s office has accused Gianaris of “flip-flopping” in his stance on Amazon, pointing to a letter that he signed in 2017 inviting the company to New York.

Gianaris has consistently rejected that characterization, adding that the letter said nothing about state subsidies. But he also said Tuesday that, given Amazon officials’ recent comments that they would oppose unionization, he would not sign that letter again today.

In response to arguments that the subsidies would be more than made up by the jobs that Amazon would create, Gianaris said only that previous state economic development projects have been “littered with overpromising and underdelivering.”

In a separate radio interview Tuesday, Cuomo called that stance political suicide. “If the Senate is going to be the reason that Amazon leaves New York, I wouldn’t want to be running for re-election as a Democratic senator,” he said.

Though Gianaris’ opposition to Amazon has inspired special ire from the governor in recent months, tensions between the two men long predate the development deal.

As a state assemblyman, Gianaris raised more than $2 million in the 2006 race for state attorney general but dropped out when it became clear that Cuomo wanted the job.

He was elected instead to the Senate in 2010, where he quickly became the most public adversary of the Independent Democratic Conference, a now-defunct group of eight Democratic senators who collaborated with the Republicans to give the opposing party control of the Senate. Many progressives accused Cuomo of condoning or even secretly encouraging the group.

Since then, Gianaris has cast himself as a true progressive — a dynamic that has only become more apparent since Ocasio-Cortez’s victory last summer over her predecessor, Joseph Crowley.

Gianaris led the party’s efforts to oust the IDC, and last year he vowed to stop taking real estate contributions. In recent months, he has courted the support of progressive activists, including from the Queens chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which helped fuel Ocasio-Cortez’s win.

Gianaris acknowledged that the demographics of his district, which is rapidly gentrifying, had evolved.

“We always make decisions as information becomes available and as circumstances change,” he said. “Certainly I care about what the people who live in my district believe, and I want to reflect that.”

Nowhere is that more apparent than on the senator’s Twitter account, where his pinned post at the top of his profile is not a promotion of his own accomplishments but rather a full-throated endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez, writing that she “pushes bold change at a time people are sick of politics as usual.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.