(Editorial Observer)

ALBANY, N.Y. — Democrats in Albany had something altogether new and unfamiliar to warm them in the bitter chill that marks the start of the legislative season: power.

In November, the party won real control of the state Senate for the first time in more than a half-century. This week, Democratic senators — along with colleagues who have long controlled the Assembly — began plowing ahead with reforms that Republicans have blocked for years.

On Monday, the Legislature moved to update archaic election laws by approving bills to enact early voting, to mandate that primary elections for state and federal offices be held on the same day, and to let 16- and 17-year-olds preregister to vote.

Hours later, they acted to close a loophole that let shell businesses called limited liability companies avoid limits on corporate donations by treating them like individuals. This long-overdue measure should help curb the influence of dark money, particularly from real estate interests, in politics.

Finally, the lawmakers went home, with Democrats, some seeming slightly dazed, posting celebratory tweets about their sudden good fortune.

The next day brought more action. On Tuesday, taking up more legislation years in the making, they voted to revise the state hate crime law to include protections for transgender individuals. Lawmakers moved to ban conversion therapy, signaling an end to a bogus technique that purports to make gay people straight but ruins lives instead.

Encouragingly, some Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues to support some of these measures.

Not too shabby for their first two days in business.

After years in the political wilderness, the state’s Democratic senators are letting the good times roll. Their leading bon vivant is Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the newly minted majority leader who has seemed to relish every minute.

At a news conference Monday, Stewart-Cousins thanked those around her and then, in a plea she had made countless times while in the minority, urged Senate Republicans to begin consideration of Democratic proposals.

Slight pause. Sly grin. “I’m just kidding!” she said.

The members of her caucus cracked up, releasing years of frustration, their heads swinging back with joyous laughter. Stewart-Cousins threw up her hands like a champion, clapped and shouted, “Yay!”

These heady times at the Capitol have some of New York’s liberals pinching themselves. Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a reform group, said she was recovering from shock after watching Democrats in the first hours of the new legislative session pass voting reforms that had been stymied for years.

“It’s whiplash,” Lerner said. “Is there more to do? Yes. But today, we’re celebrating.”

On an Amtrak train taking chattering lobbyists, aides, journalists and lawmakers to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s annual budget address Tuesday, the progressives on board were giddy, a strange feeling for them on a trip to Albany in January. “I’m jazzed,” said the New York Civil Liberties Union’s executive president, Donna Lieberman. She joked that in previous years she’d often felt like she needed to take a shower after spending time in the State Capitol.

Less jazzed were Senate Republicans, who after decades of uninterrupted power, now seemed vaguely lost. On Tuesday, for example, they suggested that if marijuana must be legalized, any revenue should go to a tax cut. Good luck with that.

For some Republican lawmakers, a vote for a bill that would treat violence against transgender individuals as the hate crime that it is seemed particularly hard to take. From their seats in the back of the room, a couple of the Republicans rolled their eyes and snickered.

At one point, state Sen. Jessica Ramos, one of six members who won primaries against turncoat Democrats who had caucused with Republicans, said lawmakers should go even further to help transgender New Yorkers, leading state Sen. Frederick Akshar, a Republican, to exclaim: “Jesus Christ! Further?”

Even for Democrats, though, it hasn’t been all fun and reforms.

In the Assembly, Speaker Carl Heastie marred an otherwise banner start to the new year by engaging in a legal maneuver to try to keep a $50,500 pay raise for lawmakers while eliminating limits on outside income set by a special committee that enacted the raise. No doubt he has better ways to spend his time.

In the months ahead, bigger battles loom, like approving a congestion pricing measure to pay for an overhaul of the New York City subway, which could prove to be one of the toughest political fights in the state this year, and the most important.

Many of the greatest challenges and opportunities will lie with Cuomo, who is likely to sign the measures. In unveiling a $175 billion budget proposal Tuesday, he presented an ambitious agenda, but few details.

For years many felt the governor might be more comfortable with a divided Legislature that he could blame for failing to enact legislation that some voters might find controversial. But on Tuesday he said Democratic control of the state Senate left him feeling that the state had been “liberated.” He suggested it would help deliver much-needed change for New York.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.