Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said the prospect of a Democratic takeover of the Senate is “enticing” but he doesn’t plan on providing financial support and resources to their cause. threemen.albany

In an interview with Fred Dicker on Talk-1300, Silver, D-Manhattan, wouldn’t predict whether the party would takeover the chamber.

“I don’t know. I can’t predict what’s going to happen there. I can’t predict what’s going to happen in the Assembly,” Silver said.

The latter portion of that statement is a bit facetious, considering that Democrats have 100 members in the Assembly and are in no danger of losing the majority.

But Silver is still worried about his marginals — Democrats running in a moderate to Republican-heavy districts in the suburbs and upstate. He told Liz in a separate interview last night that he is advising a handful of Assembly lawmakers facing primaries not to attend the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina.

Silver says he will attend the convention himself.

And he’s not going to be spending any money on helping Democrats capture control of the Senate, either.

“We have our needs for our members,” said Silver, who reported a $2.8 million campaign war chest this week.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, remain out raised and outspent by their Republican counterparts.

Silver said the chances of a Democratic takeover of the four-member Senate is complicated by the Independent Democratic Conference, which he said “seems to have aligned themselves with Republicans more than Democrats.”

But Silver reiterated that a Democratic-run Senate would help him achieve some of his own legislative goals, including an increase to the state’s minimum wage and a public financing system of campaigns.

And the speaker insisted — for the upteenth time — that’s there are no negotiations over a legislative pay raise, though Silver acknowledged that Gov. Andrew Cuomo is “amendable” to the idea.

“There are no deep discussions, there are no shallow discussions … concerning a legislative pay raise,” he said.

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