Watching all the craziness at the Capitol unfold with keen interest was former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. The long-time leader of the Senate sat down with Capital Tonight's Brian Taffe Tuesday to talk about the coup and what it means for the state.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Joe Bruno is no stranger to political storms, in particular the ones that unfold on the Senate floor, which he ran for more than a dozen years. And as significant as Monrday's storm was, it was not new to Bruno, who won his leadership position in a coup carried out on Thanksgiving Day in 1994.

In a conversation earlier Tuesday, Bruno praised the efforts of his former colleagues, saying now Senate Republicans have brought real change, change Democrats promised, but failed to deliver.

“They did more reform in a half hour yesterday, that I could see, than Malcolm Smith and the Democrats did in the previous five months. So I applaud Golisano for having the guts to recognize he made a terrible mistake by supporting Senator Smith for leadership. All the people of this state who knew, Brian, who are very aware of everything that goes on, they ought to thank the good Lord, because it's a total embarrassment around the country what was going on under Democratic control and what was not going on,” Bruno said.

In response to his statement that Democrats did little to reform Albany, we asked Bruno about the perceived lack of reform on his watch and the assertion by some that Republicans were less interested in reform than they were in getting back power. His answer, candidly, that as majority leader, he made mistakes, mistakes he said his fellow Republicans learned from.