The 2024 election has come and gone. However, it is easy to forget about local elections in the flurry of headlines on Harris’ and Trump’s proposed taxes, tariffs, and border bills. So let’s meet the politicians who won New York.
Incumbent Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was up for reelection this year and faced competition from Republican Mike Sapraicone, a retired NYPD detective. Sapraicone takes issue with Senator Gillibrand’s stance on crime, which he believes is too relaxed. He wanted to restore funding cuts to the NYPD and repeal the 2019 bail reforms, which aimed to reduce inequity in the justice system by banning the use of money bail and jail for misdemeanors. However, Senator Gillibrand easily won her elections and retained her Senate seat in deep blue New York.
Our local Congressional race was posed to be much closer. Incumbent Mike Lawler was up against former Congressman Mondaire Jones for the 17th Congressional District, which includes Yorktown. Mike Lawler won his last race against the incumbent Democrat Sean Maloney by fewer than 2,000 votes in 2022. New York’s 17th Congressional District also voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election, making it one of the only counties in America to split its presidential and congressional votes between a Democrat and a Republican. Running on such a slim victory and in a traditionally blue district, Congressman Lawler had to earn his reelection. But he beat Jones by an impressive margin of six points, signaling a potential shift to the right in suburban New York.
Senator Peter Harckham defended his New York State Senate seat in the 40th Senatorial District against Republican Gina Arena. Although not as intense as the Congressional race, this race was fairly competitive. Senator Harckham ran on his victories as a state senator: middle-class tax cuts, investments in school funding, and the protection of women’s reproductive rights, among others. Gina Arena is concerned with the proliferation of illegal pot, immigration into New York, and crime rates. Arena, like Senator Harckham, is pro-choice, a rarity in modern Republican governance. However, Arena’s populist stance on abortion was not enough to push her over the edge; Harckham won his race.
Finally, we have the race for the 94th Assembly District. Zach Couzens, a twenty-two-year-old current student at Boston College, challenged Assemblyman Matt Slater. However, largely because of Slater’s popularity and Couzens’ perceived lack of experience, Assemblyman Slater won the race with almost twice as many votes as Couzens.
Two Democrats and two Republicans won our local elections, signaling a split in our politics. With Trump in the White House yet again, we shall see how New York politics play out with increasingly bipartisan political chambers.
