Look to the Hudson Valley for the hottest New York primary races

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — Tuesday’s primary day in New York is poised to be a quiet one in most of the state.

Major county executive races in Suffolk, Albany, Onondaga, Monroe and Erie will stay off the ballot until November. There are only 17 New York City Council seats with contested Democratic primaries, down from 46 in 2021.

But there's one area where there will be plenty of action: the Hudson Valley.

A long list of cities in the political battleground region, including in New Rochelle, Yonkers, Poughkeepsie and Kingston, will feature Democratic primary fights. So will towns that include Woodstock, New Paltz and Hurley that are all in Ulster County. Several of the primaries are being described by local observers as the most engaged in memory.

It’s the latest sign that New York’s Democratic energy has shifted to a region that was traditionally home to swing seats and Republican strongholds.

“That in and of itself is a sign that we have a vibrant Democratic electorate that has a diversity of views,” said Sen. Shelley Mayer, who has represented parts of Westchester in the state Legislature since 2012 that was once a key swing district. “And we also have new candidates who are not willing to wait their turn in a traditional way and want to move in and move up.”

Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 2-to-1 in New York, and beginning in 2017, Democrats who had usually voted for the party's candidate in presidential elections, but had showed a willingness before to cross party lines in down-ballot races started to vote more for their party's pick in every contest.

But Democratic energy ebbed in 2021 and 2022, when places such as Long Island and Staten Island reversed course and became more Republican-friendly than they were even before the Trump years. Republicans won all four House seats on Long Island last year, and Gov. Kathy Hochul was crushed there in her narrow election win.

But there have yet to be many signs of progressive lethargy in parts of the state near the Hudson River, such as in Westchester, Ulster and Columbia counties.

Democratic strength in the region

Democrats had some of their best performances in memory in a few local races throughout the region in November 2021. And after two cycles of primary election cycles where several socialists toppled long-entrenched incumbents, the only one who pulled off the feat in 2022 was Sarahana Shrestha in a Kingston-area Assembly seat.

In fact, turnout in last year’s Democratic gubernatorial primary was 30 percent in Ulster and 25 percent in Columbia; it didn’t top 22 percent anywhere else in the state.

In the general election last year, Hochul’s showing in places like Westchester provided a firewall for poor performances elsewhere. And Democrats enjoyed their highest-profile victory anywhere in the country for a period last year when then-Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan won an August congressional special election in a vital swing district and won again in November.

With a year until the region regains its national prominence as candidates like Ryan appear on the ballot again, the energized local primary battles Tuesday might indicate that Democratic enthusiasm still has yet to flag.

Many of this year’s races are in places that are Democratic strongholds on paper, but have regularly elected moderates, Republicans or even former Republicans to citywide office. This time around, most of the energy has been in Democratic primaries featuring diverse fields.

Key Democratic primaries to watch

That’s the case in Poughkeepsie, where President Joe Biden received 77 percent of the vote in 2020, but voters have not elected a Democratic mayor since 2003.

Mayor Marc Nelson, a former city administrator who was elevated to the top post following after Republican Rob Rolison’s election to the state Senate last year, will be joined on the ballot by Councilwoman Yvonne Flowers and former public housing manager Wesley Lee. Either Flowers or Lee would be the city’s first Black mayor.

Unique to Poughkeepsie’s recent history, Lee’s campaign is working closely with the well-organized progressive groups that have made waves in other parts of the state.

Lee, a 78-year-old veteran of movie theatre sit-ins when he grew up in the segregated South, is part of a slate of several candidates including Vincent Pedi, a 31-year-old county party official who’s seeking the Common Council’s chairpersonship.

They’re based out of the Poughkeepsie office of For the Many, an activist group that sprang out of the Occupy movement and has since played a major role in campaigns like Shrestha’s.

Several candidates and officials said that the groups and the types of energy that led to their prominence in the “blue wave” years have had better staying power in the area than elsewhere in the state.

In places like Long Island, “Democrats came out against Donald Trump since he was so radical,” said Yonkers Council Member Corazon Pineda-Isaac, who’s running against three-term Mayor Mike Spano. “Once waters calmed, folks went back to their comfort zone. In Westchester, a community of Democrats were revived. They continue to be excited.”

Charlotte Lloyd, a 25-year-old tenant activist who’s running for Kingston’s council, was asked to run by For the Many.

“It hadn’t been something I thought of, but when they asked, I thought if I don’t step up to make changes, who will?” she said.

A shifting demographic

One major reason why the area has retained its progressive energy is a factor mostly unique in the Northeast: There has been a steady migration of progressives moving there for the past three years.

“A lot of it has to do with the pandemic,” Lee said. Former New York City residents “come here and get on the train and go back to New York to work. We have a lot of that.”

His campaign estimates there are as many as 300 annual primary voters who have recently moved to Poughkeepsie from the city. In a low-turnout June vote where perhaps 1,600 people will cast ballots, that’s a significant chunk of the electorate.

And this new crop of voters doesn’t always want the same as residents who shaped elections in past years.

They “don’t inherently trust some of the friendly back-slapping of local politics,” Pedi said.

That influx has contributed to a major issue in the region — unprecedented surges in housing costs. Kingston, not a model of economic success for much of its modern history, has had the country’s hottest real estate market in recent years.

“I’ve seen many friends and family have to leave the city, county, state just to afford somewhere to live,” Lloyd said. “There’s been a lot of going with the status quo in government, and I think it’s time to shake it up.”

Debates over issues like affordability have helped bring candidates like Lloyd, who has been involved with efforts such as attempts to bring Good Cause eviction laws to the city, into the political arena.

The increase in interest in running has also been helped by the simple fact that there are now more examples in the area of younger and more diverse candidates seeking office.

In Westchester, Vivian McKenzie became the first Black mayor of Peekskill in January. Senate Majority Leader and Yonkers resident Andrea Stewart-Cousins is the first Black woman to ever have major role in state government. Further north, recent victories by Ryan, Shrestha, and Sen. Michelle Hinchey have made young elected officials dominant in the area’s politics.

“If you see it, you can believe it,” said New Rochelle Councilmember Yadira Ramos-Herbert, who’s running in the city’s first open mayoral primary since 1991. “It’s a newer, more diverse generation that really wants to step away from the sidelines.”

And while it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for area Democrats — former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney defeat last year being a major example — they’re now also seeing that winning a general election is an achievable outcome.

That’s a dramatic shift for much of the region.

Stewart-Cousins went from an 18-point loss in 2004 to becoming possibly the safest member of the state Legislature.

Mayer, who took office in one of the most hotly-contested special elections in state history in 2018, has won her past two races by 15 and 25 points, respectively. And last year, Hinchey became the first Democrat to win the majority of the vote in the Senate seat containing Hyde Park in Dutchess County since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“I grew up in Westchester in the ‘60s,” Mayer said. “My father ran, and he was always a loser because he was a Democrat. There was no need to do anything other than get yourself on the ballot and watch yourself lose. This is a different world: Democrats are winning.”