Key state Senate and Assembly races receive endorsements from Yiatin Chu and other Post candidates
Republicans’ goal for the Legislature this year is mainly to win “super-minorities” in the Senate and Assembly: enough seats to prevent the progressives who dominate the Democratic majorities from continuing to ram through their toxic agenda.
Democratic supermajorities have given the state soaring electric bills, looming bans on gas stoves and new gas heat — as well as raging crime and disorder, reckless spending and ever-higher taxes.
Adding a few more sane state senators can also frustrate the progressive push to turn the state courts into a machine for imposing far-left policies without lawmakers even having to vote for the madness.
Let’s start with the challengers:
Senate District 11 (parts of northern and central Queens and western Nassau County)
Talk about a district in need of a fresh face: At 85, incumbent Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky (D) has held this seat for a quarter-century; her husband Leonard, for 16 years before that.
More important, she’s increasingly failed her constituents: She not only voted for the Raise the Age law, she co-sponsored the disastrous “no bail” legislation. She’s also pushed for racial quotas in public education — a naked insult to the area’s growing Asian-American population, as the quota-mongers always treat them as “white.”
Our choice is the challenger, Yiatin Chu (R).
She’s not a career politician like Stavisky, but a passionate public-school mom and an immigrant whose priorities better reflect the area’s residents.
In a district that’s roughly half Asian-American, incumbent Sen. Iwen Chu pays lip service to the community’s desires but mostly votes in lockstep with fellow Democrats, no matter how radical the bill.
Outrage at the insane anti-cop, pro-criminal fever in Albany inspired our pick, Steve Chan to enter the race.
A Marine and ex-cop, Chan says, “I battled criminals in my neighborhood, and now I want to fight crime from Albany,” and cares deeply about his community and public safety.
Having immigrated from Hong Kong with his family as a child, he’s also outraged by the “billions” spent on illegal migrants, some of whom have fed the surge in crime.
He says he quit the Democratic Party after it was “hijacked by the far left, Marxists and socialists,” and calls Democrats’ border policies “craziness.”
Once again, this challenger offers the change voters want and need.
SD-50 (parts of Onondaga, Fulton and Oswego counties)
This is actually an open seat; incumbent Sen. John Mannion (D) won it by just 10 votes in 2022 and now is trying for a House seat.
And our pick, Salina Town Superviser Nick Paro, is the perfect candidate for the job.
Paro served his town well — and impressed state officials — by successfully blocking New York City officials from sending buses of migrants to the Candlewood Suites in Salina.
He decries the enormous sums of money New York taxpayers are being forced to pay for migrants and has demanded Washington “look at tall fences and wide gates” to secure the border.
By contrast, Paro’s challenger, Democratic county legislator Chris Ryan, has pooh-poohed the issue as a “tired talking point.”
Paro also favors ending New York’s “sanctuary state” status, lowering taxes for small businesses, repealing cashless bail, boosting penalties for attacking cops and scrapping Democrats’ bans on gas appliances and gas-powered vehicles.
SD-38 (Rockland County)
This race is a rematch, as Sen. Bill Weber (R) again faces ex-Sen. Elijah Reichlin-Melnick (D) after ousting him in 2022.
Reichlin-Melnick voted for the disastrous no-bail law, though he pretends he wants to fix it to bolster his claims to be a centrist.
Hah! He was more honest in 2022, when he accepted the radical Working Families Party line.
Weber stands firmly with law enforcement and against surging antisemitism and crime. He strongly opposes the congestion-pricing plan that Gov. Hochul is expected to impose after Election Day, as well as her efforts to move “unvetted migrants” from the city to upstate.
Reichlin-Melnick, by contrast, supports the lunatic Prop 1 — which would empower extreme “trans rights” and legalize discrimination in the name of “protecting against unequal treatment.”
He also keeps talking about “comprehensive gun safety laws,” which is code for cracking down on legal gun owners instead of on criminals using guns.
For all his camouflage, Reichlin-Melnick would empower the hard left in Albany. Weber stands against it, and for his constituents.
Awash in cash, Democrats are also looking to unseat several GOP incumbent state senators — typically with supposed “moderates” who’d still empower the far left. The Senate races where it could get tight, so voters need to make it to the polls, include:
SD-1 (Suffolk County): Sen. Anthony Palumbo
SD-9 (southwestern Nassau County): Sen. Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick
SD-7 (northern Nassau County: Sen. Jack Martins
SD-39 (parts of Putnam, Orange and Dutchess counties): Sen. Rob Rolison
In tight races for the Assembly, we endorse:
CHALLENGERS
Assembly District 1 (Suffolk): Stephen Kiely
AD-11 (Suffolk/Nassau): Joe Cardinale
AD-16 (Nassau): Daniel Norber
AD-23 (Queens): Tom Sullivan
AD-99 (Orange/Rockland): Tom LaPolla
AD-100 (Orange/Sullivan): Lou Ingrassia
INCUMBENTS
AD-4 (Suffolk): Ed Flood
AD-21(Nassau): Brian Curran
AD-46 (Brooklyn): Alec Brook-Krasny
AD-45 (Brooklyn): Michael Novakhov
AD-63 (Staten Island): Sam Pirizzolo
AD-97 (Rockland): John McGowan
