NY 1st Congressional District Primary June 26th - who are you voting for?
Last edited Sun Jun 10, 2018, 09:16 AM - Edit history (1)
Who is the best chance to unseat Zeldin? I was doing a little reading, and I like Elaine Di Masi, but haven't done due diligence in reading much about the others, except the article below. Wish I had seen the debates. They all seem to have similar ideology, but have a different message that they want to bring to voters to win (anti trump, jobs, etc). I feel like this is a horse race and I’m basically looking for “the favorite”, but it is what it is I guess.
http://www.27east.com/news/article.cfm/East-End/557602/Democrats-Face-Off-At-Debate-In-Hampton-Bays
ETA additional info:
Candidates (source for money raised: FEC) :
Perry Gershon 1.4M raised
Kate Browning 368K raised
David Pechefsky 236K raised
Vivian Viloria-Fisher 152K raised
Elaine DiMasi 85K raised
Going by fundraising as "favorite":
Gershon has the most funds raised - half seem to be self-funded. Not fond of voting for someone with no political experience, and a Commercial RE/Finance background - I'd rather see our congress have less incentive to be lobbied. But all his stances tick most of my boxes.
Going through donors for these candidates, I did find something disturbing - Kate Browning's top donor is Renaisance Technologies (Robert Mercer): https://www.opensecrets.org/races/contributors?cycle=2018&id=NY01&spec=N
They also contributed to David Pechefsky for a smaller amount.
Backgrounds:
Kate Browning, who has served 12 years in the county Legislature and is term-limited from running again, said supporters have urged her to run for Congress ... A resident of Shirley and a native of Northern Ireland, Ms. Browning, 58, was elected to the Legislature with Democratic backing but was registered with the Working Families party until she recently changed her enrollment to Democrat.
Viloria-Fisher, 69, is a native of the Dominican Republic and served in the Suffolk Legislature from January 1999 to December 2011. Previously, she had been foreign language department chairperson at Ward Melville High School since September 1997. She has been a planned parenthood board member, and also ticks most boxes. Has a strong pro-environment voting record.
Henry, 36, graduated from Westhampton Beach High School and has degrees in political science, history and education from Long Island University. “I taught at Eastern Suffolk BOCES, working with people who have autism and behavioral issues,” he said. “Then I had a car crash and I stopped teaching. I went back to my roots working in service, which is what a lot of my family has done,” he said.
Mr. Henry currently works as a bartender in Buckley’s Inn Between in Hampton Bays and at the Southampton Publick House.
Gershon, 55, who announced his intention to run for Congress on July 15. He has worked in commercial real estate for more than 25 years and told The Suffolk Times he is running in this election to fight against health care being taken away from Americans and to “restore the middle class". Per his website: Perry is fighting for universal backgrounds checks and a ban on assault weapons. He's strong on unions and pro-choice.
Pechefsky, 49, a graduate of Patchogue-Medford High School, is a longtime staff member with the New York City Council and has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Hunter College and a master’s in international development from American University in Washington, D.C. His campaign website says he’s running for Congress “because we need to take our government back from [President Donald] Trump and his apologists and enablers like Lee Zeldin.”
Ms. DiMasi, 48, is a former Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist of 21 years. “My vision for Long Island creates a re-energized economy with new jobs in the clean energy sector. Evidence-based policy will right-size the regulations, so we have affordable protections that work,” she said on the Facebook site.
Browning & Pechefsky are a definite scratch out for me. Again, I like DiMasi and her background, and the fact that she's a scientist, but don't think she has much of a chance to win. It's going to be a choice between Viloria-Fisher & Gershon for me.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Back in the day, the Democrats sometimes didn't bother to field a candidate, so this is good news if we can get together to support just one. It seems like the candidates are on board with this too. 
Primary candidates
Democratic Party Democrats
Tedra Cobb
Emily Martz
Patrick Nelson
Katie Wilson
Dylan Ratigan
David Mastrianni
Withdrew
Tanya Boone
Don Boyajian
Sara Idleman
Ronald Kim
