The desire from American voters for change flipped control of the House and Senate — and also reverberated in state and local elections.
In New York's 44th State Senate District, which includes Saratoga County, Niskayuna, and the city of Schenectady, a longtime Capital Region Republican was defeated by his Democratic challenger.
Republican Jim Tedisco, who has served in the New York State Legislature for more than 40 years, was beaten by Sarah Rogerson.
Rogerson is a professor at Albany Law School and a former WAMC Roundtable panelist.
WAMC’s David Guistina spoke to Senator-elect Rogerson about her recent victory, and where she's turning her focus.
Guistina: I think many of us who've been around a while, you know, our heads turned left and right, and we went, "What? What did we just see? Sarah Rogerson won." What's your sense of "why" this time? What was it? What were your constituents, the folks of the 44th Senate District saying to you? And what do you credit with for the victory?
Rogerson: Well, there are many factors. I think we spent this whole week just trying to process what happened nationally. It's very different than what happened in Senate District 44 for a lot of different reasons. I mean, one is if you look at the arc of a 43-year career, like Sen. Tedisco's, the shape of the Republican Party over those years has also shifted dramatically. And following that arc, people were really upset with the direction of the Republican Party in this moment. So, as other folks have been analyzing the national race, that is something that is definitely in common with Senate District 44.
We heard it at the doors. People are done with this brand of Republicanism that's really rooted in MAGA and Trump. And even if on a local level you aren't incorporating those practices in your votes, although arguably, at times Sen. Tedisco was.
It's still a part of the overall discomfort of the American experience in this moment, and it's a rebuke of that brand of politics. So we took the opposite tact. I've lived here for 16 years. I know what my neighbors are looking for in leadership, and they they want a friendly face, which certainly, Sen. Tedisco was for a long time. But they also want to see results. If that means improvements to first responders and firehouses, if that means working to bring down the cost of utilities, if it means fighting for our cardiologists at Ellis Hospital and fighting the powers that be at Trinity and St. Peter's, those are the types of things that we heard at the doors, and those were the types of things that I really dug in substantively. Really, I think just that kind of authentic leadership that cares about the issues in a real way is the opposite of what we're seeing come out of Washington.
Guistina: I have talked to you in the past, and full disclosure, you've been on our Roundtable panel as a law professor at UAlbany Law, and a person who has knowledge of immigration and how it works, how much of your experience there was a help as you spoke to constituents about the situation with ICE in New York?
Rogerson: I thought for sure that some folks in my district would see me as an open borders enthusiast or whatever branding label people have, because we know that immigration and immigrants are used as like political footballs every single cycle, I've seen it for 20-plus years, and it's really frustrating. This cycle, I think it really worked in my favor because people are like, "Oh, you actually know this complicated system. You know it well." I've worked on cases involving veterans. I've worked on cases where abandoned immigrant kids are looking for safe spaces to live, asylum applicants, crime victims. I've worked on the humanitarian part of immigration law and am familiar with the law that applies to everybody else. So I can speak from a place of authority, and I think what that does is it gives people a more neutral conversation starting point when you start from the law and where the law came from and how complicated and difficult it is because everybody has a story about a neighbor or a church member or you know somebody that they interact with on a daily basis that they find out is stuck in this quagmire of immigration law and policy.
We're at the point, I think, finally, where the majority of Americans know that this is such a problem that we can't afford to engage in that harmful rhetoric that Trump got elected on. All of the bad things that we have put on our immigrant neighbors, people are really starting to see that that's not true.
Guistina: You have one thing that Tedisco never had, which is you're in the majority party, and you now have because of this incredible "Blue Wave" that ran across the country, including New York, what appears to be super majorities in both houses in the Senate and the Assembly.
I know you're getting acclimated right now, but the idea that the legislature could override a veto of the governor could mean in a democratically controlled legislature more aggressive legislation that couldn't get through might get through, and so I wonder how you're feeling about that. I immediately begin to think of healthcare.
Rogerson: Yeah, me too. The issue with healthcare and the New York Health Act and ideas to solve our healthcare crisis, both from an affordability standpoint and an access standpoint, those are not new questions, but this is certainly a new opportunity to push the conversation along with a bit more urgency. I will say it's it's really important to remember that New York Democrats, in particular, are not some monolithic body of aligned views and and opinions on solutions.
A big part of this job is to follow through on the opinions I expressed during the campaign, right? But the bigger part of the job is to listen to the constituents in Senate District 44 and to make sure that their voice is brought to the table, which is the most exciting thing about being in the majority.
It's not this idea that the Democrats are just going to run away with the state. That's just not going to happen. There are so many different viewpoints. Personally, even I grew up in a very conservative area of the country in the late '70s, early '80s. My family is all over the map politically. The best solutions come about when we listen to everyone, and so that that in some ways, I think having a supermajority makes it more complicated to lead because we have to make extra certain that what we're doing is the highest and best outcome for as many constituents as possible in all of the areas of New York that we represent, which the state of New York is like a miniature United States, right? A lot of times the country is looking at us to to come up with solutions for these big problems, and that is such an exciting opportunity, and I'm very, very grateful and humbled to know that the the majority of the voters felt that I could step into that role.
