Experience and Qualifications
Incumbent State Senator, elected in 2018 and re-elected the following three terms; currently finishing my fourth term in the State Senate.
Community Involvement
Representing NYS District 18: Williamsburg (where I live), Bushwick, Cypress Hills-East New York, and Ridgewood Queens.
Education
Attended Columbia University for undergraduate degree (BA).
Campaign Instagram
@_juliasalazar
My top priorities fuel the working-class agenda that has always been central to my work.
To alleviate the housing crisis, I will empower tenants and tenant unions by advancing my Tenant Power Act, expand affordable homeownership opportunities via my Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, and protect homeowners by passing my End Predatory Home Flipping Act.
To expand and enhance worker rights and protections, I will advance the EMPIRE Act, which allows workers and their advocates to file lawsuits on behalf of the State for labor law violations, as well as the Academic Freedom Protection Act, which will protect tenured and non-tenured college staff from retaliation for research, classroom instruction, and intramural or extramural speech.
To break cycles of violence and incarceration, I will fight to pass the Second Look Act and Fair & Timely Parole Act, as well as pass the CARE Act.
Addressing climate change and related damage requires finally following through on landmark legislation enacted in recent years. That includes reinstating the provisions of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (2019) that were rolled back this past legislative session. It means implementing the All Electric Buildings Act (2023), which the Governor has sought to postpone. And it entails fully leveraging the capacity of the Build Public Renewables Act (2023). The Hudson Valley Power Authority Act (2026) marks the latest step toward replacing investor-owned, emission-intensive utilities with a transparent, publicly-owned, non-profit, climate-forward power authority--on that we should replicate statewide.
A robust working class agenda must center social and racial justice. That's true of my policy approach to housing, worker rights and protections, prison reform and ending mass incarceration, and protecting immigrant communities. (See answer #1.) It's also true of addressing climate change and related damage, not least because communities of color and immigrant communities disproportionately bear the brunt. (See answer #2.) And it's true of protecting free and fair elections, as historically marginalized communities face the greatest risk of disenfranchisement and its consequences. (See answer #4.) Social and racial justice is also germane to my work on reproductive rights and gender equity, which I will promote through legislation of mine that includes the aforementioned CARE Act, the Maternal Health Dignity and Consent Act, my bill to require anti-bias training for all medical students, my c-section informed consent bill, and my Equity in Fertility Treatment Act, among others.
Louisiana v. Callais was a major blow to the voting rights of not just Black Americans, but all working class people. By entrenching the far right's minority rule, the case is poised to transfer even more wealth and power to the ultra rich, further deprive and punish Black and working class communities, and imperil American democracy as a whole. New York has some of the strongest state laws regarding voting rights and protections in the country, but we must fortify those policies and make it easier for working people to vote. We must reignite the fight for same-day voter registration in NY, which right-wing interests previously defeated. I also sponsor a bill that would ensure that New Yorkers who are eligible to vote never lose their right to vote due to incarceration, a policy that already exists in several states.
