VOTE411 Voter Guide

My first priority is passing a Shelter Safety and Accountability Act requiring community notice, responsible placement standards, safety planning, background screening, and measurable outcomes for taxpayer-funded shelters. Second, I will fight unfair tax and housing policies that make New York less affordable, discourage investment, and push residents and businesses out. Third, I will reform family court by requiring timely decisions, stronger oversight, due process, and real accountability from judges and court-appointed professionals. After 24 years with the same senator, our neighborhoods deserve responsive leadership focused on results, not more neglect.

The most beneficial policy would be a statewide climate-resilience and energy-modernization plan that protects New Yorkers while keeping energy reliable and affordable. New York should strengthen the electric grid, modernize stormwater systems, protect coastal communities and critical infrastructure, expand flood mitigation, and preserve dependable low-carbon power, including nuclear and hydropower, while developing cleaner technologies. Climate policy must be measured by emissions reduced and damage prevented, not by how much government spends or taxes. We should hold major polluters accountable without passing high costs to renters, homeowners, drivers, and small businesses.

Social and racial justice require equal treatment under the law, safe neighborhoods, strong schools, economic opportunity, and a government that serves every community fairly. I will support vigorous enforcement of civil-rights and hate-crime laws, including protection against antisemitism; improve access to quality education and healthcare; expand pathways to jobs and small-business ownership; reform family court; and demand fairness and accountability throughout the justice system. Public safety is also a civil-rights issue: low-income and minority communities often suffer most when violent repeat offenders are allowed to cycle through the system. Justice must protect both due process and innocent people.

Following Louisiana v. Callais, New York should review its congressional and legislative maps to ensure they comply with both the Equal Protection Clause and the Voting Rights Act. Districts should be compact, contiguous, transparent, and based on genuine communities of interest rather than racial stereotypes or partisan manipulation. I would support a more independent and accountable redistricting process, public access to the data and criteria used to draw maps, and meaningful opportunities for community input. New York must continue enforcing protections against intentional discrimination and unlawful vote dilution while ensuring that no voter is classified or treated primarily according to race. Every New Yorker’s vote deserves equal weight and protection.

My top three priorities are addressing the affordable housing crisis, combatting climate change, and protecting civil rights and liberties. We must expand affordable housing without subsidizing development of luxury housing with taxpayer dollars. I've been a vocal opponent of the CLCPA rollback, led the passage of the Climate Change Superfund Act, which, as anticipated, is now being challenged in the courts, and this year, led the passage of the SUNNY Act through the Legislature to legalize balcony solar for renters. I'll keep defending reproductive freedom and civil liberties, building on my work passing the Reproductive Health Act and New York's Equal Rights Amendment.

Climate change is the most important issue of our time. In the face of this year’s calamitous rollback of the CLCPA we have more work to do than ever to get New York back on track. We have to reduce building emissions, the largest source of emissions in our state, while increasing energy affordability by pushing forward with bold energy efficiency measures, reforming our gas system by building on policies like my repeal of the outdated 100-foot rule that subsidized new gas hookups, and doubling down on solar at all scales, with legislation like the SUNNY Act that I carried to passage this session to make plug-in solar accessible to renters and others shut out of traditional solar opportunities. We must also address rising energy demand, which is why I led the effort to implement a moratorium on new data centers, to give lawmakers and regulators time to ensure these corporate behemoths don’t drive up energy prices and emissions, and damage our air, water, and land.

I carried New York's Equal Rights Amendment, which added race, ethnicity, and national origin to the list of protected classes in our State Constitution. This year, as ICE escalated enforcement in hospitals, schools, and houses of worship, I worked with colleagues to require a judicial warrant before agents can enter those sensitive spaces, to ban masked enforcement officers, and to limit local police cooperation with federal civil immigration enforcement. I expect we'll need to do more as federal enforcement continues to escalate. I've also pushed back on the repeated delays to our Reparations Commission, whose deadline has now been pushed back twice, most recently to 2029. Lastly, I'll keep working on the structural racism built into our housing, health, and education systems, because those policies are still producing unequal outcomes across the state.

I've fought this fight before: in 2012, my Senate Democratic colleagues and I walked out of the chamber rather than legitimize a gerrymandered map that violated the Voting Rights Act and silenced debate. As Republican-controlled states move to redraw maps in Callais's wake, I support giving New York the legal authority to respond, including a constitutional amendment allowing mid-decade redistricting if another state moves first. I'll also keep defending New York's own Voting Rights Act to protect us regardless of what happens at the federal level.