Democrats retain upstate New York congressional seats in special election

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Democratic Sen. Timothy Kennedy won a special election Tuesday for the New York congressional seat vacated by Democrat Brian Higgins.

Kennedy easily beat Republican Gary Dickson for the upstate New York seat, helped by a 2-to-1 Democratic registration advantage in the district, which includes Buffalo, Niagara Falls and several suburbs.

Kennedy has been in the state Senate since 2011. Describing Washington as “chaotic and dysfunctional,” he said he would focus in Congress on reproductive rights, immigration and stricter gun laws like those adopted in New York after a 2022 mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket. .

“We must elect pro-democracy, anti-MAGA candidates across the country this November,” Kennedy said in his victory speech, “and it starts here, in this room in Buffalo, New York, tonight.”

Registration wasn’t Kennedy’s only advantage. The Democrat has raised $1.7 million as of April 10, compared to Dickson’s $35,430, according to campaign finance reports. Kennedy spent just over $1 million in the off-season election, compared to Dickson’s $21,000, as candidates worked to remind voters to go to the polls.

Kennedy will serve in Congress for the rest of the year. He is on the electoral roll, alongside Republican lawyer Anthony Marecki, for the general election. On Tuesday, former city Supervisor Nate McMurray, who planned to challenge Kennedy in a Democratic primary in June, said in a social media post that election officials removed him from the ballot due to insufficient numbers of signatures.

Earlier this year, the Republican Party’s slim majority in the House of Representatives was reduced in a hotly contested special election in the Long Island area, which followed the expulsion of Republican George Santos from Congress in New York. That race, won by Democrat Tom Suozzi, was seen as a test of the parties’ electoral strategies on immigration and abortion.

Dickson, a retired FBI special agent, acknowledged the challenges of running in the upstate district when he announced his candidacy in late February, saying he was in the race to give voters a choice voters. He said he supports Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, while describing his own policies as “more centrally oriented.”

After conceding the race, Dickson told his supporters he had no regrets about running.

The vote came as Trump was on trial in New York in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president and the first of four prosecutions against Trump to reach a jury.