U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand glided to re-election on Tuesday, easily winning another six-year term as the junior senator from New York over longshot Republican challenger Mike Sapraicone, a retired NYPD detective.
Gillibrand, an incumbent Democrat first appointed to her seat in 2009 when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, secured her third full term, with the Associated Press calling the race shortly after polls closed at 9 p.m. Tuesday. She’d won 66 percent of the votes with 40 percent of the results in.
“Tonight’s results are absolutely clear,” Gillibrand said in a speech after her victory at Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan, “that New Yorkers believe in leadership that puts people over politics and finding those common-sense solutions to the real problems that people are facing all across this state.”
The race was the only election this year for the Senate in New York. The other seat is held by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who was last re-elected in 2022.
For months, there was buzz of Gillibrand, a relative moderate from Albany, facing a possible primary challenge, including from the left in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But the progressive up-and-comer ruled out the race mid-last year.
That left re-election all but Gillibrand’s to lose in deep-blue New York, especially in a presidential election year when Democratic turnout tends to be strong, against Sapraicone, a political newcomer from Long Island who was endorsed by Donald Trump and runs a private-security firm.
The candidates clashed over a New York ballot proposal, the Equal Rights Amendment, with Sapraicone saying it could allow students to play on sports teams corresponding with their gender identity.
Gillibrand launched a failed presidential campaign in 2019 that ended after five months. As a senator, she has counted securing health care support for 9/11 first responders, and passing anti-gun trafficking legislation and sexual assault in the military reforms as among her legislative victories.
Gillibrand at her election night party, where she was introduced by Gov. Hochul, listed federal deductions for state and local taxes, healthcare and supporting union as her next set of priorities, and spoke against “hate and division” in the country, including antisemitism.
“I will always reach across the aisle to find that common ground for the common good,” she said, “and always work to unite rather than divide our state or our country.”
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