Poll Workers are needed for the upcoming Primary and Regular Elections.  Please see more information here https://www.tompkinscountyny.gov/boe/pollworker.

At the June 1st General Meeting of the Tompkins County Democratic Committee, Antonio Delgado was endorsed by a majority of the membership present to run for Lieutenant Governor of New York State. Delgado’s name will appear on the June 28th Primary in New York State. Born and raised in Schenectady, Antonio’s parents worked for General Electric in Schenectady, demonstrating the values of hard work and commitment to community. This work ethic inspired him to earn a Rhodes Scholarship while attending Colgate University.  After his Rhodes Scholarship in Oxford he attended Harvard Law School, receiving a degree in law. His hard work ethic has allowed him to experience several jobs that he feels help him to connect with the people of New York State.  His diverse experiences include a career in the music industry focused on empowering young people through hip hop and working as an attorney focusing on complex commercial litigation, while dedicating significant time to pro bono work in connection with criminal justice reform. Delgado, the first African-American elected to Congress from Upstate New York, has served as the US Representative to New York’s 19th Congressional District since 2019.  In the US 19th he has been a fierce advocate for New York, helping us recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, […]

Submitted by Renate Ferro for the Tompkins Weekly “Democratic View”, June 2022 The New York Court of Appeals declared in early spring 2022 that district maps delineating the US Congressional and State Senate districts for many New York counties, including Tompkins, would be void for the upcoming June primary election. Jonathan Cervas, a post-doctoral fellow from the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie-Mellon University and a research associate affiliated with the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, was the special master assigned by the State Supreme Court and heard cases earlier in May from representatives from communities across New York state, including Tompkins County. On May 20th Justice Patrick McCallister ordered Master Cervas’ proposals accepted and that new district maps would be adopted and implemented for US Congressional Districts and NYS Senate Districts in New York State. With the release of these newly designated area maps, Tompkins County Democrats and Democratic candidates have their work cut out for them to communicate the primary election changes that will ensue. In essence final candidates for the November election will be determined by not one, but two primary elections. In addition to the regularly scheduled Primary on June 28th and an additional Primary on August 23, a special […]

Linda Hoffmann, Chair, TCDC I hope that you will take a few moments of reflection for those who are dealing with the despair, anger, and anxiety of recent and recurring gun violence.  The racist hate crimes and deaths that devastated Buffalo, NY and the most recent deaths devastating the Uvalde, Texas Elementary School and now Philadelphia have been disheartening to watch.  Please take some time to care for yourselves and those in your family, friends, and community networks. I ask each of us to look outside of ourselves to seek an active path in securing “common sense gun laws” in our communities and country. On a celebratory note on this beautiful Ithaca Festival weekend, I know that many Democrats enjoyed the local festivities.  I hope that some of you visited our Tompkins County Democratic Booth at Dewitt Park along Cayuga Street on Saturday.  It was a great opportunity to say hello to Tompkins County Democrats reminding them all of the Primaries and Special Elections taking place over the summer months on June 28th and August 23rd.  There is valuable information for all of you to review within this Newsletter about the new redistricting maps, the candidates who are running for […]

Submitted by Rachel Kennedy for the Democratic View  published in the Tompkins Weekly for April 2022.   Rachel Kennedy lives in Trumansburg with her family. She has served there on the Village of Board of Trustees and the Board of the Ulysses Library. She enjoys making mosaics, growing things, theater, reading and British TV.  I took a bit of a dive this week into the topic of RECYCLING. The landscape is complex. I participate, certainly, as a curbside recycler, occasional redeemer of bottles and cans, and a gloomy but mostly passive receiver of news that an ever-increasing volume of my recycling efforts are fruitless. The scope of the solid waste mess is shocking.  A number of bills are currently in NYS legislature committees to tackle the problem from a number of angles. Among them: A7668 (Sponsor: Englebright), to prohibit recycling symbols on items that are not truly recyclable; S7718 (Kaminsky), to establish Extended Producer Responsibility; and A8668 (Cahill), to provide for expansion of the NYS Bottle Bill. All fascinating, and I’m zeroing in here on the Bottle Bill. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the original NYS Bottle Bill, the incentive-based program designed to ease burden on waste facilities, encourage recycling, and […]

Submitted by Ann Reichlin for the Democratic View  published in the Tompkins Weekly for May 2022 Ann Reichlin is an artist who exhibits her work  throughout the United States including her current site-specific sculpture, Transient Room at the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site in Philadelphia, PA.  Ann served on the Ithaca City School District Board of Education from 2015 to 2021. She has lived and worked in Ithaca since 1997.  As residents and communities attempt to meet New York State’s ambitious  clean energy goals, Greenidge Generation–a cryptocurrency mining facility situated on Seneca Lake– takes us in the opposite direction. If energy efficiency and transitioning to renewables is part of the solution, then the Greenidge plant’s massive use of fossil fuel is part of the problem. In the same way that the fracking industry tried to sneak into New York State about a decade ago, the proof-of-work cryptocurrency industry is slithering into our region hoping nobody will notice. Greenidge Generation should have been a positive clean energy story. The original facility used coal to produce electricity. When the coal plant was closed it was an environmental win. In an effort to re-use the site, the facility was converted to natural gas to […]