With all the snow and cold we now know how hardy the base of voters is in the state Senate’s 61st District. The turnout, as expected, was low, but Jeremy Zellner’s win was solid.
Here are the vote totals with all but two of the 128 Election Districts reporting as of midnight:
Zellner, Democrat – 18,752 votes; 60 percent of the total votes cast
Dan Gagliardo, Republican, Conservative – 12,591 votes; 40 percent of the total cast
Turnout in the district was 31,507 votes with two districts out, which represented over 15 percent of registration.
Some interesting info:
Zellner carried every Election District in the Buffalo portion of the district
Zellner won in four of the five municipalities in the district. Gagliardo carried Grand Island, which has a Republican plurality in party registrations
The Conservative Party line produced nearly 24 percent of Gagliardo’s total vote
We will have to wait until March 2nd to see how much money was spent on the race but the total amount for both candidates will likely exceed $600,000 for a four-week campaign.
Zellner will be sworn into office in the next few days and head to Albany just as discussions about the state’s next budget are beginning. The state’s tax collections, based largely on Wall Street 2025 bonuses, are doing well but there are nonetheless dark clouds on the horizon as the full effects of Donald Trump’s big, bad bill filter down to states and localities. We have recently seen announced cutbacks in staffing at the Erie County Medical Center and the Kaleida system which tie to the federal cutbacks.
Zellner, of course, will also need to pay attention to what comes next politically. The primary election for the office will be held on June 23rd, less than 20 weeks from now.
State Assemblyman Jon Rivera will be challenging Zellner in that primary. Zellner will come into that campaign with election operations in full gear. He will enjoy whatever the advantages of incumbency can be in such a short period of time.
Zellner, a lifelong resident of the district, will have the support of Democratic Party leadership throughout the district. Rivera is a Buffalo resident. His Assembly District includes parts of Buffalo, one election district in Lackawanna, and the entire town of Hamburg. Eighty percent of the 61st Senate Districtis in the northern municipalities of Erie County.
Zellner has been proficient in raising campaign money while Rivera’s political campaign treasury has been more modest. Both candidates will benefit substantially from funds available through the state’s Public Campaign Financing Program. Zellner has already been approved for $321,901 from the Program for the special election and will qualify for additional state funds for the primary and general election.
There are currently 93,457 registered Democrats in the 61st District who will be eligible to vote in the primary.
The general election on November 3 will include a Republican candidate who is unknown at this time. The party candidate in the special election, Gagliardo, may or may not want to take on a fourth election since June 2025; he won a Republican primary in his race for Amherst Town Supervisor followed by his defeats in the November 2025 election for that office as well as the just completed special election.
There are nine months to go until the general election, and a lot will happen politically between now and then. Democrats have been doing well in recent off-year elections. Governor Kathy Hochul, who will lead the party ticket in the state, is doing very well in recent polling and fundraising. She will assist local candidates by bringing out a substantial number of Democrats in November.
Assembly District 149
The Assembly seat that Jon Rivera will leave behind as he pursues the Senate seat is attracting a great deal of attention. There are four announced Democratic candidates for the 149th. A Republican candidate has not been identified yet.
The candidates are:
Adam Bojak, tenant rights attorney, ran for the seat in 2020
Alex Burgos, non-profit administrator, community organizer
Kevin Dresse, banking professional, Naval reservist
Karen Hoak, former Hamburg Town Board member who is employed as the Deputy Highways Commissioner in the Erie County Department of Public Works
There are 38,873 registered Democrats in the district.
Primary turnouts in both the 61st Senate District and 149th Assembly District will be in the 20-25 percent range of eligible voters.
Governor Hochul also has a primary coming up with her Lt. Governor, Antonio Delgado. Delgado has not developed much traction and is relatively unknown in the state. He trails far behind in polling and fundraising.
On to the primary!
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