Metzger
Skoufis
TOWN OF WALLKILL – The Orange County Democratic Committee endorsed its slate of candidates for the November elections Wednesday night.
Current 99th District Assemblyman James Skoufis was nominated for the 39th District Senate seat held by the retiring Republican William Larkin and Jen Metzger edged out Pramilla Malick for the 42nd Senate District post, currently held by the Retiring Republican John Bonacic.
“The matter of fact is the Hudson Valley is still not treated fairly and equally, in my mind, by Albany,” said Skoufis. “I’ve worked the past six years to trying to level that playing field and I’ll be able to do more in the Senate. Whether it’s getting more aid for our local schools, more funding for infrastructure projects, and also taking up and pushing for bills that have stalled, quite frankly, in the Senate.”
Metzger agreed with Skoufis and said in addition to working for sustainability and school funding within the state, she will be focused on helping expedite those “stalled” bills.
“There has been a lot of really good legislation, over the years, that has been killed in committee and the Republican held Senate,” said Metzger. “This is a great opportunity to move forward in the coming year on legislation that helps working families, helps seniors, helps our young people.”
Kevindaryan Lujan, who had his introduction into politics just last year when he was elected as the county’s fourth district legislator, won the nomination for Skartados’ former seat. He said Skartados was an inspiration to him and he is intent on providing the same accessibility to constituents as Skartados did, if elected.
“That’s exactly what I’ve done as a legislator and I’m going to do that even more as an assemblyman,” said Lujan. “I want to make sure that I’m in Poughkeepsie. The issues that are facing Poughkeepsie and Newburgh, there are many that are very similar. In Beacon, they have issues that are not the same, but they have their own issues and we need to make sure that the entire river, all those cities along the river, that they’re getting what they need: that we’re focusing on them.”
In addition to those nominations, incumbent Aileen Gunther of the 100th District Assembly was nominated for re-election.
Orange County Democratic Committee Chairman Brett Broge was nominated for Skoufis’ current Assembly seat in the 99th District. Newcomer Scott Martens was nominated for the 98th Assembly seat and Chad McAvoy for the 101st Assembly seat, along with Louise Vandermark for Orange County Commissioner of Elections.
No Democratic opponent was nominated for county surrogate court, or county sheriff.
The state primary is on September 13.
