Incumbent candidate Sarahana Shrestha of Esopus, a progressive Democrat and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is facing political newcomer Santos Lopez of Saugerties, a military veteran and Republican.

Sarahana Shrestha

Shrestha was first elected to the New York State Assembly in 2022. Her original reason for running, Shrestha said, was to pass the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), which empowers the publicly owned New York Power Authority (NYPA) to build, own and operate renewable energy projects. This passed in May 2023, just four months after Shrestha won her election.

She also lists Good Cause Eviction, which requires a valid legal reason for landlords to evict tenants, limits rent hikes and mandatory lease renewals for tenants in good standing. Shrestha said this bill was stuck in the state legislature for a long time, but she was able to “really push it from an upstate perspective.”

Shrestha, along with state Sen. Michelle Hinchey, in partnership with the Ulster County Planning Board and the non-profit RUPCO secured $8 million in the state budget for New York’s first green social housing pilot project, located in Ulster County. Rent will be permanently capped at 25 percent of the resident’s income. Shrestha said she hopes this becomes a model for other municipalities.

“We don't want to waste all this money only giving tax breaks to private developers who just aren't building the amount and the quality of affordable housing we need,” Shrestha said. “We want to actually directly invest public money into these types of affordable homes and show that people can put roots in these types of projects and they don't have to worry about making a little bit more money and losing these homes.”

For this campaign cycle, Shrestha has a larger goal. She believes her seat is not competitive, describing her opponent as “unserious” and “weak.” As such, she has been using her campaign platform to assist fellow Democrats in Congress, town board and county legislator races.

“I'm not the one who is in danger of losing my election,” Shrestha said. “I just want to make sure that, especially in the county legislature, in our local governments and in Congress that we don't let the right wing win because they're really shifting us in the wrong direction.”

Part of that strategy, Shrestha said, is focusing on young voters to oppose “unserious, racist Republican” candidates such as gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, while also pushing Democrats like incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul to be more progressive. Shrestha is also encouraging constituents to vote for Democrats on the Working Families Party line, which, she said, sends this message: “I am voting for a Democrat, but I want you guys to do better.”

Entering this election cycle, Shrestha is focused on replacing Central Hudson with a publicly-owned utility company, expanding renewable energy, passing the Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants (REST) Act to make it easier for municipalities outside of New York City to adopt rent stabilization, a three-year pilot program to cap prescription drugs at Medicare prices and regulating artificial intelligence.

Shrestha called the public ownership of utilities, which she said would “not even really need taxpayer money from the state budget,” a “commonsensical solution” to lower rates, increase power of workers and “actually have a 21st century grid that is modern, reliable, efficient.”

“When you are talking about supporting these types of legislations, you don't even necessarily have to say, ‘Yes. I'm ready to do this tomorrow.’ You can say, ‘OK. I'm ready to start looking into how this would work,’” Shrestha said. “We are doing political education for people who are supportive, but they want to know how it works, or people who are curious but they have questions.”

For the REST act, Shrestha said it is “really difficult to build a consensus in the legislature in the Assembly for a for a new bill that's trying to do something major” and is planning to get it renumbered, achieve new co-sponsors and pass the bill as soon as possible.

Shrestha is working to pass the three-year prescription drug price cap to “in what ways would we have to develop regulations for this to work,” with the opportunity to make it permanent if the pilot is successful and as a “smaller bite” in the direction of single-payer healthcare.

As AI has become more prominent, with an explosion starting in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT from the company OpenAI, Shrestha said she wants Governor Kathy Hochul to sign the Responsible Data Center Development Act, which would place a one-year moratorium on permits for large data centers and regulations for smaller data centers.

“This is one topic where I really want to push the conversation on what are these data centers even for? Do we even need them?” Shrestha said. “Similar to the utility space where we are talking about public purpose, public good – applying the same logic to data centers and AI.”

Just 10 years ago, before Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2016, self-identifying as a Democratic Socialist was considered political poison in America. Shrestha emerged from that new wave of progressive Democrats, many backed by the DSA. But Shrestha said that she discovered her ideas, which she initially viewed as “impossible” or “would take a long time to win” were more popular than she imagined, and now sees a “window of opportunity” for further victories.

“For example, single-payer healthcare, public ownership of energy utilities, social housing,” Shrestha said. “It's not that we need to convince people. We need to actually figure out how to win these policies on the inside, and also build pressure on the outside to meet these undeniable demands.”

For Shrestha, this means building the organizational capacity of her constituents and that of her colleagues, working with both fellow progressive allies and “the movement on the outside.”

“My whole approach has been that I don't want to fight these things alone. I want to fight for these things with my constituents,” Shrestha said. “I really want this to be a fight that is pushed by the people, by the public, and so electing me one more time is basically saying ‘Let's keep going. We don't want to slow down. In fact, we want to speed up.’”

Santos Lopez

Santos Lopez is a U.S. Navy veteran and first-time Assembly candidate who has lived in the Mid-Hudson Valley for 20 years, with children and grandchildren attending schools in Kingston and Saugerties. Lopez said he decided to run for the District 103 seat because he believes his home region is going in the wrong direction.

“I love this country, I worked with the United States military for so many years, and not all immigrants are the same,” Lopez said. “All I see [Shrestha] doing is running negative things, ICE, stuff that's bad for our community. Why don't we put something together? And I said, ‘You know what? I'm going to run.’”

Lopez said one of his top priorities for his campaign is immigration, being an immigrant from the Philippines who came to America at a young age. He said that he came legally, and believes in “responsibility and accountability” for other immigrants, punishing those who break the law while also being “fine” with making the system easier for those who wish to come to America to find work.

“Working in the military, being a 9/11 responder, and working with our own forces, bad guys exist out there,” Lopez said. “Let's say you're America and immigration is like a bowl of M&M's. You’ve got a million colors, you got a million different shapes, sizes, and then you mix in 100 bad ones. And if you take a handful out of that bowl and you eat it, you're going to die. So what are you going to do? You're going to check each one.”

Lopez said he is also concerned by government spending, criticizing the recent creation and opening of Lake Sophia, a decommissioned quarry that was converted into a swimming facility earlier. Lopez also has some criticisms of RUPCO’s Willow Landing adaptive reuse housing project. “I don't mind paying taxes. Just spend my money wisely. Even the project that’s on the old Ramada Inn, 82 units, that costs $48 million for 82 units,” Lopez said. “That doesn't make any sense to me. So let's go back to the basics and look at the overall thing and what the state's doing.”

Additionally, while Lopez said that he “doesn’t really care who you have an adult relationship with” and has several gay family members, he opposes transgender women participating in women’s sports.

When it comes to hot-topic issues in the Mid Hudson Valley, such as affordable housing and affordable energy, Lopez said the state should avoid “putting all your eggs in one basket,” such as with a multiple-energy source approach to high utility costs. Lopez opposes building solar panels on farmland, which he said is “for making food.”

Lopez also said the plan to replace Central Hudson with a publicly-owned, non profit utility company was “crazy,” instead saying that utility companies need to be privately owned and have competition between numerous sources of energy, including nuclear energy which Lopez said can be clean energy and is safely used by the Navy.

“You have natural gas, you have hydroelectric, you have geothermal, you have solar, you have nuclear. And why would you not tap into all those resources?” Lopez said. “Why aren't we tapping into our own resources and then we could be like Alaska? We could actually ship out, export natural gas to other countries if we have so much of it here.”

With affordable housing, Lopez criticized the tax assessments that are “going through the roof,” with reassessments that he said increase taxes on homes and prevent residents from being able to remain and first-time buyers to purchase homes. Lopez said he also wants to look at different housing options, such as turning decrepit malls into housing developments.

“Let's think creatively, out of the box instead of who's the boogeyman. ‘Oh, this is evil. Rich people are bad,’” Lopez said. “Let's look at a common-sense approach instead of just throwing money at a problem.”

From his military background, Lopez said he likes to approach problems with the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis. Lopez said working with the U.S. military also taught him to be fiscally responsible, asking what was and was not needed and where money could be saved. It also informs Lopez’s commitment to reaching across the aisle and not focusing on partisan divides.

In response to Shrestha calling him “weak” and “unserious,” Lopez dismissed the accusation, saying the voters will decide and he will follow his oath to defend the U.S. Constitution.

“When we serve in the military, we're not Democrats or Republicans. We're just Americans at the end of the day, finding a common-sense solution, and we're doing it because we love our country,” Lopez said. “I don't even see them as [Democrat or Republican]. When I talk to somebody, I talk to them as a person.”

Early voting begins Oct. 24. For more information, click here: https://elections.ulstercountyny.gov/early-voting/