BATAVIA — While waiting for unofficial results to start coming in, 139th Assembly District incumbent Stephen Hawley said he was as enthused about running for re-election he was when he first ran for office.
“I still enjoy representing people, following up on people’s concerns, following up on people’s issues with the state,” he said. “I still, in election years, go door-to-door in just about every community throughout the assembly district.”
In Genesee County Tuesday night, Hawley had 16,266 votes to 4,455 for Democrat Jennifer A.O. Keys.
“I think people in our neck of the woods in Western New York — in Genesee, Monroe, Orleans and now, the town of Newstead in Erie County — are close-knit communities. We’re rural. Our family values are important to us. All of us, collectively, are worried that we might lose our children, grandchildren to another state, because of the kinds of things that have been going on over the last several years,” he said. “Coming through the pandemic was very difficult. We all stuck together. Neighbor helping neighbor is really what the 139th Assembly District is all about. I want to be there when people need us.”
With a $225 billion budget, the state is a “spending machine,” Hawley said. Going into the next term, Hawley said, his goal will be to cut spending.
“That, of course, causes an increase in taxes, whether it’s income taxes, property taxes, Medicaid costs are pushed down to the counties. The inflation that’s going on right now, our pensions being eroded by 30% the first 9 1/2 months of this year, senior citizens living on fixed incomes or finding it more and more difficult, we have the home heating situation coming up, where prices are going to be going through the roof,” he said. “There’s only so long that kids and grandkids and businesses will stay in an environment like that — where the taxes are through the roof, where we’re a Medicaid program that’s larger than Florida and Texas combined, just has to stop. We need to take care of folks in their time of need, but we need to take care of hard-working, family-oriented individuals as well.
“We don’t happen to have, fortunately, a huge amount of issues with our public safety, but all we need to do is look to our east and west, to Rochester and Buffalo, and public safety is a huge dilemma for all of New York state,” Hawley said. “When we don’t support our police, when we vilify the police and when we are pro-criminal as opposed to pro-victim, that’s sending the wrong message.”
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