Hans Pennink / AP
Democratic Sen. Timothy Kennedy won a special election Tuesday for the New York congressional seat being vacated by Democrat Brian Higgins.
Kennedy easily beat Republican Gary Dickson for the New York state seat, helped by a 2-to-1 Democratic registration advantage in the district, which includes Buffalo, Niagara Falls and several suburbs.
Kennedy has been in the state Senate since 2011. Describing Washington as “chaotic and dysfunctional,” he said in Congress he would focus on reproductive rights, immigration and stronger gun laws like those passed in New York after a 2022 Mass. shooting at a Buffalo supermarket.
“We must elect pro-democracy, anti-MAGA candidates across the country this November,” Kennedy said in a victory speech, “and it starts here, in this room in Buffalo, New York, tonight.”
The record wasn't Kennedy's only advantage. The Democrat raised $1.7 million as of April 10, compared to Dickson's total of $35,430, according to campaign finance reports. Kennedy spent just over $1 million in the offseason election, compared to Dickson's $21,000, as the candidates worked to remind voters to go to the polls.
Kennedy will serve in Congress for the rest of the year. He is on the ballot, along with Republican attorney Anthony Marecki, for this fall's general election. On Tuesday, former town supervisor Nate McMurray, who had planned to challenge Kennedy in a Democratic primary in June, said in a social media post that election officials had removed him from the ballot for lack of signatures.
Earlier this year, the GOP's slim majority in the House was whittled down in a hotly contested special election in the Long Island area that followed the expulsion of New York Republican George Santos from Congress. That race, won by Democrat Tom Suozzi, was seen as a test of the parties' general election strategies on immigration and abortion.
Dickson, a retired FBI special agent, acknowledged the challenges of running in the state district when he announced his candidacy in late February, saying he was in the race to give voters a choice. He said he supports Trump as the Republican nominee for president, but described his own politics as “more toward the center.”
After conceding the race, Dickson told supporters he had no regrets about running.
The vote was taken with Trump on trial in New York City in the first criminal trial against a former US president and the first of four Trump prosecutions to go to a jury.
