Further recommendations for New York City's Democratic primary election, 2026. (Early voting starts today at 9am: Saturday, June 13th. Tuesday June 23rd is the final day to vote.)

In this final post I'll cover the statewide Comptroller race and a few state Assembly and Senate races in central/western Queens. And, heck, I'll throw in a nearby Congressional race too. Earlier I covered the Democratic Party position elections for District Leader and State Committee in that same region, and the candidates for a Queens judicial race.

I'm working from the official list of candidates from the New York Board of Elections.

In my judicial candidates piece I went on and on about the slimy Hiram Monserrate, who assaulted his girlfriend and stole taxpayer money, and is trying to infiltrate the rest of the governmental apparatus with his allies. Again, as with the Democratic party positions post, that's also a prelude to this post, because guess who's running in these races too? Monserrate and his cronies.

(If I mention donations made to New York state races, you can confirm my claims with public records: use the NYS Board of Elections "search contributions by contributor" interface, plug in the person's name, and check out their donations from the date I mention.)

• Comptroller: Raj Goyle
• State Senate, District 13: Jessica González-Rojas
• State Assembly, District 30: Shamsul Haque, by a hair
• State Assembly, 34th District: Brian Romero
• State Assembly, 39th District: Catalina Cruz
• House of Representatives, New York District 6: Chuck Park
• Final thoughts

State Comptroller

I discussed this race in April, explaining the role, key issues, and the candidates. I said then:

So right now I'm leaning Goyle. But I don't mean that as a solid endorsement, and I predict the race will change significantly between now and June 13th.

The race changed in the one way I'd predicted, which is that Warshaw's challenge successfully pushed Bunkedekko off the ballot. DiNapoli's office started fast-tracking some unclaimed funds payouts. The three candidates debated on May 21st. Warshaw and Goyle accumulated endorsements, such as Zephyr Teachout for Goyle and Brian Romero for Warshaw. I suspect that DiNapoli will beat them both (it's a shame that this is a three-candidate race; if there were only one challenger we'd have a much better shot at unseating such an entrenched incumbent).

I'm going to vote for Goyle. I'd probably be fine with Warshaw winning, but Goyle's gotten more endorsements from groups and people whose assessments matter to me (such as Zephyr Teachout and Chuck Park).

State Senate, District 13

Corona/East Elmhurst/Jackson Heights

This is a very controversial one. I've spoken with the candidates (in some cases in serious depth) and several staffers, gone to several meet-the-candidate Q&A sessions and forums (including the one where security removed a few of the most disruptive folks), and spoken with many friends and knowledgable locals about this race. Sorry for how interminable this section may feel. One reason I'm publishing this about three hours before polls open is because it's this week that I learned information that helped me make my choice.

Jessica Ramos

Campaign website. State Senate website (incumbent). Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, bio on English Wikipedia. Questionnaires from 2020 and 2022 re-election campaigns, and from 2025 run for mayor.

She's been in office since 2019. She's the Chair of the Senate Labor Committee, and champions pro-worker legislation in close partnership with unions and other organized labor groups. She was the main sponsor of legislation indexing the statewide minimum wage to rise with cost of living, which is a nifty idea. She introduced the Recourse Act, which basically says that if Trump cuts federal funds to New York State, then we will withhold our taxes to the feds. She co-sponsored Cecilia’s Law to decriminalize sex work, sponsors a sanctuary hospital bill, and supports legislation to improve access to legal representation for immigrants. Supports Tax the Rich. Someone I know posted an analysis of her legislative record to Reddit.

So, progressives here are pretty happy with her bills. But, Ramos has a reputation for making and holding grudges, including against other elected Democrats in overlapping districts. For years, tension's been simmering between her and several other local Democrats -- including AOC.

And then, just before voting started in the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary, Ramos -- who had consistently condemned Andrew Cuomo's past corruption and sexual harassment, and called him unfit for the mayoralty -- suddenly endorsed Cuomo over Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani won anyway, as you may have heard, and for the general election Ramos did say people ought to vote for the Democratic nominee. But her decision immensely damaged her credibility. The weekend after she did that, several people stopping by my outreach table sounded utterly bewildered and shocked and betrayed -- they sounded like people who had come home to discover their spouse cheating on them.

Why did she do it???? News reports have conveyed her explanation: she had more confidence in Cuomo's management ability than in Mamdani's. And they've conveyed alternate explanations, such as her grudge against the DSA left, which she considers an unserious soundbite factory, and against Mamdani ("I wish he was a harder worker.... I don’t think anybody who went to prep school is my savior"). And then people speculate: She thought Cuomo would win, and she wanted a role in his administration, or at least to be on his good side. And/or: she hoped he would help her get some campaign donations to get her campaign out of debt.

Ramos has now been ostracized by many past supporters, including institutions that had previously endorsed her; she discussed that in a NY1 interview in February (8-min video). Right now she's endorsed by TWU Local 100 and several other unions, as well as several of her colleagues in the legislature (including the Assembly Speaker and Senate Majority Leader). And an energetic contingent of Queens activists are supporting her (linking to Imginn proxy for an Instagram feed) because -- as far as they can tell -- she was the only local elected who opposed the Metropolitan Park (casino) project.

Sidebar on Metropolitan Park

In 2013, New York State voters approved a ballot measure allowing up to 7 licenses for casinos in the state (that wouldn't have to be on Native American land). Four casinos opened upstate. Then, in 2025, eight proposed NYC-area projects competed for the three remaining licenses. One of them, "Metropolitan Park", backed by Hard Rock International and billionaire Steve Cohen (owner of the New York Mets baseball team), overcame a zillion approval hurdles and succeeded in getting a license -- and, if it gets built, most of it'll be in Ramos's district.

She did not want this to happen. She refused to introduce a Senate bill that would have been necessary for the project to move forward, and the legislative tradition of member deference would have ended the question there -- but then another senator, who represents a small fraction of the land involved, introduced it instead. The Senate and Assembly versions of that bill passed by overwhelming margins.

Several months later, the project faced another important approval step: passing a vote by a six-member Community Advisory Committee, each member appointed by a different elected official (such as the governor, the location's assemblymember, etc.). Jessica Ramos delayed on appointing someone, then finally appointed a local Democratic leader named George Dixon to represent her. Anti-casino activists were not too surprised that the CAC approved Metropolitan Park, but George Dixon voting yes and making it unanimous raised eyebrows; why did she appoint someone who didn't vote the way she'd advise?

I could write thousands more words about the intricacies and intrigues. This whole process was, to put it mildly, controversial. (I cannot count how many conversations about the casino I have had in the past two years.) Pro-Metropolitan Park folks loved the promises of union jobs, a lovely park, investments in the local transit station, and so on. The opposition argued: CASINOS ARE BAD, and, don't build this on a floodplain, and, those promises are not as strong as you think they are (the large print giveth and the small print taketh away), and, why are we helping a billionaire set up an exploitation factory to extract wealth from our neighbors?

As you can tell, I came down on the anti-casino side. As did some fictional characters.

Digression on a TV show

Please feel utterly free to skip this, but I have been meaning to blog about it and I'm already going to be up way too late to finish this post, so why not.

Spoilers in this section for Season 5 of Only Murders in the Building. In which one subplot concerns billionaires scheming to get the license for the first casino in NYC! The first inkling we get is a volunteer trying to get a character to sign a petition against it. It was quite a shock to suddenly have this part of the show not only be ripped from the headlines but, like, ripped from my weekend.

It felt like I was making a cameo I hadn't known I was making till I saw it onscreen -- although I would not take his approach to get initial engagement. Dialogue:

"How's it going today? Do you care about dogs dying?"

"Well, obviously, yes."

"Well, I'm collecting signatures to stop New York City from opening its first ever casino. Right now, there's a few competing bids. They're all just terrible for the city --"

"Wait, sorry. What does that have to do with dogs?"

"Oh, ha, nothing. I just find it's a helpful way to get people to stop. You know what I'm saying?"

Our protagonists aren't sympathetic to the casino proposal that would massively change their neighborhood; the sympathetic characters all express shock that this might happen at all, and say that it would ruin lives, drive people into poverty, and ruin the city.

I call that last one "winning argument at the CAC."

OK I'm done talking about the TV show now

But my fellow activists are absolutely not done talking about Metropolitan Park. They're pursuing litigation to get the state to revoke the gaming license. They're calling on the governor to rescind the license. And some of them are set on re-electing Jessica Ramos, to signal that the district absolutely does not want the casino, and to reject one of her challengers, an Assemblymember who voted for that bill:

Jessica González-Rojas

Campaign website. Assembly page, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. Bio on English Wikipedia. Questionnaires from 2020 and 2022 re-election campaigns.

González-Rojas (widely known as "JGR") is the incumbent Assemblymember for 34th District, since 2021. She is a queer Latina woman and previously headed National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. Key issues in legislation she's sponsored legislation include reproductive freedom, queer rights, healthcare costs, and SNAP. She calls for climate justice & for universal childcare for every child from birth to the age of four. She successfully sponsored legislation that eliminates the cost of asthma inhalers and that made free school breakfast & lunch available to all schoolkids. Analysis of her legislative record. Fundamentally I think she and Ramos vote for pretty much the same bills, but they focus on different topics in what they sponsor and really push to get passed.

Ramos has lost a ton of past endorsements, and generally they've gone to González-Rojas, who is endorsed by DRUM Beats, Working Families Party, Make the Road Action, local Councilmember Krishnan, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, nearby Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, and many other local groups and electeds. Mamdani hasn't endorsed her formally, but he marched next to her rather than Ramos in the Queens Pride Parade a week ago, which many read as a signal. She's a member of Democratic Socialists of America, but isn't seeking their endorsement for this race.

Ramos argues that JGR's support for Metropolitan Park goes beyond just voting for that one bill. Ramos has said that "Jessica González-Rojas is Steve Cohen’s state Senate candidate" and that her "launch was sponsored precisely by consultants of the casino”. And Ramos alleges (such as in this September 2025 interview on the Max Politics podcast) that the real reason JGR launched this primary challenge isn't the Cuomo endorsement, but as part of powerful forces' revenge on Ramos for opposing the casino.

González-Rojas consistently says that she deeply researched the casino proposal, consulted her constituents, and heard them say, five-to-one, that they wanted this project. (I believe her; I think Cohen's well-funded persuasion campaign succeeded on a ton of her constituents. Interestingly, I haven't heard her point out that the bill passed 138 to 7, and her own "no" vote would not have stopped the tide.) JGR argues that Ramos has taken campaign donations from lobbyists for other casinos -- perhaps Ramos is not so much opposed to casinos as she says? -- and that Dixon's yes vote on the CAC belies Ramos's stance as well.

González-Rojas also asserts that, unlike Ramos, González-Rojas can work with others -- "builds bridges rather than burning them."

And of course Ramos's Cuomo endorsement is one of JGR's key talking points, too. I recall González-Rojas answering someone asking how she differs from the other candidates by pointing out that she didn't endorse a sexual harasser, and she hasn't been convicted of assaulting a woman.

Because remember: there's a third candidate in this race too.

Hiram Monserrate 🙁

Campaign website: hiram26.com. I don't want to find and link to all his social media profiles. Bio on English Wikipedia detailing his conviction for assaulting his girlfriend, his indictment for corruption, his conviction for mail fraud, and so on, as I discussed in the judicial candidates roundup. The state Senate expelled him, but several years ago he managed to beat George Dixon to grab a District Leader position. And since he got out of prison, he's kept running to get back on the City Council or into the state legislature, and so far he's always lost.

But he might win, if Jessica González-Rojas and incumbent Jessica Ramos split the progressive vote. In a 2024 Democratic primary for a nearby Assembly seat, Monserrate got 40% of the vote.

Monserrate has been declining interviews with newspapers, but he spoke at those forums this week, and alongside the crowds that came to support Ramos and JGR, crowds came to cheer for him. He promotes himself as a law-and-order dude pushing back against leftist excesses; he's an ex-cop who said at Tuesday's forum that "in the 90s we got it right!" (I'm guessing Abner Louima doesn't feel the same way.)

And he says he's learned his lesson from his past mistakes, and changed his ways. I know he hasn't. For one thing, in April of this year, and in 2022, he received campaign donations from "FRIENDS OF CSRL" at 139 Bassett Avenue, Brooklyn, 11234. That's a misspelling of "Carl", and the address is Carl Kruger's. Kruger went to prison for corruption, too. And then there's how he reacted to a woman in December (last year) who refused to shake his hand after a press conference, instantly turning stormy and trying to rip his press release out of her hand. It didn't make the news, but I know it happened.

Oh, and this is more of a side note, but on March 10th, 2026, Monserrate's campaign received a $5,000 contribution from Lukas Simianer of Pflugerville, Texas. It's very unusual for a state legislative candidate in our area to get out-of-state contributions, but Monserrate's gotten thousands of dollars from Simianer (an AI tech CEO/founder), as well as a few folks in Florida who've gotten sued for fraud in the past.

My choice

I think of both Jessicas as intelligent legislators, who nearly always support policies that I favor, and who have each made choices I think are wrong (the Cuomo endorsement and the casino support).

My research leads me to doubt the credibility of Ramos's explanations for endorsing Cuomo, and for appointing George Dixon to that CAC. This undermines my trust in her integrity and in the hard decisions she makes behind closed doors. And: while it's great that Ramos works well with organized labor, I do want my representatives to have meaningful working relationships with other local elected officials and advocacy organizations too, and not take a "my way or the highway" approach. Organizers I know have found that it's far more possible to get meetings with JGR, and to make them productive, than to get useful conversations with Ramos. DRUM Beats wrote in their endorsement: "Our members had disagreements with JGR regarding casinos, but noted and appreciated that we could struggle through disagreement with genuine openness and mutual respect."

I grieve that losing Ramos's seniority and skill in the Senate may be a setback for labor. I'm unhappy that some would perceive a JGR victory as an approval of Metropolitan Park. But my assessment is that Jessica González-Rojas would be a better steward of this seat than the incumbent is.

And even if you're deeply unhappy with both JGR and Ramos, if you're a registered Democrat in District 13, please vote for one of them, to keep Monserrate out, because he'd be worse.

Assembly, District 30

(Woodside/Elmhurst)

This race also isn't entirely an easy choice. I have been in conversations with all three of these candidates, and talked about them with locals.

Patrick Martinez

Campaign website. Part of the Crowley family machine in Queens Democratic politics; he had no website or social media at launch, yet was already endorsed by the Queens Dems. He sits on Community Board 2, where he's worked on fighting the housing crisis. He worked for a year or two as a teacher, and for the last 12 years in digital ad sales; his About page mentions the former but not the latter. His stated policy priorities align with mine. I asked him about his thoughts, as a digital ad sales domain expert, on the New York Privacy Act to protect individuals' data; he wasn't familiar with the bill. About three weeks later, I had another chance to speak with him, and asked him again; he still hadn't reviewed it.

Somnath Ghimire

Campaign website; some broad ideas and sentence fragments about policy priorities, and a looooong bio. LinkedIn (“Somu For New York”).

Ghimire is a Nepali-American whose promotional material characterizes him as a community leader. I do admire his early work as a democracy activist in Nepal, and distributing aid and meals to Queens residents in the depths of the COVID crisis. However, his communication skills in English are so poor that I sometimes couldn't tell whether he was rambling or just hadn't understood a question. And he suggests "stronger policing... and modern surveillance systems" to improve public safety; when asked what he means, he's called for more cops on the street and more surveillance cameras. I don't align with him on policy, and I don't think he is capable of serving as a New York State legislator.

Shamsul Haque

Campaign website. Twitter, campaign Twitter, LinkedIn.

Haque moved to the US in 1991. Several years later, he enrolled at CUNY, where he served on the CUNY Board of Trustees (2002–2003) and was part of CUNY tuition protests against Governor Pataki in 2003.

After the September 11th attacks, Haque joined the NYPD in an effort to help demonstrate that Muslims are patriotic. While there, he cofounded the Bangladeshi American Police Association. He ended his career at the NYPD with several years working in Internal Affairs, where he pursued wrongdoing by other cops. Now he's a former NYPD officer who supports police reform; at the state level, he wants to change penal laws to reduce the rate of incarceration, and pass Daniel's Law so that mental health professionals respond to more calls where that's the best option. (No 50-a complaints.) I've seen him show up for at least one rally calling for justice in the NYPD's killing of Win Rozario (context).

In the 2025 mayoral election, Haque prominently supported Zohran Mamdani, and helped him persuade rank-and-file NYPD officers and their supporters -- not least in the aftermath of the killing of Didarul Islam. Haque doesn't belong to the DSA, but he supports many of their goals and he hired many DSA folks to staff his Assembly campaign, and he supports left-progressive policies such as Tax the Rich, free universal childcare, and returning CUNY to being tuition-free. And he spoke out against the educational institution “buffer zone” bill (175-B). His endorsements include Bernie Sanders and DRUM Beats.

However, this is a fairly recent turn for him. Haque endorsed Eric Adams in 2021, and supported Republicans as recently as 2022 (caution: NY Post). And, what's worse, he has been a supporter of Hiram Monserrate -- pretty recently! He donated to a Hiram Monserrate campaign as recently as 2025. And a group he cofounded and is still a leader of, Rise Up NYC, had Monserrate speak on their stage (among other local politicians) in February 2026, as visible in this video (about 19 seconds in).

He's only ever been registered with the Board of Elections as a Democrat (I checked, using a Freedom of Information request). But there are many kinds of Democrat, and I know progressives who are very leery of someone whose change of heart is so recent.

My choice (a very mild recommendation)

Somnath Ghimire is bad at communicating and confused about his own policies. Patrick Martinez isn't as deeply engaged with statewide policy issues (including ones where he has relevant expertise) as I want an Assembly candidate to be. And he does not need this seat to make progress on his favorite issues; volunteering and organizing would be effective too.

In contrast, as an ex-cop, Haque can bring unique credibility to state-level legislative advocacy to improve policing. And DRUM Beats's endorsement is pretty meaningful, especially as it took a lot for them to arrive at it:

Our members were intrigued by the possibility of progressive positions - taxing the rich, community safety beyond policing.... - being held by a former police officer.


Through sustained engagement for many months, through tasking out mini-projects, through intense interviews with our members including families impacted by NYPD’s violence, and through our background research, we found @shamsulforqueens to be a worthy candidate of our endorsement. 

Shamsul’s commitment to accountability, working-class politics, and community-centered public safety has the potential to challenge traditional narratives around safety and strengthen progressive movements in Queens and beyond.

I spoke to one voter in that district who prefers Patrick Martinez; she said she'd rather have a reliable Queens Machine rep than someone who was a Republican five minutes ago and feels more likely to go rogue. And I totally respect that. And I find Haque's far-too-recent support of Monserrate pretty worrisome! But -- given that Haque's in an unusual situation, where DRUM Beats and related grassroots organizations are guiding him in continuing the growth he started when he got into the Mamdani campaign -- for me, Shamsul Haque's positives outweigh his negatives, and I would cautiously, mildly, recommend him as the best choice in this race.

34th Assembly District

(most of Jackson Heights, parts of Corona, East Elmhurst and eastern and northern Astoria; map)

Oh, thank goodness, an easy one.

Brian Romero

Campaign website. Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky. News coverage of his campaign: early October, December, and January from qns.com, Dec. 12th in Queens Eagle, Jan. 15th in Queens Chronicle.

Romero was a former social worker & mental health counselor before he switched to working in advocacy and government. He has worked as chief of staff in Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas’s office, and as chief of staff to state Senator Kristen Gonzalez.

Romero is a queer man and his standout issue is LGBT rights. I've been impressed while hearing him speak about housing insecurity, gender affirming care for young people, and other issues. He seemed very confused about casteism and I think he didn't understand what it is, but he is intelligent and can learn. He is a member of DSA but is not seeking their endorsement.

Romero has a zillion endorsements in this race, such as Make the Road Action, Working Families Party, Citizen Action of New York, affordable housing group Churches United for Fair Housing Action, Rep. Nydia Velázquez, Councilmember Julie Won, Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, former local Councilmember Danny Dromm, and Assemblyman Steve Raga.

Rosa Sanchez

Sanchez is an ally of (you guessed it) the disgraced and corrupt Hiram Monserrate. She's part of the "Restore Roosevelt Avenue" coalition, which advocates more policing and cracking down on sex work and brothels. She's on the executive board of Monserrate's Roosevelt Democratic Club, which endorsed Julie Milner and John Ciafone for judicial spots this year.

My choice

Brian Romero, by a mile.

39th Assembly District

(Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights, as well as portions of Middle Village, Rego Park and Maspeth; map)

Almost done. Here's another easy one.

Catalina Cruz

Campaign website. Assembly page as she's the incumbent. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Medium. English Wikipedia bio.

Cruz has served in this office since 2019, and has sponsored, you know, reasonable legislation.

Yonel E. Letellier Sosa

Was previously an Assembly staffer; worked as chief of staff to Jose Peralta, whose defection from the Democratic caucus helped rob Democrats of their power in the legislature for several years. Previously ran and lost in this primary in 2018. Petitioned this year with Hiram Monserrate, as I witnessed in April (photo in my judicial roundup).

My choice

Catalina Cruz, again, by a mile.

US House of Representatives, New York's 6th District

(Elmhurst/Woodside/Flushing/Fresh Meadows)

Grace Meng

Campaign website. House website (she's the incumbent). English Wikipedia bio, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

Meng has held this seat since 2012, and faced nearly no primary opponents since then (the one primary challenge was in 2020, where she won comfortably over two opponents with 65.3% of the vote). She was previously a lawyer and an Assemblymember. She's also the daughter of an Assemblymember.

Currently she's New York's senior member of the Appropriations Committee. She supports Medicare for All, reproductive health, and other mainstream progressive-to-center Democratic policies. And (check out the "Consumer protection" section of her English Wikipedia bio), Meng's response to constituent complaints of mail theft led to the US Postal Service making the mail more secure for everybody, which is great. However, she voted yes on HR 488 which thanked ICE.

Her campaign received $920K in contributions in 2025, and quite a lot of individual transactions above $500. The top contributor to her 2023-2024 re-election campaign was AIPAC (and she spoke onstage at AIPAC's annual policy conference in 2018). This raised controversy especially when she was not particularly accessible to constituents who advocated a different policy position. In general, she hasn't held many town halls or similar open-to-the-public events in the past several years.

In 2025, a child in Meng's district disappeared during a routine ICE check-in. Meng didn't speak publicly about the case, even when other electeds did. (Meng later said her office had been in touch with the family.)

As the incumbent and the establishment candidate, Meng's garnered several mainstream endorsements, such as Reproductive Freedom for All, Democratic Majority for Israel, and unions such as 32BJSEIU and NY Hotel & Gaming Trades Council.

Charles ("Chuck") Park

Campaign website. Bluesky, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram.

Park is a former Foreign Service officer, and formerly Councilmember Shekar Krishnan’s chief of staff. I first met him when he worked with me on the HEART Act (and have spoken with him several times during his campaign). Park has served on the Community Education Council for school district 30, taught microeconomics, organized at MinKwon Center for Community Action, and worked at NYC Economic Development Corporation. He is an adoptive parent.

He's a progressive who came to the Feb. 25th Tax the Rich rally in Albany (context). His platform: Abolish ICE and disaggregate DHS, Medicare for All, affordable clean energy, Block the Bombs Act, child tax credit, and so on. More news coverage: Nov. 17, June (in Salon! Blast from the past).

Park says he’ll refuse PAC & lobbyist donations. His campaign received $140K in 2025, all under $200. He's holding frequent local in-person events.

Endorsements: 504 Democratic Club, NY Progressive Action Network, Central Queens Independent Democrats, Forest Hills Indivisible, Raj Goyle, New York Communities for Change, and several others (bottom of the page). His former boss, Councilmember Krishnan, endorsed Meng instead, which must sting a bit. Park almost got the New York Working Families Party nomination, but then, "In an unusual move, Working Families Party leaders rejected an advisory council’s recommendation": a situation that raises my eyebrows and certainly doesn't lend more credibility to the NY WFP's future endorsement choices.

My choice

Chuck Park: a platform I agree with more, endorsements I value, and a commitment to being a lot more accessible to constituents.

Final thoughts

I wish we had more straightforwardly clear choices in some of these races.

The pernicious influence of Hiram Monserrate demands that we build a stronger bench of candidates to counter him.

There are people in my circles who are looking forward to these posts, and people who will be unhappy with me about what I've said in them. Both of those facts increase my desire to be careful and responsible in what I say and how I say it. Please feel free to leave links to other good resources in the comments - or your own thoughts, including disagreement or corrections, as long as you're being productive and not just insulting or dismissive.

This is the first non-school election I've ever experienced where I had so much in-depth personal knowledge of the candidates -- some of them even recognize me now. But of course every month I learn more about the depths I don't know -- the history, the relationships, the systems, the issues, the vastness of a field that clever ambitious people have worked in for hundreds of years.

And I want to again thank Naomi Kritzer, my role model in local politics blogging. Her work has been a model in how to walk readers through the relevant issues and facts so that, even if they disagree with me on policy, they understand the key issues dividing the candidates, and why I came to the conclusions I did, and they have info and links to help them make better voting choices, and they feel respected. That's what I hope this does for you. Or, if you're not in any of these districts, at least you've found it entertaining.