{"id":328868,"date":"2026-08-25T00:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T00:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/328868\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T00:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T00:30:08","slug":"tracking-women-candidates-in-n-y-s-legislature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/328868\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracking women candidates in N.Y.&#8217;s legislature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the first Latina to be elected to represent upstate New York, Assemblymember Gabriella Romero was elected to the state Legislature in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love my job and I\u2019m committed to doing the work,\u201d said Romero. \u201cSo, I think I would say I\u2019ve been quite a successful freshman legislator, especially given the challenges of being the youngest woman and being an upstate Latina, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Prior to her time in the Assembly, Romero represented the 6th ward on the Albany Common Council.<\/p>\n<p>She also served as a public defender working as a felony trial attorney.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve undoubtedly had challenges and sticky situations where people have literally said, \u2018you\u2019re just a public defender.\u2019 You know, I keep it moving,\u201d said Romero. \u201cI think it\u2019s really important to stay focused on the work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to data from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, more women are running for office.<\/p>\n<p>At the state level across the country, in the highest position as <a href=\"https:\/\/cawp.rutgers.edu\/data\/candidates-women-candidates-2026#Governor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">governor<\/a>, 14 women, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, are currently serving as governor, which is a record high.<\/p>\n<p>In six states, Hochul is among incumbent women running for governor, while there are 15 women running in 10 states with open seats. In eight states, 10 women are running as challengers.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly Dittmar tracks the numbers as the director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver the last decade for example, we saw really record highs in 2018 and 2020 elections for women running for office and winning,\u201d said Dittmar. \u201cIn the last few cycles, we\u2019ve seen smaller gains and then even stalled progress in the 2024 elections.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the state of <a href=\"https:\/\/cawp.rutgers.edu\/data\/state-state-information\/new-york?tab=StateLegislature\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New York<\/a> specifically, when Hochul came into office, there were 19 women in the state Senate, 14 Democrats and five Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, there are 22, 19 Democrats and three Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>While the numbers went up in the state Senate, they went down in the Assembly.<\/p>\n<p>There were 56 women in 2021, 52 Democrats and four Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, there are 52 women, 49 Democrats and three Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven though the numbers of nominees may not change significantly, they\u2019re winning their races to get into office in New York,\u201d said Dittmar.<\/p>\n<p>Dittmar highlights the results are also tied to partisanship. When Democrats do well, women do well, because they make up a larger share of Democratic candidates and office holders, and when Republicans do well, it\u2019s a little more mixed because Republican women are a smaller percentage of the candidate pool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the first Latina to be elected to represent upstate New York, Assemblymember Gabriella Romero was elected to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[206,9,11,10,49,51,50,5304,112,108,87,200],"class_list":["post-328868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-albany-capital-region","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-nicole-neuman","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-politics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}