Jonathan Rivera will win the Democratic nomination in the race for New York\u2019s 61st Senate District, the Associated Press declared.<\/p>\n
Rivera had represented the\u00a0149th Assembly District since 2021, stepping down from the role to run for the Senate seat.<\/p>\n
His opponent, Jeremy Zellner, has been the chair of the Erie County Democratic Party since 2012. He resigned from the Erie County Board of Elections as Democratic commissioner to seek the nomination.<\/p>\n
As of the latest unofficial results, Rivera had 54.8% of the vote to Zellner’s 45%, with 97% of the estimated vote counted.<\/p>\n
The 61st Senate District includes parts of Erie County, covering Buffalo, Amherst, Grand Island, Kenmore, Williamsville and the town and city of Tonawanda.<\/p>\n
The AP also declared Adam Bojak will win\u00a0a three-way race to replace Rivera in the Assembly, with 49.6% of the vote with 98% of\u00a0the estimated vote counted. He will defeat Karen Hoak, who has 33.2% of the vote, and Kevin Deese, who has 17%.<\/p>\n
Bojak,\u00a0a tenants’ rights attorney\u00a0and Democratic socialist, was backed by Rivera.<\/p>\n
He will face Hamburg town board member Frank Bogulski on the Republican line in November.<\/p>\n
The 149th district includes parts of the cities of Buffalo and Lackawanna, the town of Hamburg, the villages of Blasdell and Hamburg and the hamlet of Lake View.<\/p>\n
Election Day is Nov. 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jonathan Rivera will win the Democratic nomination in the race for New York\u2019s 61st Senate District, the Associated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[8255,1611,87783,136,138,137,41583,139,40140,41582,50,1592,40139],"class_list":["post-226467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-buffalo","tag-decision-2026","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-luke-parsnow","tag-news","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-politics","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-state-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}