{"id":78730,"date":"2026-01-05T22:54:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T22:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/78730\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T22:54:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T22:54:23","slug":"zellner-launches-bid-for-61st-senate-district-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/78730\/","title":{"rendered":"Zellner launches bid for 61st Senate District seat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Longtime Erie County Democratic Party\u00a0Chairman\u00a0Jeremy Zellner on Monday launched his bid for Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan&#8217;s former 61st state Senate District seat.<\/p>\n<p>Zellner has been the chair of the Erie County Democratic Party since 2012. Last week, he resigned from the Erie County Board of Elections as Democratic commissioner to seek the nomination.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs State Senator, I\u2019ll fight to bring the cost of living down, protect access to healthcare, and stand up to those who try to undermine organized labor,&#8221;\u00a0Zellner said in part in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic state Assemblyman Jon\u00a0Rivera\u00a0and local Republican\u00a0businessman\u00a0Dan Gagliardo\u00a0are\u00a0also running for the seat.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The special election, <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrumlocalnews.com\/nys\/buffalo\/news\/2026\/01\/02\/special-election-to-fill-sean-ryan-s-state-senate-seat-set-for-feb--3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">announced by Gov. Kathy Hochul last week<\/a>, is on Feb. 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Longtime Erie County Democratic Party\u00a0Chairman\u00a0Jeremy Zellner on Monday launched his bid for Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan&#8217;s former 61st&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[8255,40138,1611,136,138,137,139,40140,50,1592,40139],"class_list":["post-78730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","tag-buffalo","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-news","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-politics","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-state-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78730","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=78730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}