Hispanic Congressman Antonio Delgado will be sworn in Wednesday as New York’s next lieutenant governor, Governor Kathy Hochul announced.
The Democrat said Monday that she will issue a proclamation for a special election to fill her colleague’s seat in upstate New York once he is elected lieutenant governor. It is not clear when that will be.
When a seat becomes vacant, the governor has 10 days to announce a special election to be held 70 to 80 days later, in accordance with state law.
Gov. Hochul said the special election will align with the Aug. 23 primaries for state House and Senate seats.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat, has been fulfilling the duties of lieutenant governor since the April 12 resignation of Brian Benjamin, who proclaimed his innocence following his arrest in a federal corruption investigation.
Congressman Delgado has said he wants to leave his congressional seat to assume the largely ceremonial role of lieutenant governor so he can fight for Hochul’s agenda and serve as a liaison between New Yorkers and local, state and federal partners.
The Democrat is a graduate of Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Law School and was first elected in 2018 as the first upstate New Yorker of color in Congress on campaign promises of universal access to Medicare and closing tax loopholes for the wealthy.
Hochul and Delgado have faced criticism for vacating a congressional seat at a time when Democrats are struggling to maintain their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and after state courts approved new political maps that Democrats they had drawn up to consolidate comfortable majorities in the years to come.
Hochul appointed Delgado days after the state Court of Appeals rejected the congressional maps in a majority opinion that largely concurred with Republican voters who argued the district’s boundaries were unconstitutionally rigged.
That decision nullified maps that would have reshaped Delgado’s 19th Congressional District into a safe Democratic district that stretched from the Hudson Valley to Albany and west to Binghamton and Utica.
An upstate judge has approved a final set of maps that creates an even larger 19th Congressional District that stretches to Ithaca, in the Finger Lakes wine and tourism region. Some 52% of voters in the newly created district voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, up from 52% on the Democrats’ failed maps.
Democrat Pat Ryan, who ran second to Delgado in the district’s 2018 Democratic primary, has said he will run to succeed him.
Republican candidates Brandon Buccola and Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro are also running for the 19th District seat.
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