Inside: Senino-Smythe race in 41st Senate District is rematch of 2018
Republican state Sen. Sue Serino and Democrat Karen Smythe are squaring off in a rematch of the 2018 election in New York’s 41st Senate District.
Serino is seeking a fourth two-year term in the Senate. Smythe is a Democrat who made her first foray into elected politics in 2018 when she ran a close, but ultimately unsuccessful, campaign to unseat Serino. (Serino won 51,79051,144 in a race decided by absentee ballots.)
A Hyde Park resident and owner of Serino Realty, Serino began her political career as a Hyde Park Town Board member in 2010. She was elected to the Dutchess County Legislature in 2011 and the state Senate in 2014.
Smythe was a political novice when she made her first bid for t he st ate Senate in 2018. A Red Hook resident, she is executive director of the Beatrix Farrand Garden Association and spent 16 years as an executive for CB Strain & Son, a mechanical contracting business founded by her grandfather.
New York’s 41st Senate District comprises all of Dutchess County, except the towns of Pawling and Beekman; as well as the Putnam County towns of Kent, Philipstown and Putnam Valley.
On her campaign website, Smythe lists among her priorities: f inding alternatives to property taxes to fund public schools, confronting institutional racism, bringing broadband internet service to unserved regions, expanding workforce development opportunities, environmental protection, and increased funding and education for tickborne diseases.
Serino, on her website, says her priorities are: reducing taxes, creating jobs, “standing up for taxpayers,” fighting the heroin epidemic, repealing the New York gun- control legislation known as the SAFE Act, combatting Lyme disease, urban revitalization, and “restoring faith in government.”
Serino critical of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and representatives from New York City, who she said hold upstate communities “hostage” to their needs, and she vowed to push for legislation that increases transparency in government spending and increases penalties against politicians who try to avoid laws that are meant to keep campaigns open.
On job creation, Serino said the state needs to invest more in job training and that “government needs to step out of the way” by ending regulations and taxes on small businesses that stifle entrepreneurship and employment gains.
On Education, Serino vowed to end the Common Core curriculum, calling its rollout a “complete disaster.” She said the state needs to “hit the pause button on education reform” until new reforms