Exit the Senate
State Sen. Catherine Young goes back to her family farm roots as Agritech director
Republican Catherine Young going back to her family farm roots.
A few months after losing an internal Republican leadership battle, Sen. Catharine Young is abruptly resigning her seat.
On March 11, the Olean resident will begin a new job as director of the New York State Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture at Cornell Agritech. Young was serving as a county legislator when first elected to the state Assembly in 1998, and won her state Senate seat in a 2005 special election.
News of the resignation caught the Capitol by surprise on Thursday, with Senate Republican leader
John Flanagan blindsided with news reports of Young’s decision during a live radio interview.
“I’m not aware of anything,” Flanagan told the Capitol Pressroom. “We certainly want to have her here.”
Less than an hour later, Young made her departure official in a statement that explained she was leaving because of a “new and exciting opportunity.” She noted that Cornell “holds special and personal significance” to her and her family, with a connection dating back to 1949 when her father attended college there.
In November, after Republicans lost their hold on the majority in the state Senate, Young led an unsuccessful leadership challenge to Flanagan. Following the vote, she said the conference needed to make “some adjustments” and called for the members to unite.
As the result of her failed coup, Young was stripped of her leadership role on the chamber’s finance committee and lost control of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee.
“Serving the people of our region for the past 23 years truly has been the deepest honor of my life,” Young said.
“I often have reflected about that sunburned and freckledfaced kid with pigtails who spent so much time working and playing on our farm, always having big hopes and dreams but never realizing that I would someday have the opportunity to find my passion of helping others as a senator,” she added. “Leaving my job in the Senate — a job that I love — has not been an easy decision and it is bittersweet.”
The vacant seat, which has a large Republican enrollment edge, will likely be filled by November.
Young leaves public life with more than half a million dollars left in her campaign account, which is also owed $100,000 by the Senate Republican Campaign Committee.