Upstate Assemblyman Won’t Run for Senate
-
- April
- 9
Assemblyman David Koon, D-Perinton, said this morning that he will not run for the state Senate against Sen. James Alesi, R-Perinton.
Koon was initially thought to be a tough challenger to Alesi as Democrats seek to win the majority in the state Senate for the first time since 1965. Koon has won re-election in an Assembly seat in the eastern Monroe County suburbs that has a Republican majority.
But Koon said today that he will take a pass.
“I’m going to stay where I am,” he said. “I still have a lot of work to do that I can do in the Assembly. I just want to do a lot more work for Monroe County.”
Koon was first elected in a special election in 1996 and has been considered for a number of posts, including Monroe County executive last year. But he declined to run then too.
Koon’s decision leaves Democrats without an immediate candidate to challenge Alesi. Instead, at least for now, Democrats will focus on the neighboring seat held by Sen. Joseph Robach, R-Greece.
Several Democrats—including former Sen. Richard Dollinger, Brighton Supervisor Sandra Frankel and Rochester School Board member Willa Powell—are seeking the Democratic nod to challenge Robach.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 10:42 am by Joseph Spector.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
