I’m a child of the 66th Assembly District: a gay kid born at St. Vincent’s Hospital who played little league basketball at Tony Dapolito and got his Bar Mitzvah cake at Veniero’s. I’ve spent my life here—and my career working to expand opportunity, strengthen democracy, and help this city live up to its promise. I would be honored to continue this work as our Assemblymember.

When my parents moved to 11th Street in 1980, my father was a cab driver and my mother was an artist. Lower Manhattan—and the Village in particular—was affordable and accessible to everyday New Yorkers. It represented freedom: to be where you wanted to be and live how you wanted to live. Indeed, my gay great-uncle brought my mother to Stonewall before the riots while dressed in full drag. Born into poverty, to immigrants who had fled religious intolerance in Eastern Europe, Uncle Jerry could be himself in the Village. Today, the neighborhoods where I played as a kid in the 80s and 90s are at risk of becoming a playground for the ultra-rich, while our fundamental freedoms are under attack. My nephew and nieces will not be able to live here as adults, and they’ll have fewer rights than their grandmother did, if we don’t take action today.

Early in my career, I founded a company that raised millions for low-wage workers and nonprofits. I started working in politics after 2016, joining the resistance to fight back against Donald Trump’s first-term agenda—specializing in voter protection, building teams to protect every eligible American’s right to register, vote, and have their vote counted. In 2018, I joined Manhattan’s Community Board 2 to give back to the community that has given me so much. 

I ran for this Assembly seat in 2022 after seeing how Covid-19 left Lower Manhattan reeling—and how little urgency Albany brought to our recovery. Though I didn’t win, I stayed in the work, helping build a community of more than 4,500 New Yorkers newly engaged in local politics to win vital policy wins: protecting congestion pricing, helping pass landmark affordable housing measures, and electing leaders like Mark Levine and Zohran Mamdani. 

The challenges facing New York that motivated my 2022 run are even more pressing now, and the state legislature has enormous power to address them—but our leaders in Albany are not using that power.

We must lower costs—particularly housing costs. In Manhattan, average rents are over $5,000 a month. Rents are rising seven times faster than wages. 100,000 New Yorkers sleep each night in a shelter; thousands are on the streets or in the subways. In our district, the median household income is double the city’s overall—but that doesn’t tell the full story. Even high-income earners struggle to afford rent and childcare, low-income tenants are in precarious stabilized apartments or reliant on elusive rental assistance, and homeowners whose homes may be valuable on paper are being hit with skyrocketing utility and insurance costs. And not everyone in the district is doing well: 11% of our elders are in poverty, as are 3% of our kids. 

We must push back against authoritarianism. The Trump administration is sending masked agents into the streets of American cities and attempting to strip rights from other disfavored groups. They are weaponizing prosecutions, federal funding, and approvals of programs from congestion pricing to offshore wind. We cannot allow our families to be ripped apart, our sovereignty to be disrespected, or our children to grow up with fewer rights than their grandparents. New York must remain a bulwark against authoritarianism—protecting voting rights, expanding access to the ballot, and organizing to win elections that defend the freedoms of women, immigrants, LGBTQ+ and disabled New Yorkers, and all marginalized communities.

We must also achieve true safety and justice on our streets and statewide. Safety and justice aren’t just about crime. They’re about providing access to safe and dignified shelter to street-homelessness New Yorkers; getting reckless, deadly drivers off the streets; and cleaning up piles of trash. They require every New Yorker getting the healthcare they need—from reproductive care to gender affirming care to care regardless of ability to pay. They mean incarcerated New Yorkers not being subject to inhumanity. They mean all New Yorkers being safe from the ravages of climate change, which are making flooding of our streets and subways more frequent and more severe.  

Most profoundly, we must fundamentally make New York affordable if we are going to keep the promise of our freedoms. Declaring that we are a haven for abortion seekers, queer Americans, and immigrants is insufficient if it’s too expensive to be here. I’m running to ensure our district leads, our neighborhoods do their fair share, and that we provide more than enough of what all working families in New York need to thrive.

My campaign is unapologetically progressive. Beyond that, it is about the need to be more than just progressive: we must be aggressive. This moment of crisis—with our lives and our livelihoods being threatened by authoritarians and out-of-control costs—requires a firm and final rejection of the status quo. Unlike the other candidates in the field, I've taken on the status quo in the form of challenging a 30+ year incumbent and the establishment community that propped her up. 

From a viability perspective, I’m proud of what we achieved in the moderate 2022 election cycle against the incumbent—now, in 2026, I am extremely confident about the differentiators from the field that indicate we have the strongest path to victory. 

To start, we out-raised our most significant competitor by almost $100,000 in the first filing, giving us a serious cash advantage. I was in the top five fundraising Assembly candidates statewide at the first filing (number two for non-incumbents), reporting $127,700 in contributions. I will max out the $175,000 in public matching funds for in-district donations towards a goal of $500,000 in total. 

Moreover, the dynamics of the district and this election year are in our favor:

- I’m the only gay candidate in the district that is the home of the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation.

- The three other serious candidates in this race are from the same small community of downtown Democratic clubs—with the same politics and competing for the same constituency. I am the only one who has run district-wide, and these candidates will divide the support of the retiring incumbent in three.

- As the true progressive in the race and Working Families Party endorsee, I am the clear match for a district that voted at over 60% for progressives Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander in the primary.

- The pro-housing politics that informed my earlier run are far more popular now: for example, the recent ballot question to speed market-rate housing development got nearly 60% of the vote in the district.

- I have a clear path to consolidating elected and institutional support after four years of relationship-building and by being the frontrunner in an open race. To date, I have been endorsed by Mark Levine, Antonio Reynoso, and Keith Powers. I will soon roll out endorsements from Justin Sanchez and Shaun Abreu, and I expect other elected endorsements to follow.

This is the moment for our campaign, and I am prepared to leverage it with a high-quality team and broad donor and volunteer base.

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We must massively, urgently deploy clean energy to meet our emissions reduction goals under the CLCPA, to lower electricity costs for rate payers, and to reduce financial pressures on housing to ensure the solvency of New York’s essential rent-stabilized housing stock. I will do everything in my power in the legislature to block any backsliding on emissions reduction commitments; to stop new fossil fuel projects like the NESE and Constitution Pipelines; to speed large-scale solar, wind, and geothermal projects; and to site battery storage and electrify the grid.  New nuclear power is absolutely worth seriously considering, but I cannot say for sure today that we should build new nuclear reactors, given that we may be able to meet the CLCPA's goals with cheaper and faster alternatives. Indeed, New York's climate funding—from the $1 billion sustainable future fund to future cap-and-invest dollars—must be used in accordance with the CLCPA towards its stated objective of achieving 85% renewable energy generation. The remaining 15% of zero-emission power generation contemplated by the CLCPA *could* include nuclear power; still, if nuclear is part of New York's energy future, it is many years and many billions of dollars away, and it may be more expedient to reach the CLCPA's goals without it.   Ultimately, I will always work to meet the CLCPA's goals as quickly and affordably as possible, overcoming the obstacles to change that have long delayed our large-scale deployment of clean energy.

In 2022, I challenged a 30-year incumbent and the network of institutions that supported her, making an argument about the necessity for change in a district where a vocal and empowered group is well-served by the status quo. I made the case that aggressive action to add more homes and reclaim space for cars were critical progressive policies. I did not win that election, but that campaign became the seed of Abundance NY—as well as a model for the synthesis between abundance ideas and progressive values that is gaining purchase in New York politics.

Beyond the many wins that Abundance New York has been involved in securing—from protecting congestion pricing to passing City of Yes and the pro-housing ballot proposals, to adding power to individual transit and rezoning proposals—I am proud of my continued abundance record outside of the organization. 

For example, I have organized colleagues on Community Board 2 to challenge the consensus on controversial issues in order to advance the needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. When COYHO was opposed almost unanimously by our Land Use committee, I whipped 17 “no” votes against their anti-housing resolution which ultimately passed with just 21 “yes” votes. That split decision helped provide more space to the City Council to pass the text amendment without massive modifications.

I've also been at the forefront of the Human Services committees' support for Safe Haven shelters in our district, having authored multiple resolutions in support of Paul's Place on West 14th Street. This pro-shelter attitude from CB2 has helped translate into smooth launch and operation for the Safe Haven and the scores of New Yorkers it serves every day.

Outside of Abundance and the Community Board, I also volunteer with Open Hearts, providing direct service to street homeless New Yorkers through packing and distributing care kits and volunteering at "free stores" to distribute essentials—and I've personally rallied for policies like a stronger Streets Plan and expanded licenses for street vendors.

Housing affordability—and the threats to New Yorkers’ staying in their homes—must be a top legislative priority. We must advance policies like those included in the 2023 Housing Compact proposal to enable more home creation region-wide. I would also like to expand the $50 million Housing Access Voucher Program into a statewide guarantee, while also expanding Right to Counsel statewide, to keep people in their homes as we build towards housing abundance.

Given the authoritarian attacks on New York’s immigrant communities, we must also pass New York for All. Additionally, we should advance the related legislation to push back against ICE’s incursion into our streets: Dignity not Detention, MELT, RADAR, and Access to Representation.

Childcare costs are the other major pressure pushing families out of New York, and so raising revenues (e.g. through the Invest in Our New York package) to fund universal childcare is another urgent priority.