Despite his apparent loss, Republican candidate James DiStefano won praise from his party for the race in the 49th state Senate District.
“He worked extremely hard. He was up against a very good candidate. He was out there campaigning; it’s a huge geographic area,” said John DiSpirito, the Onondaga County Republican chairman, as the GOP gathered in East Syracuse on election night.
As of 10:45 p.m. Tuesday, DiStefano was the unofficial loser to Democratic incumbent David Valesky. DiStefano could not be reached for comment election evening.
Unofficial Onondaga County board of election results reported that, with 97 percent of the polling places reporting, the unofficial results show DiStefano with 19,568 votes or 33 percent. Democratic David Valesky won with 39,431 votes, or 67 percent. Valesky had held the seat for two terms and had raised four times more money than DiStefano, giving him a leg up.
On Tuesday, DiStefano planned to spend the day touring the 49th District, which includes parts of Onondaga, Madison, Oneida and Cayuga counties.
Earlier in the day, many voters at the polls didn’t know who DiStefano was.
At the Fayetteville Elementary School polling station, Anne Pearson made clear that DiStefano had not made much of an impression. “I never saw him on TV. And as far as the other candidate’s mailings, we were just bombarded,” said Anne Pearson, a registered Independent from Fayetteville. “So I was kind of surprised to hear he was even running,” she said. She didn’t hear much about the 49th New York State Senate race in general and only voted for Valesky because she was more familiar with him as the incumbent, Pearson said.
At The Nottingham retirement home polling station, Diane D’Eugenio, a Democrat from DeWitt, simply couldn’t bring herself to vote for a Republican for the state senate. She says she’s registered as a Democrat so she can vote in the primaries, but considers herself a voter who could go either way. She had some knowledge of DiStefano from his previous role as DeWitt Town Supervisor, but said it’s his party affiliation that made her stay away.
“I don’t know much about local politics but I did know he was on the Town Board and was a Republican so I pretty much went with the Democrat,” D’Eugenio said.
As for what’s next for DiStefano, GOP Chairman John DiSpirito said no decisions have been made. But he stressed the party’s appreciation for the candidate’s hard work.
“It’s very hard to take that incumbent out but we really appreciate that he stepped up to the plate to take that chance,” DiSpirito said.
(Torie Wells is a junior broadcast journalism student.)
-30-
