We are Proud to Endorse Dave Wagenhauser for Congress
The Seneca County Democrats have endorsed David Wagenhauser, Candidate for Congress in the NY-24 Congressional District. For more information on Dave and the other candidates running this year, see our Candidates 2024 page. Check out Dave's campaign website
Election Day is November 5th, 2024
Election Day is November 5th, 2024
Early Voting Starts on October 26th
Check out our Candidates 2024 page to see local and national candidates you'll be proud to vote for
Check out our Voting information Page for Absentee Ballot information, early voting times and more!
Never Forget. Demand Action
Anolt Joseph "A.J." Laguerre Jr., Angela Michelle Carr, and Jerrald De'Shaun Gallion, murdered in Jacksonville August 26, 2023
Murdered in Uvalde, TX on May 24, 2022
| Murdered in Buffalo, May 14, 2022
Roberta A. Drury, 32; Margus D. Morrison, 52; Andre Mackneil, 53;Aaron Salter, 55; Geraldine Talley, 62; Celestine Chaney, 65; Heyward Patterson, 67; Katherine Massey,72; Pearl Young, 77; Ruth Whitfield, 86 |
Our New Congressional District: NY-24
In May, a judge finalized the NEW NY State Congressional districts. These replace districts that were established only a few months before but were ruled unconstitutional.
Seneca County is now part of the new NY-24 CD. It stretches from Watertown to Batavia, and includes Auburn, Geneva, Canandaigua, Geneseo and Oswego. It does not contain the cities of Rochester, Syracuse, Ithaca or Buffalo.
Our first election in this year. The Democratic candidate is Steven Holden. Check out his profile on our November 8 Election page. He is running against Republican Claudia Tenney, who currently represents the (old) NY-22 district. Tenney is perhaps most notorious for her remark, in the wake of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018, that " it’s interesting that so many of these people that commit the mass murders end up being Democrats." Tenney is a staunch opponent of gun safety measures. She has been endorsed by Trump, and has praised the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision overturning Roe vs. Wade.
Election Day is November 5th, 2024
Election Day is November 5th, 2024.
Early Voting starts on October 26th. Dates and times will be posted soon.
Check out our Candidates 2024 page for profiles of Democratic Candidates.
Check out our Voting Information page for Early Voting Days and times
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American
July 1, 2024
Today the United States Supreme Court overthrew the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law.
It decided that the president of the United States, possibly the most powerful person on earth, has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. The court also said it should be presumed that the president also has immunity for other official acts as well, unless that prosecution would not intrude on the authority of the executive branch.
This is a profound change to our fundamental law—an amendment to the Constitution, as historian David Blight noted. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that a president needs such immunity to make sure the president is willing to take “bold and unhesitating action” and make unpopular decisions, although no previous president has ever asserted that he is above the law or that he needed such immunity to fulfill his role. Roberts’s decision didn’t focus at all on the interest of the American people in guaranteeing that presidents carry out their duties within the guardrails of the law.
But this extraordinary power grab does not mean President Joe Biden can do as he wishes. As legal commentator Asha Rangappa pointed out, the court gave itself the power to determine which actions can be prosecuted and which cannot by making itself the final arbiter of what is “official” and what is not. Thus any action a president takes is subject to review by the Supreme Court, and it is reasonable to assume that this particular court would not give a Democrat the same leeway it would give Trump.
There is no historical or legal precedent for this decision. The Declaration of Independence was a litany of complaints against King George III designed to explain why the colonists were declaring themselves free of kings; the Constitution did not provide immunity for the president, although it did for members of Congress in certain conditions, and it provided for the removal of the president for “high crimes and misdemeanors”—what would those be if a president is immune from prosecution for his official acts? The framers worried about politicians’ overreach and carefully provided for oversight of leaders; the Supreme Court today smashed through that key guardrail.
Presidential immunity is a brand new doctrine. In February 2021, explaining away his vote to acquit Trump for inciting an insurrection, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who had also protected Trump in his first impeachment trial in 2019, said: “Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office…. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation, and former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”
You can read and subscribe to all of Heather Cox Richardson's daily newsletters here