New Queens Senate district opens gate for progressive LIC candidate
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Kristen Gonzalez, a 26-year-old Queens native, announced Wednesday that she’s running for State Senate in the newly created District 17. Photo by Kara McCurdy/Courtesy of Gonzalez campaign
By Jacob Kaye
A young, progressive first-time candidate was the first to announce Wednesday a bid for a newly created State Senate seat in Northwest Queens, less than 24 hours after it was proposed by the state legislature.
Kristen Gonzalez, a 26-year-old Queens native, is running for election in State Senate District 17, a new electoral district lawmakers proposed as part of the state’s redistricting process Tuesday.
Gonzalez, a Democratic Socialists of America member and the first person to announce a bid for the seat, says she’s uniquely fit to represent the proposed district, which is home to a plurality of Hispanic residents – around 38 percent of the district’s residents identify as Hispanic, around 31 percent are white, around 19 percent are Asian and around 4 percent are Black, according to 2020 Census numbers. The district covers parts of Glendale, Greenpoint, Long Island City, Sunnyside, Maspeth, Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, Ridgewood, Woodhaven and Woodside.
“It's a Latino majority district and it'd be historic having a Latina representing Long Island City or Ridgewood in the State Senate,” Gonzalez told the Eagle in an exclusive interview. “It's a chance for historic representation, not only based on the district’s demographics, but also based on experience.”
“We have folks who are very much part of that Bernie coalition of Latinos, of those who are South Asian, millennials, East Asian, and I think this is a great opportunity to build a really great coalition, to do a lot of community organizing in this district, do a lot of relational organizing, and then get the representation that all of these communities deserve in Albany, finally,” she added. “Someone who's going to fight for them, someone who has the same lived experience.”
Gonzalez was born in Elmhurst, where she spent her childhood. Her father passed away when she was young and her mother raised her on an assistant teacher’s salary, Gonzalez said.
The first-time candidate received a scholarship to attend a private school in Manhattan when she was in middle school. Gonzalez said that during her commute from Roosevelt Avenue to the Upper East Side, she was struck by the line of immigrant workers waiting for a free breakfast from a Catholic charity in Queens compared to the line of businessmen in suits waiting outside of Starbucks in Manhattan.
“Just growing up between those two worlds…it motivated me to ask why,” Gonzalez said. “That got me politically active at an incredibly young age.”
Gonzalez studied political science and race and ethnicity studies at Columbia University before moving to Washington, D.C. to work as an intern in the Obama administration and, later, for Senator Chuck Schumer. She moved back to Queens – she now lives in Long Island City – after she said she “realized that, actually, some of the most impactful legislation that happens is on the local and on the state level.”
Gonzalez began organizing with the local DSA chapter – she’ll seek their endorsement during her campaign – as well as her local community board, where she’s been a member since 2018.
Gonzalez, who now works as a product manager at a tech company, said that the decision to run for District 17 was completely dependent on the proposed redistricting maps, which were released Tuesday by the legislature after the New York Independent Redistricting Commission failed to submit a final draft of electoral maps by its deadline.
“There was this feeling that there might be a district and so I was recruited [by DSA], in the case that if there is something new – if it works out, then great,” she said. “But that decision to actually do it was based on the maps coming out.”
Gonzalez is campaigning on a host of progressive policies, including democratically-controlled and publicly-owned utilities, free public transit, healthcare and housing for all and a green new deal in New York State.
Climate change, healthcare and housing are at the top of her priorities list, especially following the pandemic, Gonzalez said.
She wants to help pass the Build Public Renewables Act – a bill previously introduced in the legislature that would, in part, provide only renewable energy and power to New Yorkers. Gonzalez also said that she would work to help pass Good Cause Eviction, a bill that would prevent landlords from evicting tenants without a “good cause,” and put a cap on rent increases.
Running a proposed district that’s home to some of the pandemic’s most adversely affected residents, Gonzalez said it’s time the state reevaluated its healthcare system.
“We need a single-payer healthcare system in New York – that's it, we need to pass the New York Health Act,” she said. “I feel so strongly that after two years of the pandemic, where we've lost our neighbors, it just feels like we have to learn from this.”
The district has shown, in recent years, an appetite for voting for young, progressive leaders – Juan Ardila, a progressive candidate who finished second in the City Council race for District 30, received around 45 percent of the vote in 2021 and a portion of the district’s Brooklyn voters elected Assemblymember Emily Gallagher in 2020.
Though there has been some recent pushback against left-leaning policy, particularly in relation to criminal justice, in the past year, Gonzalez said she’s confident the desire for progressive leadership has only increased.
“I think there is an appetite for bold leadership that will advocate for these communities, center the voices of those who are here and who will listen thoroughly,” Gonzalez said. “And I think people, after a pandemic, will definitely want someone who's going to fight for them.”
“So, I don't think that appetite is gone – I think that appetite has grown,” she added.
