Republican Dan Stec, who is now the 114th District assemblyman, is one of three candidates that have announced they are running for the 45th Senate seat, now held by Betty Little, who will retire at the end of 2020.

In a Dec. 31, 2019, Adirondack Daily Enterprise article, Stec said “(There are) 130,000 people in my Assembly district that have voted and elected me four times in the state legislature already.”

I found Dan Stec’s statement troubling. According to the New York State Board of Elections website, the 114th Assembly District, which Stec represents, had only 82,572 active registered voters in 2018, which was the last time he ran for office.

While it’s impressive to say that 130,000 people voted for him, the number Stec is using is actually the total number of votes he received over eight years in four different election cycles. The actual number of votes Stec got, each time he ran, was much less.

Dan Stec’s vote totals ranged from a low of 28,950 in 2012 to his best year, 2016, when he ran unopposed and got 42,777 votes. But even in that unopposed 2016 race, 9,167 voters left Dan Stec’s line blank rather than vote for him.

While Dan Stec won the Assembly seat four times, the only race in which he had a Democratic opponent was his first race in 2012, when he ran against Dennis Tarantino. In that race, against a strong opponent, Stec received his lowest vote total, 28,950 to Tarantino’s 23,044.

While math may not be Dan Stec’s strength, his Democratic opponent Kimberly Davis is a second-term Clinton County treasurer with a degree in accounting and a background in finance. If voters choose Kimberly Davis, they can be sure that math will not be a problem.

Margaret Bartley

Chair, Essex County Democratic Committee

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