New York State Senate
The New York State Senate is the upper chamber of the two chambers of the State Legislature. It has 63 members who represent various districts across the state, each of which has an average of about 320,885 residents.
Senators are elected to two-year terms with no term limits, and the elections are held in even-numbered years. The base salary for state senators is currently $142,000 per year. In addition they are entitled to per diem allowances for each day they are in session, plus travel reimbursements for travel related to their official duties, including mileage, tolls and other costs when they use their personal vehicles.
Currently 42 of the 63 senate seats are held by Democrats.
First Senate District
The First Senate District includes the towns of East Hampton, Southold, Shelter Island, Southampton, and Riverhead, as well as parts of eastern Brookhaven. The district is entirely contained within New York’s First Congressional District.
Politically, the district leans Republican, with voter enrollment giving a slight Republican edge over Democrats, though a sizable portion of voters are not affiliated with either major party.
The incumbent representative in the First Senate District is Anthony Palumbo, Republican of New Suffolk.
Palumbo, 54, served as a member of the New York State Assembly from 2013 to 2020, prior to his election to the State Senate following the retirement of the long-serving State Senator Ken LaValle.
Palumbo earned his bachelor’s degree in government and law from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. He earned a law degree from St. John’s University in Queens. He is married and the father of two children.
Palumbo was a prosecutor in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office and an attorney in private practice before entering electoral politics in 2012.
He is seeking his third term of office as a senator.
Challenging Palumbo this year is Sarah Anker, Democrat of Mount Sinai.
Anker, 60, is a former Suffolk County legislator. She was first elected to that position in 2011 and was term-limited from seeking re-election in 2023.
Prior to her election, she served as the director of Brookhaven Town’s energy department, which she helped establish. Anker founded the Community Health and Environment Coalition and her advocacy advanced the state health department’s cancer cluster investigation. She also served as a member of the Mount Sinai school district board of education.
She is the mother of three children.
Anker points to her record in the Suffolk County Legislature, and says she will prioritize “affordability, public safety, roads and traffic, clean water, open space and farmland preservation, and addiction and mental health resources.”
Anker says she is committed to reproductive rights and will fight to prevent extremists in New York from rolling back those rights.
Palumbo emphasizes his experience as a prosecutor and his commitment to public safety and law enforcement. He has pushed to repeal “cashless bail” and other criminal justice reform measures enacted by New York’s Democratic majority in both chambers of the legislature and the state’s Democratic governors.
Palumbo serves as the Deputy Floor Leader and the Ranking Member of the Senate Codes and Judiciary Committees.
Anker and Palumbo met in a debate hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island and North Fork on Oct. 21. Watch the video.
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