The date for a special election for a congressional seat based mainly in the Southern Tier has officially been scheduled.
Gov. Kathy Hochul over the weekend set Aug. 23 for the special election for the 23rd Congressional District seat previously held by Republican Rep. Tom Reed, who resigned in May.
The date for the special election was expected, since that date already coincides with the congressional and state Senate primaries in New York state.
The governor also set Aug. 23 for the special election to fill the 19th Congressional District seat previously held by Antonio Delgado, who was chosen by Hochul to be the lieutenant governor after Brian Benjamin resigned.
Whoever wins the special election for the 23rd Congressional District will serve out the remainder of Reed’s term, which ends in December.
Reed had already said he wasn’t running for re-election and he announced in May he was leaving to take a job with a Washington, D.C.-based government relations and public relations firm.
Candidates for the August special election are expected to include Joe Sempolinski, who is the Steuben County Republican Chairman and Democrat Max Della Pia, who ran unsuccessfully in a Democratic primary for the seat in 2018.
The congressional district landscape gets more complicated next year due to redistricting. The new 23rd District still includes parts of the Southern Tier, as well as portions of Erie County, but it carves out parts of the Finger Lakes region, which are currently part of that district.
