A Syracuse seat, governed like it was sent from Manhattan.
Not our voice. Not our values. Not Central New York.
Central New York is not a laboratory. It is not a slogan. It is families who pay the bill, drive the roads, work the plants, and want their streets safe.
Rachel May has spent her years in Albany answering a different constituency. The record is not complicated. It is consistent.
behind her top priority
You pay. She applauds.
New York’s energy experiment was sold as virtue. Ratepayers received the invoice. Rachel May didn’t just vote for it — she championed it.
- CLCPASupportedBacked the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act — mandates that treat reliability as an afterthought.
- DivestCo-sponsoredThe Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, plus a call to reject new fossil-fuel infrastructure.
- FrackingBackedThe state fracking ban and a stack of mandates that treat cost as someone else’s problem.
- WatersPraisedFloating solar on New York waters — and said she was “startled” by the opposition it drew.
In 2022, May posed at an Albany climate rally behind a banner that used 9/11 imagery — a plane marked “climate change” flying toward buildings that looked like the Twin Towers. She later said she did not see the content of the sign, that it was “flapping in the breeze.”
A senator does not get to stand in front of a message and then claim the message was invisible.
Central New York’s lakes are not unused rooftops. They are drinking water, fisheries, recreation, and identity. Treating them as spare acreage for Albany’s energy experiment is the opposite of representing this place.
If the policy makes power more expensive and the landscape more experimental, it is not climate leadership. It is a transfer of risk onto families who already pay too much.
The bill is always bigger.
Every priority she signs onto arrives with the same footnote: someone has to pay for it. In Central New York, that someone is you.
The New York Health Act — the single-payer takeover Rachel May supports — carries a price tag independent analysts put near $139 billion a year in new taxes. That is not a rounding error. It is roughly the size of the entire rest of the state budget, collected again.
Layer on the energy mandates, the payroll taxes, and the fees, and the pattern is unmistakable: the plan always costs more than promised, and the invoice always comes north.
Downstate can absorb another surcharge. A retiree outside Cortland, a small manufacturer in Oswego, a young family in Syracuse cannot.
A tax that is a talking point in Manhattan is a breaking point here.
The revolving door was a choice.
Nobody woke up one morning to a softer justice system by accident. Someone in Albany voted for it. Rachel May was there for the votes.
Cashless bail
Backed the reforms that sent defendants back to the street before the paperwork was dry — then resisted the fixes.
“Less Is More”
Supported loosening the consequences for parole violations, over the objections of law enforcement.
HALT & closures
Lined up behind restricting how corrections officers can manage the most dangerous inmates.
The people who pay for these experiments are never the people who design them. They are the shop owner on the corner, the officer on the shift, the family that just wants to feel safe walking home.
Look at who stands with her.
- She runs on the Working Families Party line — the organizing engine of the state’s downstate progressive wing.
- She champions the New York Health Act, the multi-billion-dollar single-payer takeover.
- She aligns with the activists who want to pull police back and let the parole and bail experiments run.
- Her climate coalition treats Central New York’s lakes and landscape as spare acreage for the next experiment.
These are not stray associations. This is the coalition she chose, the platform she runs on, and the agenda she carries to Albany.
The company she keeps is downstate. The seat she holds is not.
Every vote below has her name on it.
Rachel May has represented Central New York in the State Senate since 2019. The pattern is not a caricature — it is a public record of how she voted, who she voted with, and what it costs the people she was elected to serve.
Put it together.
- Energy: mandates and divestment that push power bills up and treat reliability as optional.
- Taxes: a single-payer plan needing roughly $139 billion a year in new taxes.
- Crime: cashless bail, looser parole, and limits on how the most dangerous inmates are managed.
- Our lakes: Central New York’s waters recast as an energy-experiment site.
- Her coalition: a downstate progressive platform carried into an Upstate seat.
These are not separate stories. They are one record.
What voters should ask.
- Q01When power bills climb under the mandates you championed, whose side are you on?
- Q02How much will Central New York families actually pay for a $139 billion single-payer plan?
- Q03Why treat our lakes as an energy-experiment site and call the opposition “startling”?
- Q04Why back cashless bail and looser parole over the objections of local law enforcement?
- Q05If you stood in front of a banner using 9/11 imagery, how did you not see the message?
- Q06Whose voice does a Syracuse seat carry to Albany — ours, or a downstate platform’s?
Rachel May is not a villain in a story. She is a senator who consistently answers a constituency that is not this one. Before you give her your vote — read the record.
- Look at the energy bills you pay.
- Look at the taxes her agenda requires.
- Look at the revolving door she voted for.
- Look at the coalition she runs with.
Not our voice. Not our values. Not Central New York.