After the nationwide wipeout of Republican incumbents on Election Day, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, in a rebuke to President Trump, proclaimed on Facebook: “[High] costs, corruption, and chaos were the themes of this election. We hammered Trump on all three. The results speak for themselves.”

Although Yonkers has been a solidly Democratic city for more than a decade, the election’s blue wave added even more muscle to the Democratic brand.

Every candidate endorsed by the Yonkers Democratic Party in this election cycle won his or her race, and in all but one, it wasn’t even close. Democratic candidates’ winning margins were generally more than 25%, and in some races exceeded 40%.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Shelley Mayer easily retained their seats in the New York State Senate. Gary Pretlow and newcomer Frank Jereis won their races for New York State Assembly, while Shanae Williams, Wilson Terrero and David Tubiolo dominated their races for the Westchester County Board of Legislators.

The only close race was for Westchester County Legislative District 15, where Democratic challenger Kisha D. Skipper edged out Republican incumbent James Nolan by a slim margin of slightly more than 1%. Although Skipper has declared victory, Nolan has not conceded. He alleges that the election was stolen but has yet to come forward with evidence supporting his claim.

In other races, Yonkers voters overwhelmingly supported Governor Kathy Hochul, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, Attorney General Letitia James and Congressman George Latimer for reelection. Alexandra Bisesi was elected Yonkers City Court judge.

In a nutshell, Democratic control in Yonkers over state, county and city elected offices is approaching 100%. Every elected state official representing Yonkers is a Democrat. At the county level, following the defeats of incumbent Republicans Nolan and Conservative Margaret Cunzio of Thornwood, all 17 seats on the Board of Legislators will be held by Democrats. And in Yonkers government, the lone remaining Republican elected official is City Council Member Mike Breen, whose term expires at the end of 2027.

For all practical purposes, the Yonkers Republican Party has become irrelevant.

I reached out to former City Council Member Anthony Merante, who lost his race for New York State Senate to Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Merante was not discouraged.

“The Yonkers Republican Party is not finished. We need to regroup, rebuild and address our weaknesses. The Democrats didn’t win, we lost, but it’s not over.”

Merante, ever the optimist, is already looking forward to the next election.

Perhaps the most eye-popping feature of the election was the huge voter turnout. For example, in the race between Skipper and Nolan for Westchester County Legislative District 15, voter participation increased sharply compared with the 2023 election. More than 21,000 votes were recorded this year, compared with an estimated 13,000 in 2023 — an increase of more than 8,000 votes, or roughly an additional 62%.

The Democratic sweep and enormous voter turnout overshadowed the embarrassing, epic failure of the county’s voting machine system. But the image of thousands of paper ballots crammed into orange plastic bags, transported under police guard to a central location where the counting process then took three days (and is still not officially complete) is sure to remain a stain on the Westchester County Board of Elections for a long time to come.

So now, with the 2026 election finally all but over, it’s back to business, full steam ahead, for the exultant Yonkers Democratic Party — at least until next year, when voters go to the polls again to choose Yonkers’ next mayor.

Although Mayor Mike Spano has yet to announce whether he intends to seek an unprecedented fifth term — which would require the City Council to suspend the city’s term-limit provisions for a third time — the jockeying for position between City Council President Lakisha Collins-Bellamy and Council Majority Leader John Rubbo has already begun. Neither has officially announced their candidacy.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. There is still the postmortem on what happened this Election Day. Here is our analysis of the three races that The Ledger watched the most closely:

Westchester County Board of Legislators, District 15: Democrat Kisha D. Skipper Defeats Republican Incumbent James Nolan

In the only competitive Yonkers race in this year’s election, Kisha D. Skipper rode the blue wave to eke out a win.

In her victory statement, she proclaimed: “We built this grassroots campaign one conversation, one door, and one vote at a time. We faced challenges, persevered and proved that PEOPLE POWER MAKES THE DIFFERENCE.”

And indeed, it was a steep and difficult road to victory.

Skipper initially did not have the support of the Yonkers Democratic Party or any endorsements from sitting Yonkers officeholders in the June primary. Nonetheless, she managed to win the nomination by defeating the Yonkers Democratic establishment’s preferred nominee with support from progressive organizations and a grassroots campaign.

It was only after her primary victory that the Democratic Party embraced her. Skipper proved that an outsider with sufficient grassroots support can overcome the party organization’s endorsement and win a Democratic primary.

In the general election, she had to overcome a strong Republican incumbent and tenacious campaigner in Nolan. By all accounts, Nolan ran a solid, well-financed campaign. The closeness of the race, when Republicans elsewhere on the ticket lost by huge margins, is a testament to the seriousness of his candidacy.

However, Nolan was purported to have been a Trump supporter — a clear liability in a Democratic district in an election dominated by anti-Trump sentiment. But his strong showing, particularly in Yonkers election districts that favored a Democrat in another race, suggests that his local political appeal extended beyond his Republican base.

An analysis of election district votes provides some evidence of a split-ticket voting pattern indicating that Democrats in the district crossed over and voted for Nolan.

In 57 overlapping Yonkers election districts appearing in both Assembly District 90 and County Legislative District 15, Democrat Frank Jereis outpolled his Republican opponent John Isaac by 1,946 votes. Yet Nolan outpolled Skipper by 200 votes in those same election districts.

In 17 of those districts, Jereis won the Assembly contest while Nolan won the county legislative race.

While these figures cannot establish precisely how many individual voters crossed party lines, they strongly suggest that Nolan attracted support from some registered Democrats. It should also be noted that on social media some disaffected Republicans stated they voted for Skipper.

Two weeks before early voting began, campaign disclosure filings revealed that the campaign had failed to meet state deadlines. A missing disclosure deadline may reflect organizational shortcomings — Skipper did not fully explain why her campaign was unable to make a full and timely disclosure. Her noncompliance prevented The Ledger from completing our analysis of who had donated to her campaign. We have since been informed that the filings will be brought up to date after the election.

And finally, at a candidates’ forum on October 22, where I served as one of the moderators, Skipper was involved in a physical altercation involving James Nolan’s mother, Donna, and a former Skipper campaign worker turned Nolan supporter, Stephanie Houlgin. Skipper was taken from the building in handcuffs and later released without charges. Donna Nolan was treated at a hospital for minor injuries.

In the aftermath of this unfortunate incident, questions were raised about how the police handled the matter, particularly why only Skipper was detained when an eyewitness later stated that Skipper was not the aggressor. Yonkers police are still investigating the incident. It is not clear how this confrontation affected the vote.

Despite all these challenges, Skipper’s victory is a testament to her grit and determination in the rough world of Yonkers politics, and to the fact that she greatly benefited from the heavy anti-Trump voter turnout that also helped Democratic candidates in down ballot races across the country.

Westchester County Board of Legislators, District 17: Democrat Wilson Terrero Defeats Working Families Candidate Leslye Oquendo-Thomas

Unlike the Skipper–Nolan race, this was not a traditional Democratic-versus-Republican contest. It offered voters a choice between the candidate backed by the Democratic establishment and a challenger running on the Working Families Party line. There was no Republican candidate in the race.

This was a rematch of the Democratic primary, which Oquendo-Thomas lost to Terrero by just four votes. Oquendo-Thomas stayed in the race because she believed voters supported her and that she could make up the difference even without appearing on the Democratic line.

However, in the run-up to the election, I spoke with Oquendo-Thomas, who told me that while voters in her district were enthusiastic about her candidacy, she was having difficulty explaining to them that although she was a Democrat, her name appeared on the ballot under Row D, the Working Families Party line.

She told me that many of her early voting supporters had bubbled in the straight Democratic ticket and thus did not cast a vote for her.

Oquendo-Thomas’s resounding defeat underscores the power of the Democratic Party nomination in Yonkers.

It also demonstrates how difficult it is for a candidate, even a registered Democrat with substantial grassroots support, to overcome the organizational strength and political advantages that come with the party’s endorsement and ballot line.

The four-vote margin in the primary suggested a Democratic electorate almost evenly divided between the two candidates. But the general election produced a dramatically different outcome.

For Terrero, the Democratic nomination proved to be an enormous advantage. For Oquendo-Thomas, the Working Families Party line was not enough to overcome it.

The result is another reminder that in Yonkers, winning the Democratic primary can be tantamount to winning the election.

New York State Assembly, District 90: Democrat Frank Jereis Defeats Republican John Isaac

If the Terrero–Oquendo-Thomas race demonstrates the importance of the Democratic Party control over the Democratic ballot line, the election of Frank Jereis to the New York State Assembly demonstrates the party organization’s ability to hand pick the next generation of political leadership to ensure its future grip on power.

Jereis, a young political insider, has deep ties to the Yonkers Democratic establishment and was the party’s choice to succeed longtime Assemblyman Nader Sayegh.

Jereis’s mother is a longtime Democratic Party ward leader, and his father, a veteran political operative who once served as chairman of the Yonkers Republican Party and as an executive assistant to former Republican State Senator Nick Spano, the brother of current Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano.

Those family and political relationships illustrate how the political organization around the Spano family has developed over the years.

Although Mayor Mike Spano switched his party registration from Democrat to Republican to run for Mayor in 2011, the family’s political roots extend back to the days when Republicans were a dominant force in Yonkers politics. Nick Spano was a powerful Republican state senator, and his younger brother Mike a Republican state assembly member serving in the same seat to which Jereis was just elected. The relationships the Spanos developed when they were Republicans have remained relevant even as the city’s political landscape shifted overwhelmingly toward the Democrats. Some former Republicans found a home in the Yonkers Democratic Party.

The formal Democratic Party organization and the Spano political network are not identical. But their overlapping relationships and political interests have helped create an environment in which establishment-backed candidates often enjoy significant advantages.

Frank Jereis represents the next generation of political figures emerging from an organization which now controls the Democratic Party and has substantial influence within the remnants of the Republican Party.

Moreover, with the endorsement and organizational support of the Yonkers Democratic Party, Jereis quickly raised substantial campaign contributions and qualified for public matching funds under New York State’s campaign financing program.

According to campaign finance figures reviewed by The Ledger, he raised more than $100,000 in private contributions and was approved for approximately $250,000 in public matching funds.

But the importance of Jereis’s election extends beyond campaign fundraising.

His candidacy illustrates how an established political organization can help develop and promote younger candidates, providing them with the relationships, endorsements, fundraising assistance and campaign infrastructure needed to win public office.

For Jereis, the election represents the beginning of what could become a long political career that also gives him the opportunity to help shape the future of the Yonkers Democratic Party.

It also raises an important question about the future of Yonkers politics: Will the next generation of elected officials emerge primarily from established political networks, or will candidates without those connections have an equal opportunity to compete?

Skipper’s primary victory suggests that political outsiders can succeed. Terrero’s general election victory demonstrates the power of the Democratic ballot line. And Jereis’s election illustrates the advantages available to a candidate with deep connections to the political establishment.

Together, the three races tell us considerably more about the future of Yonkers politics than the Democratic sweep alone.

What Happens Next

Now the stage is set for next year’s mayoral election.

The great blue wave that swept Yonkers and much of the country has further strengthened the Democratic Party’s position. Given the Republican Party’s increasing irrelevance, the winner of next June’s Democratic primary becomes the odds-on favorite to take the helm at city hall.

This makes the party’s endorsement, and the influence of the Spano political organization, all the more important.

At this point, the two most prominent potential candidates are City Council President Lakisha Collins-Bellamy and Council Majority Leader John Rubbo. Both have been strong supporters of Mayor Mike Spano. It remains to be seen which, if either, will receive the Democratic Party’s endorsement.

But it’s still early. It is also possible that one could withdraw in exchange for political support in a future race, although there is no indication that such an arrangement has been made. Or, other candidates could jump in, including someone willing to challenge the party establishment in a Democratic primary.

The approaching 2027 mayoral election will provide the next major test of whether the party establishment can continue to determine who leads Yonkers — or whether Democratic voters are prepared to make that decision for themselves.