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Andrew Bodiford
From Ballotpedia
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
Andrew Bodiford (Democratic Party) ran for election to the New York State Assembly to represent District 50. He lost in the Democratic primary on June 25, 2024.
Bodiford completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Andrew Bodiford earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2014 and a law degree from City University of New York Law School in 2019. His career experience includes working as a lawyer.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: New York State Assembly elections, 2024
General election
General election for New York State Assembly District 50
Incumbent Emily Gallagher won election in the general election for New York State Assembly District 50 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Emily Gallagher (Working Families Party / D) | 98.0 | 36,598 |
| Other/Write-in votes | 2.0 | 749 | ||
| Total votes: 37,347 | |||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for New York State Assembly District 50
Incumbent Emily Gallagher defeated Anathea Simpkins and Andrew Bodiford in the Democratic primary for New York State Assembly District 50 on June 25, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Emily Gallagher | 75.0 | 4,652 |
 | Anathea Simpkins | 20.9 | 1,295 | |
 | Andrew Bodiford | 3.7 | 228 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.5 | 28 | ||
| Total votes: 6,203 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Working Families Party primary election
The Working Families Party primary election was canceled. Incumbent Emily Gallagher advanced from the Working Families Party primary for New York State Assembly District 50.
Campaign finance
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Bodiford in this election.
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Andrew Bodiford completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Bodiford's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I am Andrew Bodiford, a lawyer and an author, a graduate of our local public law school CUNY Law, and an advocate for the right of the people of North Brooklyn to live with dignity in affordable housing amid our spiraling cost of living crisis. In my law practice, Law Offices of Andrew Bodiford, Esq., PLLC and I have worked on diverse areas including housing, personal injury, contracts, and space law. I wrote a book called The Economic Reformation that sets out some of my broader thinking on how we should change the economy as a city, country, and planet to better work for the people. In my personal life I am passionate about New York's parks, time with friends, and history and reading which I believe shines light on the sorts of new ideas that we need to break through and create real change.
- Affordable housing. We have an emergency situation with rents out of control in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. With an increase coming for stabilized units and the legislature failing to take action to really stem the tide of unsustainable increases for market rate units where the most people live, we face a crisis that young people and long time working class residents may not be able to make it through without getting displaced from their homes. We need the Legislature of New York to take action, and now. I will bring the sense of urgency that is lacking now to the New York Legislature and focus on building alliances that can actually get real change passed before time runs out for our residents who cannot afford to live in their homes.
- Climate. We have a global crisis of climate change, with the planet getting warmer every year and a collective action problem in creating the global solutions we need. Of course, New York is the city with the highest GDP in the world and we can use this to create a model for solving for the climate crisis that starts here, in co-operation with other cities around the world as I have outlined in my article Cities in International Law. We do not have much time to lose, and as a coastal area North Brooklyn will feel the impacts from climate change in terms of storms and sea level rise sooner than elsewhere. We need big ideas and real change, locally and globally, a paradigm I will bring to fight this crisis with.
- Infrastructure. North Brooklyn has had a massive increase in population over the last few years. This has strained much of our local infrastructure and especially transit. As many people with a morning commute can attest, the train in North Brooklyn is incredibly crowded in the mornings and frequencies of trains are subpar even at peak times for the G and JMZ trains. I will focus on getting funding for the State controlled MTA and on increasing transportation options including new G, L, M, and LIRR services, reliable bus service in North Brooklyn, partnerships to increase ferry service with the City, improved bike infrastructure, and a high speed train service to connect New York with Albany, and ultimately Buffalo, Toronto, and Montreal.
Housing, climate, transportation, jobs, healthcare, education, parks, foreign affairs.
As an author who has written on politics, my own book The Economic Reformation sheds a lot of light on my political philosophy and is probably the best guide to how I would approach major problems (it can be found online on Barnes & Noble and Amazon). My favorite current political and philosophical thinker is probably Slavoj Žižek, always controversial and someone people love to hate but who has in my opinion had insight ahead of the curve about many aspects of modern society. I am also interested in the works of economists Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty, both of whom are influences on my thinking about the economy. My favorite American political authors are Henry George, whose Progress and Poverty I am deeply influenced by, and Frederick Douglass.
The most important aspects of public service to me are a focus on the public interest and a sense of creativity to solve the most important problems we face. We have a country in which money in politics has come to define our era and the connections between politicians and special interests are a particular roadblock to creating bold change.
Tenaciousness, creativity, historical perspective
I would like to leave a more equal and livable world in which everyone can more truly exercise the 'pursuit of happiness.'
The first very significant political event I remember is the 2000 election and the Bush v. Gore decision that ended it. I was 8 but I knew something very bad would likely follow from the fallout of not really knowing the true vote count in Florida. It also reinforced my absolute belief, of course, in exercising our political rights and in doing so purposefully and strategically. In my view this was a very fateful event that presaged much of the next 24 years that have witnessed a decline in democratic traditions in the United States and it is very much our task to undo the damage done which started in 2000.
Ideally the governor should have a cooperative relationship with the state legislature that is focused on achieving the collective goals of the State and the people of New York. With full Democratic control, unlike at the national level, this should not be a problem in theory, but a tradition of 'imperial' governors in New York sometimes thwarts the degree of full cooperation most useful for making real change.
The most significant challenges are very clear: a housing crisis, not limited to Brooklyn or New York, a growing cost of living crisis that is not new but has been developing over the last 20 years or so and which includes increasing costs for education and healthcare as well as food and shelter, a broad economic crisis that has seen stagnant real incomes for the last 40 years or so in the United States for most ordinary people and soaring inequality that focusses economic benefits in the hands of the 1% wealthiest millionaires and billionaires, the coming of AI and labor saving technology which will reorder how economic activity happens and the relationship of capital with workers and workers with work, foreign affairs crises that will inevitably affect New York as the world's wealthiest city and a hub of global finance and commerce, including the current refugee crisis and the War in Ukraine, a global climate crisis that will require all hands on deck in the next decade to accomplish an energy transition that benefits everyone, and of course a constitutional crisis on the national level in this country that will invariably impact New York. The United States Congress has been more or less stuck for the last 15 years as one party has blockaded meaningful compromise and stymied change with the hope that this will eventually rebound to its benefit as frustrated voters give up on (normal) politics. This will surely continue until there is constitutional reform that will remove the filibuster, correct for gerrymandering, overturn the Citizen's United decision, and eliminate the electoral college, not an easy lift constitutionally. This will place much of the responsibility of governing the country on the shoulders of the larger states, of which New York is the fourth largest and home to the largest city and largest center for finance and commerce in the United States. States like New York and California will probably have large roles in national regulation.
Yes, in a broad sense. It is very beneficial for state legislators to have experience with political and legal issues that they will have influence over and to have experience talking with the people about the most pressing issues in the community.
Yes absolutely. This is the only way anything gets done.
My political hero is Franklin Roosevelt. He was, in fact, a New York legislator (as was his cousin Theodore Roosevelt) though of course this is not what he was most famous for. Both Roosevelts were responsible more than anyone else for reforming this country to constrain the intense capitalist forces which had long reigned unchecked in the United States to create a model that instead of resulting in union busting and the Great Depression, caused by unconstrained concentrated corporate power, could lead to broad based growth and prosperity for all, to the ultimate benefit of industry as well as workers. It is my firm belief that we have to do this again in our latest period of unchecked inequality and corporate excess and in the United States, starting in New York, I believe we have to summon the spirits of the Roosevelts to accomplish this.
Not sure, but potentially if I believed I could be of service and make a difference.
Yes. There is a woman I met who had been living in one of the new waterfront constructions since the beginning of the pandemic. She had been harassed and threatened with summary eviction, illegally, by the management who just wanted to throw her out and replace her with a higher paying tenant. This is the human face of this horrible crisis for housing security that we are having, driven by greed as well as by deeper objective economic forces. It is the job of the people's representatives I believe to protect those like her from being driven out of their homes.
A new rent stabilization act.
Housing, Transportation, Cities, Judiciary, Education, Election Law, Economic Development, Job Creation, Commerce and Industry
Ballot initiatives are great for democracy. They bring many impactful issues directly to the people.
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Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on June 14, 2024
Current members of the New York State Assembly
Leadership
Speaker of the House:Carl Heastie
Representatives
District 1
Thomas Schiavoni (D)
District 2
Jodi Giglio (R)
District 3
Joseph DeStefano (R)
District 4
Rebecca Kassay (D)
District 5
Doug Smith (R)
District 6
Philip Ramos (D)
District 7
Jarett Gandolfo (R)
District 8
District 9
Michael Durso (R)
District 10
Steve Stern (D)
District 11
Kwani O'Pharrow (D)
District 12
Keith Brown (R)
District 13
Charles Lavine (D)
District 14
David McDonough (R)
District 15
Jake Blumencranz (R)
District 16
Daniel Norber (R)
District 17
John Mikulin (R)
District 18
Noah Burroughs (D)
District 19
Edward Ra (R)
District 20
Eric Brown (R)
District 21
Judy Griffin (D)
District 22
District 23
Stacey Amato (D)
District 24
David Weprin (D)
District 25
Nily Rozic (D)
District 26
District 27
Sam Berger (D)
District 28
Andrew Hevesi (D)
District 29
Alicia Hyndman (D)
District 30
Steven Raga (D)
District 31
Khaleel Anderson (D)
District 32
Vivian Cook (D)
District 33
Clyde Vanel (D)
District 34
District 35
Larinda Hooks (D)
District 36
Zohran Mamdani (D)
District 37
Claire Valdez (D)
District 38
Jenifer Rajkumar (D)
District 39
Catalina Cruz (D)
District 40
Ron Kim (D)
District 41
Kalman Yeger (D)
District 42
District 43
Brian Cunningham (D)
District 44
Robert Carroll (D)
District 45
Michael Novakhov (R)
District 46
District 47
William Colton (D)
District 48
District 49
Lester Chang (R)
District 50
Emily Gallagher (D)
District 51
Marcela Mitaynes (D)
District 52
Jo Simon (D)
District 53
Maritza Davila (D)
District 54
Erik Dilan (D)
District 55
Latrice Walker (D)
District 56
Stefani Zinerman (D)
District 57
District 58
District 59
Jaime Williams (D)
District 60
Nikki Lucas (D)
District 61
Charles Fall (D)
District 62
Michael Reilly (R)
District 63
Samuel Pirozzolo (R)
District 64
District 65
Grace Lee (D)
District 66
Deborah Glick (D)
District 67
Linda Rosenthal (D)
District 68
Eddie Gibbs (D)
District 69
Micah Lasher (D)
District 70
Jordan Wright (D)
District 71
Alfred Taylor (D)
District 72
District 73
Alex Bores (D)
District 74
Harvey Epstein (D)
District 75
Tony Simone (D)
District 76
District 77
Landon Dais (D)
District 78
George Alvarez (D)
District 79
Chantel Jackson (D)
District 80
John Zaccaro (D)
District 81
Jeffrey Dinowitz (D)
District 82
District 83
Carl Heastie (D)
District 84
Amanda Septimo (D)
District 85
Emerita Torres (D)
District 86
Yudelka Tapia (D)
District 87
Karines Reyes (D)
District 88
Amy Paulin (D)
District 89
J. Pretlow (D)
District 90
Nader Sayegh (D)
District 91
Steven Otis (D)
District 92
Maryjane Shimsky (D)
District 93
Chris Burdick (D)
District 94
Matthew Slater (R)
District 95
Dana Levenberg (D)
District 96
Patrick Carroll (D)
District 97
Aron Wieder (D)
District 98
Karl Brabenec (R)
District 99
District 100
Paula Kay (D)
District 101
Brian Maher (R)
District 102
District 103
District 104
District 105
Anil Beephan (R)
District 106
Didi Barrett (D)
District 107
Scott Bendett (R)
District 108
John McDonald (D)
District 109
Gabriella Romero (D)
District 110
Phil Steck (D)
District 111
District 112
Mary Walsh (R)
District 113
Carrie Woerner (D)
District 114
Matthew Simpson (R)
District 115
Vacant
District 116
Scott Gray (R)
District 117
District 118
Robert Smullen (R)
District 119
District 120
William Barclay (R)
District 121
Joe Angelino (R)
District 122
Brian Miller (R)
District 123
Donna Lupardo (D)
District 124
District 125
Anna Kelles (D)
District 126
John Lemondes (R)
District 127
Al Stirpe (D)
District 128
Pamela Hunter (D)
District 129
District 130
Brian Manktelow (R)
District 131
Jeff Gallahan (R)
District 132
Philip Palmesano (R)
District 133
Andrea Bailey (R)
District 134
Josh Jensen (R)
District 135
District 136
Sarah Clark (D)
District 137
Demond Meeks (D)
District 138
Harry Bronson (D)
District 139
Stephen Hawley (R)
District 140
William Conrad (D)
District 141
District 142
Patrick Burke (D)
District 143
District 144
Paul Bologna (R)
District 145
Angelo Morinello (R)
District 146
Karen McMahon (D)
District 147
David DiPietro (R)
District 148
Joe Sempolinski (R)
District 149
Jonathan Rivera (D)
District 150
Andrew Molitor (R)
Democratic Party (102)
Republican Party (47)
Vacancies (1)
