New York Republicans choose a former police detective to challenge Gillibrand

Republicans seeking to unseat New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand chose Mike Sapraicone, a wealthy private security official, as their preferred candidate at a party convention on Thursday.

Sapraicone, 67, has cast himself as an affable moderate, promising to outmaneuver Ms. Gillibrand and find solutions to the migrant and affordability crises that the state’s ruling Democrats have struggled to combat.

“It’s time for us to have a voice in New York that we haven’t had yet,” he said in an interview, accusing Ms. Gillibrand of not having been “seen or heard” since her failed bid to become president in 2020 .

The message won easily over the state’s political establishment, which believes Sapraicone represents Republicans’ best chance to compete in New York. Eighty-four percent of delegates voted in his favor at the convention in Binghamton on Thursday.

But the show of support apparently failed to clear his path. Rather than drop out, two conservative Republican runners-up, Josh Eisen and Cara Castronuova, signaled their intention to petition for the ballot measure so that primary voters would have the final say in June.

That would unleash a potentially messy battle that exposes the deep ideological fissures dividing the party. It threatens to force Sapraicone not only to tap his campaign coffers but also to take more conservative positions on issues such as abortion and former President Donald J. Trump, which could hurt the party in November.

“Today the party bosses spoke,” Eisen said. “The rest of the Republican Party will have the final say in the June primaries.”

The stakes may be higher than they seem. Few Republicans actually believe the party can defeat Ms. Gillibrand in a state that hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate since the 1990s. But party leaders say privately that a serious, palatable candidate could propel Republicans down the stretch in more winnable races, including for key House districts.

Mr. Sapraicone, whose name emerged as a potential candidate in the special House election to replace George Santos on Long Island, formally entered the Senate race on Friday.

He has a compelling biography and deep personal resources that could boost his campaign. The Republican spent 20 years in the New York Police Department and now heads Squad Security, a private company that employs 600 active and retired officers. according to its website.

But Mr. Sapraicone enters the competition with some baggage. He has donated repeatedly to Democrats over the years. And he was among a group of former police detectives accused of it a 2021 lawsuit of coercing a false confession and suppressing exculpatory evidence that kept a man behind bars for decades.

Mr. Sapraicone’s likely main challengers wasted little time in attacking, portraying him as cowardly when it came to conservative priorities.

“He has questionable views on guns, questionable views on the Second Amendment, he is unclear on his position on Trump,” Mr. Eisen said before the vote.

Mr. Eisen, 52, is perhaps the most formidable threat. He is the founder of a successful translation company, but also has private money to pump into his campaign and the support of former Governor George E. Pataki.

In an interview, Mr. Eisen described himself as a “Second Amendment purist.” He said federal prosecutors who charged Mr. Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election results went too far and tried to criminalize the techniques of a “scruffy New York real estate man.”

“He was just literally following legal maneuvers that were legitimate,” he said of Mr. Trump. “They may not appeal to everyone’s taste.”

Ms. Castronuova, a conservative reporter for Newsmax, appears to be playing her own game for Trump’s support. She has increased her ability to generate ‘viral media attention’, defended the January 6 rioters and has approval from Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump.

“Just as parents should have a choice about which vaccination their child’s body receives, voters should have a choice about which candidate runs in the general election for Senate!” she wrote in a text message.

Given Mr. Sapraicone’s impressive vote totals at the convention, any Republican challenger will need to collect thousands of signatures from voters across the state to reach the primary.

Party leaders were already working on Mr. Eisen’s kneecap. They recirculated old news reports showing that he had been sanctioned in court harassing legal opponents and the use of racial slurs. (Mr. Eisen said he was “not proud of anything I say all the time,” but downplayed the issue as “business disputes.”)

They also pointed to a handful of donations he made to far-left Democrats, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York.

“He’s not going anywhere in the Republican Party,” said Conservative Party Chairman Jerry Kassar, a longtime partner of Republicans in New York. He said both issues “disqualified” him.

Mr. Sapraicone has an even more prolific history of supporting Democrats. Although he has given more to Republicans, Mr. Sapraicone has donated $140,000 to Democratic candidates and causes in New York since 2017, according to state and federal election data.

Gavin Wax, the president of the New York Young Republican Club, singled out one donation Thursday: a $1,000 contribution from Squad Security to the New York attorney general, who just defeated Mr. Trump in a civil fraud case.

“As President Trump fights a politicized prosecution of him by Letitia James, the @NewYorkGOP led by Ed Cox rushes to crown anti-Trump RINO @MikeSapraicone,” said Mr. Wax. wrote on X.

There were signs that Mr. Sapraicone was already feeling the pressure.

In the interview, he said he was in fact a strong supporter of Mr. Trump and called the 91 charges against the former president “terrible.”

Mr. Sapraicone explained that he was in favor of background checks when purchasing firearms. “I know some people don’t agree with that, but that’s important.” — but not a ban on semi-automatic weapons, such as those often used in mass shootings.

And while he said he would oppose a federal abortion ban, he called for more restrictions on the procedure in New York, a state where abortion rights are considered sacrosanct.

“I don’t like what you hear in New York, where we say you can get an abortion right at full term, that you don’t have to warn your parents if you’re a minor and that regular doctors can do abortions,” he said. .

Ms. Gillibrand, 57, is likely to put many of these issues at the center of her campaign for a third full term. She has one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate, is a staunch supporter of abortion rights and gun safety measures and a virulent critic of Mr. Trump. She also has a daunting $9 million in campaign cash on hand.

A spokesman for the senator, Evan Lukaske, said Ms. Gillibrand looks forward to campaigning on her record and “winning re-election this fall.”