Headlines for Thursday, October 13, 2022

Union members and activists will be gathering today to rally and pressure Governor Hochul to raise the state’s minimum wage. The gathering will take place at 2:30 pm at the Plumbers and Pipefitters Building, 701 W State Street in Ithaca. A press release from the Tompkins County Worker’s Center says that the minimum wage needs to be indexed to the cost of living and increases in worker productivity. The event will also provide an opportunity to network and strategize with local officials who support raising the wage.

With just weeks before the general election, Republican and Conservative party leaders have brought a suit against New York State challenging a law that allows the use of absentee ballots by voters who are afraid of contracting COVID-19 by voting in person. The Times Union is reporting that if the suit is successful, people using absentee ballots may need to vote again in person. State officials have decried the suit’s timing and are attempting to have the case thrown out. They said the suit is an attempt to “cause tremendous disruption to the orderly unfolding of the election process."

The mother of a teen who was shot at near the home of Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin is pushing back on what she sees as Zeldin’s politicization of the shooting. According to the New York Times, Zeldin, a staunch Trump supporter, has been citing the incident to bolster his argument that Democrats are to blame for an uptick in violent crime. Mary Smith said her son is “just a normal kid” and blamed the shooting on increasing gun possession among young people. She says despite Zeldin’s multiple media appearances highlighting the incident, she lives around the corner and she’s yet to hear from him. To date, Zeldin lags behind Governor Hochul in most public polls.