“Our biggest opponent is apathy,” Rivera said in an interview last week. “There’s people that are either not knowledgeable that there’s a primary coming up, or they’re like, ‘Another one?’ It is a very big challenge to be able to connect with voters.”
Rivera paused. “And did I mention the heat?” (He had.) “It’s hot.”
Both candidates are facing a common foe in the scorching temperatures that have dogged them during the campaign’s final stretch.
“Funny enough, I have a great tan and people think I’ve been at the beach,” said Camilo, president of the Bronx Women’s Bar Association and a former vice chair of the Bronx Democrats. “But I’ve been outside.”
Rivera, Camilo have different ideologies
Rivera, a native of Puerto Rico, was first elected in 2010, ousting scandal-scarred incumbent Pedro Espada – a Democrat who, a year prior, had helped engineer a Republican coup of the state Senate and would later be convicted of unrelated federal corruption charges.
Rivera has risen to become the health committee chair, a position that gives him sway over health and Medicare spending that makes up a third of the state’s budget. With longtime Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried retiring, Rivera is in line to become an even bigger player in health care issues in Albany should he win re-election.
Rivera is the main sponsor of the New York Health Act, a long-standing legislative proposal that would enact single-payer health insurance in New York, and is considered one of the more progressive Democrats in the state Legislature.
He has sponsored and passed bills that would implement safe-staffing levels at hospitals, as well as Dakota’s Law – a bill, named after a Bronx girl, that would require doctors to assess children for lead-poisoning risks during health care visits. (Dakota’s Law is awaiting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature.)
“All of that is the legislative work that I’m incredibly proud of that is driven by how to make the lives of the people I represent better,” Rivera said.
Camilo, born in the Dominican Republic, is a lawyer who previously held commissioner and associate counsel posts with the city Board of Elections. She is the president of the Bronx Women’s Bar Association and was a practicing attorney before she put her job on hold during the campaign.
Thanks in part to a candidate shuffle caused by the state’s botched redistricting process, Camilo has found support from major Democrats in the Bronx and the city, with Reps. Ritchie Torres and Adriano Espaillat backing her campaign. Mayor Eric Adams is set to fundraise for her next week, according to Spectrum News NY1.
Camilo is running as more of a centrist. Among other areas, she points to her support of charter schools as a factor that distinguishes her from Rivera. (New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, a Wall Street-backed super PAC supporting charter schools, has so far spent $266,000 on advertisements in support of her campaign, a large sum for a Senate race.) She’s a critic of the Defund the Police movement and said lawmakers need to be more “supportive of law enforcement.”