Incumbent Assemblymember Didi Barrett and Samuel Hodge, an attorney and former chair of the Columbia County Democratic Committee, are competing for the Democratic nomination in New York’s 106th Assembly District.
The district includes the Pine Plains Central School District.
The Herald interviewed both candidates separately, asking each the same questions about affordability, housing, economic development, the environment and the challenges facing rural residents. They were also asked questions specific to their campaigns and the criticism they have faced.
Their answers are presented in their own words, lightly edited for clarity and length. Claims about each candidate’s record, or their opponent’s, are presented as their own.
What are the biggest challenges facing residents of Assembly District 106 right now?
Barrett: I think that the biggest challenge is affordability, especially when it comes to housing. And at this point, even food, energy costs, childcare. And another piece of that is attracting and keeping young families to our region. We’re seeing a decline in all enrollment in all our schools. We’re seeing a shortage in volunteer firefighters, which are the main first responder community in our region. A lot of that has to do with people working farther away from home, so they can’t feel that they can commit to being part of an emergency rescue squad or a fire department locally. I think those are really huge issues for our district.
Hodge: When you’re lost in the woods, they tell you to find food and shelter. Housing is the number one issue facing not just Assembly District 106, but really the entire state. The average home price right now in Columbia County is $535,000. So to put that in perspective, what 35-year-old who wants to start a family has $100,000 in the bank to pay for a down payment? Not many. And that is a real problem for our region. Our schools all face declining enrollment. People are having to move out of the communities that they love. Their kids aren’t able to go to the schools that they went to or grew up in, the communities that they have lived in their entire life. So we need real change and a real plan to build affordable housing and rehab existing structures into affordable housing. Otherwise, New York is not going to look like the New York that we know today. We’re slated to lose two congressional seats in 2030, and that’s in part because New York is so unaffordable. So tackling the affordability crisis is going to be my number one concern. I’m going to be laser focused on it in Albany. It’s a big umbrella that covers a lot of different problems that are affecting our budgets, whether it’s childcare, health care, utility costs, or housing, but housing definitely needs to be a top priority.
What specific actions would you take in Albany to address those challenges, and how would you measure whether those efforts are working for residents in Columbia and Dutchess counties?
Barrett: We’ll continue doing the work that I’ve been doing to make sure that we’re building more affordable housing. The $1.5 million that we secured for Habitat for Humanity a few years ago has resulted in that big sprawling complex on Route 82, which has already become a model and they’re working now with Columbia Land Conservancy to build. We were working to pass our community housing funds bill or legislation that I carry. The utility legislation that we introduced, and the rebates that people will be getting shortly as well, are pieces that we’ve already advanced and will continue to work on. Really shifting the way the PSC [Public Service Commission] looks at these rate cases. And there’s new language in the budget as a result of bills of mine where ratepayers are getting more return on equity money back where the PSC has to really judge and measure and share what kind of affordability measures they put into the decisions that they’re making. There’s a number of things on all fronts. And we certainly have, every time we have any disposable income, given money to all of the food access groups in the district, whether it’s Dutchess counties, Dutchess Outreach or the Recovery Kitchen in Columbia County. All of those things are part of trying to help the community meet this moment.
Hodge: So I think when it comes to housing, there’s a great bill called the Social Housing Development Authority. I would make a few tweaks to it, but the idea is that we can use state land to build affordable housing. We can purchase land to build affordable housing, and we can purchase existing structures and convert them to affordable housing. This would especially do well in rural areas where we can purchase maybe a dilapidated building in downtown Pine Plains or in the city of Hudson and convert it to a multifamily home or an affordable house for a family. So it’s another tool in our toolbox to address the housing crisis. Too often the solution from Albany has always been to incentivize private developers to build affordable housing, but then the projects go by the wayside, never come to fruition. And we’re just not building enough. We have to provide more homes that are affordable to families in the district. When it comes to health care, we need real systemic change. I’ve been referring to it as the medical industrial complex. Everything just costs more and more and more money. And the state has not taken any meaningful steps to rein in health care costs in New York. I am a strong proponent of the New York Health Act, which would create a single payer health care system. It would be great for rural areas, whether it’s supporting our hospitals or EMS. And then when it comes to utility costs, they’re only going higher. And again, Albany has done almost nothing to lower our bills. I’d ask any voter to look at your bill this month to last month. It’s probably gone up. So that’s something where there are real policy solutions on the table, but they’ve been stalling in Albany. They should have paused all rate increases and they didn’t. National Grid, which covers much of Columbia County just went up on April 1. NYSEG went up. Con Ed 10% a increase. Albany is not doing its job and we can do better. Then we need to make childcare universal, not just for families in Dutchess County, but for the entire state. And we can do that by taxing the ultra wealthy. Families shouldn’t have to choose between one parent going to work or staying home and taking care of their kids, because that’s not a choice. So we really have to do a better job of supporting New Yorkers and making sure that they can stay here and thrive in New York.
Looking five to 10 years ahead, what challenges do you think will most shape life in these communities, and what should the state be doing now to prepare?
Barrett: Well, I think that the housing issue is a major one and making sure that we have housing both for older couples or older individuals who want to downsize after their kids leave home. And having places for younger families, starter houses, younger individuals to come to our area. So I think housing is a critical piece. And we just talked about what I see doing for that. I think continuing to address the climate issues, I mean, we really see the impact of both the federal policy issues and the climate on our agriculture here and our farmland and our farmers are critical to our local economy. So I think that’s something that I’d like to see the state pay a little bit more attention to, especially our small and midsize family farms. A lot of attention in Washington in the past has always been the big square states. And I know some of our representatives in D.C. have been good advocates for our smaller farms. And I want to see more of that happen. And as a state representative, I always work with our federal partners to move these kinds of things — particularly agriculture — forward.
Hodge: It’s all about housing. If people can’t afford to live here, all the other problems that New York has aren’t going to affect those families because they’ve moved someplace else. So we have to provide affordable housing and really reinvent the wheel and come at it with every tool that we’ve got. Zoning changes, incentives to private developers and building social housing, like we discussed before. That’s the important piece that we need to keep the Hudson Valley and our rural areas thriving. So if 10 years from now we haven’t built a meaningful number of affordable housing units, we’re going to be in big trouble. On utility costs, the best way to lower costs is to lean into the future and make a rapid transition to renewable energy. That way, we’re not subject to the volatile markets of the fossil fuel industry. The technology just gets better and better and better. And the quickest way to lower our bills is for us to transition to renewable energies. And if we haven’t done a meaningful job in 10 years of doing that, we’re going to be in big trouble, not just in the Hudson Valley, but also this country, in our world. On health care, this is a place where we have to take on tough fights. We have to think bold. We have to fight hard. And the New York Health Act was introduced, I think, when I was five years old in the early 90s.
We need change. And we’re not getting it from Washington, D.C. Massachusetts was a laboratory for solutions and was the blueprint for the Affordable Care Act. Why can’t New York be the blueprint for the next Democratic administration and be the first state to have a single payer health care system? I think we can. We just have to do the hard work to get it passed. And putting your name on it as a sponsor is not enough. We have to build a coalition of groups and people, and take on these corporate interests, insurance companies who put up roadblocks at every single door. And then when it comes to utility costs, this is where Didi Barrett has really failed. It’s under her watch that all of our bills have gone up. Coincidentally, her campaign is funded by utility companies, energy corporations, and the fossil fuel industry. She’s taken $80,000 from these interests. All the while, she’s the energy chair. Money in politics is a cancer. It breeds cynicism and it’s ultimately corrupting. And we should reject it in this Democratic primary. Democrats know that taking corporate PAC money is wrong. Didi Barrett knows it’s wrong. I will never take corporate PAC money, and I will never answer to utility companies, especially bad actors like Central Hudson. We can do better.
We’ve covered some of this already, but many residents are worried about the cost of staying here, from housing and taxes to energy costs, transportation, childcare and health care. What specifically would you do, or what have you done, to make rural life more affordable?
Barrett: I mean, we did talk about that. Dutchess County got $1 million for Dutchess Community College to launch a childcare center. Working with Gov. Hochul, she brought $20 million to the county to do a pilot on childcare. And we’re working with her team, the executive branch, in the agencies, and with providers. There’s a wonderful nonprofit in Poughkeepsie called Day One, which I have been working with for a number of years since they started. And now they’re going to be coming to Columbia County as well. So Columbia-Greene [Community College] is going to be working with them, and they’re going to have a program here. So really expanding childcare access. And just the other day, we brought the Speaker of the Assembly to Hudson to put money into the Hudson School district. And I think helping our school districts by really investing in our school districts to attract and keep the younger families and have people really understand these are great schools. That’s always in addition to housing and jobs, which are a key attraction or a deterrent for people when they decide where they’re going to live.
Hodge: You’re right, we have covered a lot of this. One issue where I think we can help rural areas like Pine Plains, Milan, Gallatin — really every community — in our district is addressing the problem that we have with EMS. It costs our county and our towns a lot of money. And we’ve seen in the more rural parts of this district response times that are, oftentimes 13, 14, 15 minutes, which is well past the goal of a nine minute response time. So I don’t think the volunteer model is working, and that we really have to rethink how we’re addressing this EMS crisis, which does cost our towns and counties quite a bit of money. I think we have to end the policy where you only get reimbursement if you’re taking somebody to the hospital. I think we need to incentivize people from getting their paramedic training and then becoming paramedics. And these are all things that could be paid for by Albany. We’ve already spoken about how the New York Health Act could be transformational, but that would reduce a lot of red tape and increase the reimbursement costs for these EMS companies. I think we also need to require Dutchess and Columbia County to have really robust plans for how they’re going to address this crisis. And it should be reviewed by the state. And then the last thing I would say is we should implement telehealth services in a meaningful way so that we can connect people on the ground who are in crisis with nurses or doctors who are on call.
God forbid, if there is a long delay in getting EMS to respond to a person or a family in need. So that costs a lot of money for our towns and counties. And it’s just one opportunity to make it more affordable. When it comes to our property taxes, most property taxes come from our school budgets. A lot of people just assume it’s the town or county taxes, but it really is coming from our school taxes. And there are real ways that we can save money and ensure that taxes, which disproportionately get increased in rural areas versus suburban and urban areas, can be addressed. And so a couple of ideas that I have are having the state fully fund pre-K programs in rural districts, and then also having the state fully fund all special education costs in rural districts. And this would help control costs. Not just in like the Pine Plains School District or the Germantown School District, but it would help control costs really throughout Columbia and Dutchess counties. So those are just small ways where the state can intervene and cover some of these costs, which would be relief for homeowners in rural Dutchess and Columbia counties.
How would you balance housing and economic development needs with protecting the environment and the rural character of the Hudson Valley?
Barrett: I mean, that’s what we literally do all the time. I think working with organizations like that organization that I met with just the other day at the habitat group where they’re looking at building these habitat houses with land around them. I think we have a real opportunity in our region to create models of different housing. We’re never going to build the kind of housing that a place like Albany or Westchester is going to do because our scale is different. So what I really love about what we can do here and this particular project with Habitat for Humanity, and Trillium and Scenic Hudson, and Columbia Land Conservancy, which is, just beyond the Pine Plains border. It’s really right nearby. It seems to me like a great model to be able to advance and share with other parts of the state as well. But that’s what we need to do, we need to be building more housing that is owner owned and workforce housing, but also address the renting rental needs where they are. And that’s not just in the city, but in the rural areas as well.
Hodge: These things aren’t mutually exclusive. We have to be smart about any development that we’re going to do, whether it’s a six-unit multifamily home or preserving a historic building, in one of our downtown communities, or a downtown in one of our communities. That’s why the Social Housing Development Authority really offers a great new tool. We can work with preservationists in downtown Hudson to restore a landmark home and make it a multifamily unit or revert it back to a single family home. And it won’t change the character of downtown Hudson. So we can balance these interests while also building new affordable homes while we’re also rehabbing existing structures that would otherwise continue to become dilapidated and eventually be torn down. All you have to do is drive through this extremely beautiful district, and you’ll see structures left and right that have been abandoned. And there each one is an opportunity. So we need to work closely with our towns and villages, but we have to also be strategic and recognize that we have to build. Otherwise our communities will continue to be hollowed out. So we need to see these investments as an opportunity for the future.
Assemblymember Barrett, your opponent has repeatedly run ads criticizing your campaign for accepting donations from energy companies. How do you respond to criticism from the Hodge campaign?
Barrett: I think voters should be concerned that Sam Hodge is such a liar. He’s totally fabricating these numbers, number one. And number two, we haven’t seen anything about his proposals. He’s completely lied about my record. He’s completely misrepresenting the bills that I’ve advanced. All of the utilities have come to our office and complained about any number of bills that we’ve moved. But they support me because I’m the chair of energy and my staff and I meet with them and understand what their problems are. But there is no way that one could describe me in the pocket of anything. And when you talk about fossil fuels, most of the contributions that we’ve gotten from anybody that I’ve met through my energy work — it’s renewables, it’s advocates, it’s people working in the solar field. We just passed ASAP [Accelerate Solar for Affordable Power ]. And people were thrilled to see that there’s a lot of work being done in this energy sector that Sam Hodge has no clue about. And he speaks very irresponsibly about the sector and I think that that’s something that people should really be worried about.
I voted to pass the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2019. I voted yes on that and I voted for it to continue because I heard from my constituents over and over and over again that they did not want to see rollbacks, that they did not want to see a change in the accounting method. That’s my point: I’m not a one shot kind of person where I’ve come up with an idea and that’s where it is for the rest of my life. I’m a constant student. I love learning. I really am passionate about this district and passionate about learning and things change. I’m willing to educate myself over and over again about where we are and what our needs are at any given time. That is my commitment to the CLCPA. Obviously, I passed legislation called the Excess Revenue Bill that gives utility profits back to ratepayers. The utility companies aren’t happy with that, because they’ll have to give some of their profits back. I also passed the ASAP act to make sure that New York was funding more solar because it is the only renewable energy that we’ve really met our goals on the CLCPA goals.
What’s going on at the federal level has been a huge impediment to a lot of the things that we wanted to do in New York state. They basically destroyed the offshore wind industry. We still have some opportunities with onshore wind. We’re in a real sort of transition period, the last three years since Trump was elected, and the state is trying to figure out how to continue to do the things that we prioritize. It isn’t always easy. I have a strong environmental record. The League of Conservation voters have supported me over and over again. There’s nothing that Sam Hodge can say other than what he makes up about what he’s done to support our ratepayers or help us reach our climate goals or protect our environment at any level. That’s something that I hope readers will understand and remember.
Mr. Hodge, Barrett has accused you of being a liar and running a negative campaign with personal attacks. How do you respond to this criticism from the Barrett campaign?
Hodge: I think it’s shameful that Didi has resorted to making character attacks. It is a fact that in 2017, she voted against immigrant protections. She can say over and over again that she didn’t take that vote, but it’s a matter of public record that she joined Republicans and voted no. It’s also a fact, in a matter of public record, that she has taken thousands and thousands of dollars from the fossil fuel industry, utility companies, and energy corporations. At first I ran a couple of ads that said she had taken $70,000. I had to edit those ads because she had taken more money. And this was all revealed in her May 22 filing. She’s taken $80,000 from the industries that she is supposed to hold accountable. And then lastly, it is just a fact that Didi Barrett does not support the invest in our New York program, which is colloquially called the tax-the-rich bills. Again, it’s a matter of public record. So it’s disappointing that Didi is misrepresenting her past and trying to hide from poor decisions that she’s made. I have deep respect for the 14 years that she has served this district, and I will never take away some of the accomplishments that she’s had as an Assemblymember. But I also believe that she does not deserve a seventh term and that it’s time for new ideas, new leaders, and fresh perspectives.
The problems facing the Hudson Valley are unprecedented in scale and pilot programs and commissions aren’t solving our problems. We need to think bold and fight hard against these entrenched corporate interests that influence Albany in the most ugly ways. In 2025, New York broke a record $385 million spent on lobbying legislators and the governor on legislation. And it’s like, that is a ton of money from very, very wealthy and powerful interests. We have to change how Albany works. Whenever I hear a politician say to someone, well, you don’t understand the job, you don’t know how Albany works, I think to myself, well, you don’t know how Albany is broken, how people are struggling. And I think most people in Albany right now would benefit by touching grass and speaking to people who are two and three months behind on their utility bills, are choosing between paying their rent or mortgage and getting necessary health care. It is just such a difficult time for New York, and we have to try something different. We have to think bigger and we have to solve these problems.
Why should Democratic voters in Pine Plains, Ancram, Gallatin, Milan, and Stanford choose you?
Barrett: Because with me, they know who I am. I’ve always been a straight shooter. What you see is what you get. I’m not shapeshifting to address some image that I’m trying to put forward. They know that I deliver. We brought back close to $20 million at this point to the district in both Dutchess County and Columbia County. I really do cover and know the issues in all of my towns from Poughkeepsie all the way up to New Lebanon. We brought money back for everyone. We’ve met with them regularly. We talk regularly to residents and community members and leadership, and are committed to passionately staying involved here. And I’m really committed to making sure that we flip Congress because one of my priorities is definitely to make sure that we change the tenor of what’s going on in Washington. I’m going to be in Pine Plains tonight for the FFA banquet giving out citations to the kids because it’s such a wonderful organization.
Hodge: It’s frustrating to hear people justify reelection, by saying, well, an incumbent is an incumbent. There are many examples of people who are coming to Albany with fresh ideas and determination, have that sense of urgency, and also have the energy to take on big problems. State Sen. Michelle Hinchey is a perfect example of that. In her second term, she did something that teachers have demanded for years, if not decades, which was meals for our children, breakfast, lunch and a snack. And she was the lead sponsor of that bill. And she built a coalition to make sure that the state could fund that and implement it throughout the state. And millions of lives are now changed in perpetuity. That is an example of what somebody can do when they arrive in Albany with a mission and energy and a sense of urgency to solve these problems. We have to ask ourselves, what has happened in the last 14 years? Health care is more expensive. Housing is out of reach. Our utility bills have never been higher. And for most, childcare is too expensive or doesn’t exist because they’re in a rural childcare desert. We need to be thinking about the future, not the past. And that’s what I’m focused on: how do I deliver immediately when I get to Albany. I have a lot of ideas, and I think Albany would benefit from a little bit more imagination.