HILLTOWNS — Assemblyman Christopher Tague is well on his way to winning his second full term as representative of the 102nd District, shutting out Democratic challenger Betsy Kraat by a 34-point margin according to Wednesday morning’s unofficial election results. 

Tague declared victory on Wednesday afternoon, finalizing what he described in a press release as a “long and exhausting campaign.” 

“When we get back to Albany,” Tague said in his statement, “I will continue advocating for expanded broadband access to our rural upstate populations, a repeal of the dangerous bail reform law, protections for our farmers and local businesses and increased accountability in government.”

Mail-in votes still need to be counted, with the last batch of posts allowed to arrive at the board of elections’ office as late as Nov. 10, but Albany County’s Democratic election commissioner, Matthew Clyne, told The Enterprise that mail-in votes are unlikely to reverse the results indicated by the gameday count. 

There are just over 88,000 registered active voters in the 102nd District, which covers Schoharie, Greene, and parts of Albany, Columbia, Delaware, Otsego, and  Ulster counties. Nearly 58,000 of these voters — 65 percent — submitted a ballot, with Tague winning about 37,000 of the lot across the Republican, Independence, and Conservative lines, representing approximately 65-percent of the vote share.

Kraat, on the Democratic line, won nearly 18,000 votes, or 31-percent of vote share. Nearly 2,500 ballots — 4.3 percent — were left blank.

District 102 residents did not vote along strict party lines since, according to enrollment numbers, a sizable share of Democrats appear to have voted for Tague.

“We’re confident that there will be a significant showing for Betsy in the absentee votes that have yet to be counted,” Kraat’s campaign manager, Shannon Lynch, told The Enterprise. “Therefore, we will wait for all votes to be counted before making any further decisions.

“We have run a spirited campaign,” Lynch went on, “that has brought together a coalition of progressive voters across the district, despite the challenges we have faced with the pandemic and Republicans’ aggressive and anti-democratic rhetoric.”

District 102, as of Feb. 21, has 31,476 enrolled Republicans, 26,888 enrolled Democrats, and 23,703 registered voters who are not enrolled in a party. Among small parties, the Independence Party leads with 5,862 members followed by 2,644 Conservatives, and fewer than 1,000 registered voters enrolled in other parties.

President Donald Trump’s wide victory margins in the rural parts of District 102 may have helped Tague. For example, Trump took 61 percent of the vote in Greene County to Joe Biden’s 37 percent. Similarly, in Schoharie County, Trump took 67 percent of the vote to Biden’s 30 percent. Both of those tallies are from the state board of election’s unofficial numbers on Nov. 4.

Tague, 51, was first elected to his seat in a 2018 special election, taking over for Republican Peter Lopez, and he retained the seat the following November after beating the same Democratic challenger, Aidan O’Connor. 

Tague’s focus in office is achieving robust representation and legislation for upstate New York, fighting against what he describes as a city-focused legislative bloc that passes “one-glove-fits-all legislation” to the benefit of New York City and detriment of New York’s rural communities.

“One of the things I’ve been doing over the past two-and-a-half years,” Tague told The Enterprise last month, “is trying to get my colleagues from the New York City region to understand that there is an upstate New York and legislation that helps them does not always help us.”

Kraat ran to unseat who she saw as a “Trump delegate,” and advocated for higher taxes for the state’s wealthy, a state single-payer health-care program, and police and bail reforms.

By Election Day, Kraat raised $17,316.33 from 255 contributors, which paled in comparison to Tague’s $83,852.14 from 401 contributors. This averages out to $68 per donor to Kraat, and $209 per donor to Tague.