ALBANY COUNTY — Democratic incumbent Assemblywoman Patricia A. Fahy bested her two rivals by a wide margin on Tuesday.

“I’m encouraged to hear that they ran out of ballots here in Guilderland,” Fahy said to The Enterprise on Election Night after early returns made her victory clear. “It just kind of gives you hope for humanity, that we’re having this record turnout and people are paying attention so much, and recognizing the importance of exercising such a fundamental right

“It kind of gives you hope,” she reiterated, as she gathered with other Democrats in Guilderland at Maria’s Tailgate Tavern. “You want more young people to care, and to realize that there are so many important issues at stake.”

Republican Robert G. Porter and Conservative Joseph P. Sullivan both had said they were running to give voters a choice and neither had campaign funding. As of yesterday, Fahy had raised $94,793 for her campaign, according to the New York State Board of Elections.

Beginning with her first run in 2012 and every race since, Fahy has garnered well over 60 percent of the vote in the Democrat-dominated 109th District.

Fahy on Tuesday received 71 percent of the vote to Porter’s 24 percent and Sullivan’s 5 percent, according to unofficial results from the Albany County Board of Elections.

Fahy got 31,846 votes on the Democratic line, 2,582 on the Working Families line, and 1,474 on the Independence Party line. Porter garnered 12,270 votes on the Republican line, and Sullivan got 2,573 on the Conservative line. Again, these are all unofficial results from the county’s board of elections.

Porter, who worked in law enforcement for the Marines for 21 years, has run for office once before — losing his Republican bid two years ago to represent the heavily Democratic 9th Ward in Albany.

Sullivan, who spent most of his career in state government, has launched many campaigns, none successful, including a 2012 run, again on the Conservative line, against Fahy to represent the 109th District. That year, 59,326 people voted. Fahy won 64 percent of the vote, Republican Theodore J. Danz got 32.6 percent, and Sullivan got 3.4 percent.

The district, which was reconfigured in 2012, covers Bethlehem, Guilderland, New Scotland, and the western part of Albany where all three candidates live.

Fahy faced her only serious competition in the 2012 Democratic primary when she bested five opponents to get the party line. In the previous two elections — in 2014 and again in 2016 — Fahy faced the same challenger: Republican Jesse D. Calhoun, a preschool teacher and musician. Fahy beat Calhoun with about 67 percent of the vote in 2014, when 41,337 district residents cast their ballots, and with about 70 percent of the vote in 2016, when 61,347 residents voted.

Many of the bills Fahy supported in the long-Democrat-dominated Assembly were stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. Those issues may gain ground with the so-called blue wave bringing a Democratic majority to the State Senate in Tuesday’s election.

In 2017, Fahy voted “yes” for the Reproductive Health Act that would have allowed a health-care provider to abort a fetus at any time if it were not viable or it its mother’s life or health were at risk. During this campaign, Fahy said she fully supported codifying Roe v. Wade into state law, and that it is important to take abortion “out of the criminal code and into the health code where it belongs.”

Conservative Sullivan, on the other hand, called the 1973 United States Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade “a national tragedy,” and said, “I can’t see how a woman can kill her flesh and blood. It’s not choice; it’s infanticide.”

Republican Porter was more nuanced, stating, “We need to say when and where an infant’s rights end and a woman’s rights begin.”

Both Porter and Sullivan opposed single-payer health insurance while Fahy has voted “yes” on the bills the State Assembly passed for single-payer health insurance. “This year, we’ll drill down to make sure the costs are manageable,” she said. “We have to make sure we’re fining savings for taxpayers and businesses.”

Fahy said she “absolutely” wants the state to close the LLC loophole, naming it as one of her top campaign-finance issues. Although individuals are capped in making campaign contributions, they can, because of a Supreme Court decision in a case brought by Citizens United, form a Limited Liability Company to donate more.

“I’m hoping next year, if things do change with the Senate,” Fahy said, “that it will be possible” to close the loophole.

Fahy said she fully supports decriminalization for possession of small amounts of marijuana and also fully supports expunging records of such arrest. But, before she commits to legalization of marijuana for recreational use by adults, she said that concerns need to be addressed about driving while impaired, about youth access to marijuana, and about spikes in crime with the “cash economy” it would create since the federal government hasn’t legalized marijuana.

On gun safety, Conservative Sullivan said, “The Second Amendment keeps us safe” from “tyrannical government” and the “socialist Democratic Party … would take away our rights under the Constitution.” Republican Porter said, “Manufacturers figure out ways around the law to sell their produce. Or people disobey the law; criminals don’t obey the law.”

Fahy, who voted for the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, hurriedly passed after the 2013 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, said during this campaign that it’s not enough to do background checks on the people buying guns; the people selling guns also need to be checked.

In the wake of the Las Vegas music-festival shooting a year ago, which killed 58 people, Fahy proposed a bill that would make possession and sale of bump fire stocks a misdemeanor while the manufacturing or transport of them would be a felony. The gunstocks are designed to make bump firing easier, allowing semi-automatic firearms to mimic the firing speed of fully automatic weapons. That bill has not passed.

Fahy is also interested in the sort of database that California has, which tracks ammunition sales with the goal of keeping it out of the hands of felons.

Fahy noted, “I passed the parity bill for sports men and women to give them parity … I believe in legitimate rights of responsible gun owners.”

Fahy also said, “The research is profound here: States with the strongest gun control have the lowest crime rates and lowest gun-related fatalities.”

She concluded, “The more we do, the safer we are.”