When Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a new Democrat-drawn congressional map into law last week, among the changes was a shift in the boundaries of the 23rd Congressional District.
Represented by Congressman Nick Langworthy, the 23rd District now includes both Pendleton and the southern part of the Town of Lockport. The bulk of the district is in the Southern Tier and Erie County, where Langworthy said two-thirds of the acres were in his district, or approximately one-third of the population, and then spans all the way to Tioga County along the New York/Pennsylvania border.
Noting that it’s approximately a three-hour drive across the 23rd, Langworthy said that the district needed “stabilization.” He noted that the congressional seat representing Lockport has become a revolving door, naming former Congressman Chris Collins, who was pardoned by former President Donald Trump for insider trading, as one of the departures in the region.
He also said that Chris Jacobs, a former congressman who also represented Lockport, had also chosen to not run after making “a late political position on 2nd Amendment rights.”
While the election is still months away, Langworthy said he wanted to visit every part of his district and listened to town and county elected officials at Lockport Town Hall on Monday afternoon.
Supervisor Mark Crocker told Langworthy that the town was currently in danger of becoming a flood plain because the state Department of Environmental Conservation was forbidding dredging of the two major creeks running through it.
Langworthy said he would check with the Army Corps of Engineers, whom he had a “strong working relationship with,” and see what he could do.
He did comment on the news of the Supreme Court decision to allow Trump on several primary ballots, citing “activist judges” for trying to block the former president’s bid for a return to office.
“The decision was 9-0,” he said. “The most liberal justices in America joined with their colleagues to come to this decision,” he said. “Now the people get to choose.”