‘I’m humbled’: A Q&A with Long Island Assembly Minority Leader Ed Ra

The Assembly’s 47 Republicans unanimously elected Long Island Assembly Member Ed Ra the next leader of the chamber’s minority conference on Monday, succeeding former Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay. The vote in the Assembly parlor lasted about 15 minutes.

Barclay announced last week he would not seek reelection in the fall and immediately resigned his post leading GOP members of the lower house. The outgoing Assembly member said he was thrilled Ra is taking his place. “It’s a lot of hard work, but Ed’s been around for a long time,” Barclay told City & State. “He knows what he’s doing. We’re unified, so I’m thrilled with that. And I feel totally confident that he’ll be a great leader.”

At 44 years old, Ra is the youngest minority leader to be elected in decades. He will soon step down as the Republican co-chair of New York’s Future Caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers aged 45 and younger.

Ra spoke with City & State in the first hours following his ascension to Albany leadership about his plans to lead the chamber. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Will Barclay gives you big shoes to fill. How’d it feel to be elected unanimously to succeed him and what do you think you’ve done in your tenure that makes you poised to do that?

It makes me feel great, obviously. I'm humbled by the support of all my colleagues, and I think that they've watched me over the years. Some are newer, some have been here a long time. The way I've been able to raise our points, fight for our conference, but do it in a respectful way, so I think I'm respected on both sides of the aisle. And I think that our members recognize it's important that we have the relationships with the other side, with the speaker, to help do everything we can do to help our districts.

After you were elected Monday morning, you told reporters you share similar priorities to what Leader Barclay had fought for with affordability and public safety. Affordability is the buzzword everyone is saying. How will you fight for it differently?

That's been a buzzword on the Democratic side, and for them, it always means spend more money, and I don't think that's how you make New York more affordable. We have the worst business climate in the country. We're one of the least affordable states, (with) the worst per-capita taxes. All of these statistics tell the story. So I think that we need to improve our business climate. I think that benefits our economy, and actually, in the long run, helps our taxing revenues and all that. I think we obviously are all seeing the spike in energy costs and part of that is all the taxes and fees that we put on top of things, and also our prior moves away from lots of different sources of energy. So we need that all-of-the-above approach so that we make sure we have the right mix and have adequate energy supply with a focus on affordability and on reliability.

You've noted how your conference supports expanding child care in the state. Do you support the governor's plan for universal child care over the next several years?

There's a lot of support for continuing to expand child care options, but it depends on what we mean by “universal.” By universal, do we mean we just give it to everybody, regardless of income, regardless of their ability, at the same level? I don't think that is the right way to go about it. There are a lot of things we can do to make it more affordable. We've increased some of the tax credits, and I do certainly support the aspect of the governor's proposal to make sure we get to a point of actually having universal pre-K, which is an essential part of this whole child care discussion. 

What do you think of the governor's proposed legislation to prevent local police from using resources to work with U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement, or barring ICE detentions in sensitive areas like schools or day care centers? 

The sensitive areas conversation is one thing, but I think there's a lot of trying to make people believe they're going in schools every day, which I don't think matches the reality. We want everybody to be safe when these interactions happen. And I think that the best way to ensure safety is to allow the our local law enforcement that are well-trained and work in our communities every day to work together with with federal authorities when they're going into the area, rather than having an adversarial relationship, which I don't think helps keep the public safe.

Hochul’s bill would also prohibit New York’s 62 counties from having local agreements with ICE. Should counties be able to have that?

I think counties should be able to have that.

What do you think of Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman as a GOP gubernatorial candidate? Are you concerned at all about his pro-abortion stance or being more open to gun control than other Republicans?

We have a diversity of opinions within the Republican Party on those issues. I think at the end of the day, everybody is going to realize we can either support our candidate or have another four years of Kathy Hochul’s policies.

You’re one of the youngest lawmakers to lead the Assembly Republican conference in several years. 

There are always, you know, different perspectives you have in different generations. When I first got elected, I was 28 years old. And at that time, I was the youngest member that was serving in either house of the legislature. So, you know, there's a lot of things that we were talking about, things like child care earlier. You know, I'm in the generation where my peers are dealing with those issues. So it does bring a little bit of a different perspective that can be beneficial.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Barclay had a very friendly relationship and even did things together sometimes. Do you plan to continue that? How's your relationship with Speaker Heastie?

Absolutely. I served as a rank-and-file member with the speaker before he was speaker. I served on the labor committee when he was Labor chair. So I have always had a friendship with him, and I think we will continue to have that cordial relationship now. You know, there are always disagreements. That's going to happen. We don't agree on a lot of policy issues, but I will continue to have a working relationship and, really, a friendly relationship with the speaker.

Have you spoken to him since your election to leadership?

I have. We met for a few minutes earlier after the vote, and obviously we're going to try to get together for a meeting more at length at some point in the coming days.