Award-winning journalist Spencer Rumsey is making his first bid for public office because he believes that voters in his district want a real choice for a change—especially in this historic election when Americans can elect our first woman president.
Currently the senior editor at the Long Island Press, he’s worked at Newsday, the New York Post and Long Island Jewish World. He’s written and edited stories about public education, the environment, economic development and the future of health care on Long Island. He’s been endorsed by the Long Island Environmental Voters Forum. At Newsday, where he spent 21 years starting with the New York City edition, he was a steward in Teamsters Local 406 of the Graphic Communications Conference/IBT.
His wife of 25-plus years, Dr. Jane Gudaitis, is a school psychologist at Eastern Suffolk BOCES. Both born in Wilmington, Delaware, where they first met as teenagers, they moved to East Northport in 1993 and to Northport in 2003, raising two sons who attended Northport-East Northport School District from kindergarten through 12th grade. Their older son graduated summa cum laude from SUNY Geneseo with a major in history and Spanish, and the younger one is a junior majoring in engineering at SUNY Binghamton.
“I want to solve our state’s serious problems, from lead contaminating our schools’ drinking water fountains to homeless veterans sleeping in the woods, from our young adults overdosing on drugs to our seniors struggling with the rising costs of living,” says Spencer Rumsey. “I promise to challenge the status quo, to speak truth to power, to ask questions, to listen and to learn as much as I can so I can choose wisely if I get the chance to serve the people of the 12th Assembly District in our state’s capital.”
Rumsey also wants to push further for ethics reform.
“I want to vote on bills for the public good and not find out later thanks to a federal prosecutor that I just lined the pocket of some hidden insider,” he says. “We can do better than this. It’s time we got a new Assemblyman!”