No endorsement in New York's 8th Senate District
Find out the candidates Newsday's editorial board selected on your ballot: newsday.com/endorsements22
Residents of State Senate District 8 have been offered an unfortunate choice.
The ballot for voters in this South Shore zone includes Democrat John Alberts, of West Babylon, and Sayville Republican Alexis Weik, an incumbent state senator who is new to many due to redistricting.
Alberts, who turns 39 on Nov. 1, is not actively campaigning. And the editorial board cannot endorse Weik due to her unacceptable stand on a critical issue.
That is not to say that she would not be a capable representative on some issues. She understands the importance of protecting Long Island’s environment. She knows that the region is woefully underprepared for big hurricanes, and has worthwhile ideas about dredging and the need for an evacuation center where South Shore residents could find shelter in emergencies.
And she is very likely to win, given the district’s GOP strength.
But Weik, 50, has an alarming, and incorrect, position on COVID-19 vaccines, a hot-button, misinformation-prone topic. She told the editorial board, “We have seen that the, what they call a COVID vaccination, is nothing more than a flu shot, a rather ineffective flu shot.”
She said that “people still have many symptoms, people still go to the hospital even if they’ve been vaccinated and boosted, they’re still in the hospital, they still are very, very sick. It depends on how many other underlying health conditions they have.”
About the COVID vaccine, she claimed that “it hasn’t seemed to really minimize anything.”
This is misleading at best. Elected officials have a responsibility to not be so ill-informed. Yes, vaccinated and boosted people get sick, but the vaccination drive has prevented many bad outcomes. An October report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that vaccination was linked to more than 650,000 fewer COVID-19 hospitalizations and more than 300,000 fewer deaths among seniors and other Americans enrolled in Medicare.
Weik is abandoning science in her stand, an approach that does not bode well for her work on other topics. She also ardently continues to support so-called “parental choice” in child vaccines.
Local Democrats also deserve criticism for not mounting a real race to give voters a true choice.
Newsday makes no endorsement.
ENDORSEMENTS ARE DETERMINED solely by the Newsday editorial board, a team of opinion journalists focused on issues of public policy and governance. Newsday’s news division has no role in this process.
