The three-way Democratic primary for the 149th Assembly District underscores some of the divisions confounding the party, locally and statewide.

Leftists vs. centrists. Outsiders vs. insiders. Corporate money vs. labor union support vs. small donors. 

There’s an establishment candidate with political pedigree who has the local party’s endorsement — and, in recent weeks, the support of big money from online gambling interests.

There’s a democratic socialist who hopes to add to the list of victories scored in recent years by the party’s progressive factions — and who has garnered endorsements from a host of labor organizations, as well as the seat’s current occupant.

Finally, there’s a relative newcomer to politics looking for entry to what can feel like a closed game.

The race features a city vs. suburb dynamic, too. The 149th encompasses much of Buffalo’s West Side, then runs along the lakefront through a sliver of Lackawanna to the Town of Hamburg. That’s all traditionally Democratic territory, though Hamburg in recent years has swung Republican. The town’s Democrats tend toward centrism, those in the city more to the left.

The party’s choice, Karen Hoak, is from Hamburg, where her family have been party stalwarts for three generations — her grandfather a state senator, her father and brother town supervisors.

Adam Bojak, the democratic socialist supported by labor and current Assembly Member Jonathan Rivera, grew up in East Aurora and now lives in the city. He’s among the cadre of leftists who became politically engaged by the 2016 presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont — who in May endorsed Bojak’s candidacy.

Kevin Deese also lives in the city, but his husband hails from Hamburg, giving him a presence in both of the district’s main population centers. He was elected a Democratic committee member just two years ago — one of a handful of city-dwellers who in 2024 won committee seats despite opposition from party leadership.

Their policy platforms have more similarities than differences: All three support the New York Health Act, for example, which would create a statewide, single-payer healthcare system. They all support Democratic-led efforts to build more housing across the state, reduce energy bills for consumers, and provide universal childcare.

All three sat for interviews with Investigative Post.

Bojak: progressive with labor support

This is Bojak’s second three-way Democratic primary for the District 149 seat. In 2020, he ran against former city lawmaker Robert Quintana and Jonathan Rivera. Rivera won handily, but Bojak finished second with about 30 percent of the vote.

“So I knew people were interested in what our campaign was talking about,” he told Investigative Post. 

That campaign’s motto “homes and people first,” he said, a sentiment born of his work as an attorney fighting evictions and foreclosures. When people lose their housing, he said, “they lose their communities, they lose their neighbors. 

“None of those issues have been solved — if anything, they’ve only gotten worse,” he said.

Rivera announced last fall that he would forgo reelection to the Assembly to run for the 61st state Senate seat vacated by Sean Ryan when he became Buffalo mayor. Bojak, 42, saw a chance to “finish the work that we started back then.”

When he ran in 2020, Bojak was a party outsider — a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America and a devotee of Sanders, whose presidential campaigns inspired him to seek elected office. In 2021, he worked on India Walton’s mayoral campaign, which many viewed as an outsider’s attack on the hegemony of party insiders.

At the same time, he became a party committee member and started building relationships within it — including with Rivera.

The victory of Zohran Mamdani, a fellow democratic socialist, in last year’s race for New York City mayor inspired him to run again, too.

“He didn’t talk like some wonky socialist, he just talked to everyday issues, and he had the answers that made sense to people,” Bojak said. “And we have that same kind of mindset for our campaign — universal issues need universal solutions.”

He favors raising taxes on “corporations and the ultra-wealthy” to pay for universal childcare. He wants Western New York to be part of the childcare pilot programs Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul aim to start elsewhere in the state.

“If working-class people in New York City need it, then working-class people in Buffalo do, too,” he said.

His policy platform also includes publicly owned and operated utilities — gas and electric, as well as internet — because “those bills are going up astronomically.” He believes those services should be “controlled by the people … not some corporation that’s trying to extract profits from us.”

Bojak has the endorsements of 10 labor unions, including the city and state teachers’ unions, the New York State AFL-CIO and the United Autoworkers Region 9. He’s supported by a host of progressive political groups, including the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America. He also has endorsements from left-leaning elected officials, both local and downstate.

Hoak: a single mother with government experience

Hoak’s family is most widely known for their lakeside restaurant, where she was pressed into duty “at a very young age,” she said. 

Working the family’s small business shaped her, she said. So did the family’s other business — politics and government.

Her grandfather was a state senator in the 1960s. Her father was a long-time town supervisor in Hamburg and a force in local Democratic politics.

Hoak, 43, and her brother Randy followed in those footsteps. Karen was elected to the town board in 2019, then lost reelection in 2023 — a year in which Republicans made significant gains in town politics. Randy in 2021 was elected town supervisor, but did not finish his term, resigning a year early to return to his previous post with the Erie County Department of Social Services.

Hoak also works for the county, as deputy commissioner for the Department of Public Works. Before taking that job, she spent two decades in private-sector construction management jobs while raising two children as a single mother. 

“I’m a working mom. I’ve raised both of my children, primarily, completely on my own,” she said. “I have endured struggles and hardships that so many people are facing.”

She said the breadth of her experience — as a single mother, an elected official, a professional who’s worked on infrastructure projects in and out of government — is “unique to this race” and distinguishes her from the other two candidates. She said it has taught her how to build relationships across political divides.

Like many Democratic candidates this year, she said “affordability” is the “number one issue” she’s hearing about from voters in the district.

“Affordability, though, isn’t just one issue,” she said. “Affordability is housing, affordability is healthcare, affordability is childcare, and affordability is infrastructure, and affordability is public safety.”

She, like Deese and Bojak, supports a statewide single-payer healthcare system. She supports legislation to improve pay and conditions for home healthcare workers who look after the elderly and disabled, according to her website’s platform page. She supports an income tax surcharge on state residents making $1 million or more annually.

In addition to the endorsement of the Erie County Democratic Committee, she’s won the support of three labor unions, according to her campaign website. One of those is AFSCME Local 1095, which represents about three-quarters of the county’s public works employees. U.S. Rep. Tim Kennedy and Erie County Legislator Taisha St. John Tard have endorsed her, too, along with Eleanor’s Legacy and Advance Native Political Leadership — groups that support women candidates and candidates of indigenous ancestry, respectively.

She’s also won the support of online sport-betting companies FanDuel and DraftKings, which fund a political action committee called New York Future. As of Tuesday, the PAC reported spending more than $275,000 promoting Hoak’s candidacy — on TV and digital ads, polling and research, and direct mail. 

That’s more than Hoak’s campaign committee has raised or spent thus far on its own, according to the most recent campaign finance disclosures.

Deese: “changing a broken system”

Deese, 34, was raised in Florida and attended the U.S. Naval Academy. Shortly before graduation, he was diagnosed with HIV — which, at the time, disqualified him from receiving his commission. He joined a lawsuit that succeeded in changing federal policy. 

In 2024, he was made an ensign in the U.S. Navy Reserve in a ceremony at the Naval Park on Buffalo’s waterfront, attended by his family and his partner Jake, who grew up in Hamburg. The pair has since married.

“I thought, you know, this is what fighting and changing a broken system looks like,” Deese said of that moment. “You don’t give up and you don’t make excuses for the things that are broken. You learn the system, you work to change it, and you don’t stop until the job is done.”

In 2024, Deese joined a small band of insurgents who ran for Democratic Party committee seats. As it happened, he ran in the West Side election district represented by Jon Rivera — and beat him by a two-to-one margin. 

“When I saw who I was up against, I said, ‘Oh, well, crap,’ but I put in the work, and neighbors came out and voted,” he said.

On the spectrum of political ideology, Deese said he lands “on the progressive edge of mainstream Democratic policy thinking.” He counts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — both former presidential candidates — as role models, along with U.S. Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of Queens.

He said he believes Democrats must “build durable coalitions” that jettison “the intra-party debates and divides around moderate versus progressive, or centrist versus left, or establishment versus DSA.”

His platform page includes support for the New York HEAT Act, which would free ratepayers from subsidizing the extension of natural gas infrastructure to new customers and steer money toward clean energy development and energy efficiency, including weatherization programs.

He supports the governor’s reforms to state environmental law to make new housing construction “inexpensive and fast as possible.”

Asked to differentiate himself from the other two candidates in the race, he said the voters he’s met knocking on doors want “fresh blood,” rather than “the same-old, same-old, status-quo politics and political dynasties” or “aggressively leftist” alternatives.

“I’m someone that the working families of this district can trust to make decisions and choose my battles based exclusively on what is going to make the biggest positive difference in their lives,” he said, rather than in response to political pressure, “favors owed” or “ideological purity.”

On Monday, Deese was endorsed by the Stonewall Democrats of Western New York.

Primary elections are June 23. Early voting begins June 13.

Attorney Frank Bogulski, a Hamburg town board member, has the Republican and Conservative Party lines in November’s general election, but faces steep odds. Nearly half the district’s 80,000 registered voters belong to either the Democratic or Working Families parties. Just under a quarter are registered Republicans or Conservatives. Another quarter are unaffiliated with any party.