The wife of a former Gloversville mayor has announced her candidacy for the 118th District seat in the state Assembly, creating a three-way Republican primary for the nomination in June.

Chanda Insognia King, 44, of Johnstown, joins Charles Potter of Gloversville and Christina VanValkenburgh of Johnstown seeking the post being vacated by Assembly Member Robert Smullen, R-Johnstown, who is running for the 21st District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, being vacated by Elise Stefanik.

“I didn’t wake up one day thinking politics sounded fun,” King said in a release. “Politics showed up anyway, in our homes, our businesses, and our conversations. Too many people feel talked at, instead of listened to. I’m not here to follow a script or chase a title. I’m here to listen and represent this district with integrity.”

The district includes Hamilton County, most of Fulton and Herkimer counties, and parts of Montgomery and Oneida counties.

King said her platform includes protecting seniors and veterans, promoting Second Amendment rights, supporting small businesses and family farms, school choice and parental authority in children’s medical care, and accessible health care without mandates.

King has never held public office, but has been involved in civic life for years, volunteering during the administration of her husband, former mayor Dayton King, who resigned in 2019 following his guilty plea to official misconduct, a misdemeanor, admitting he used the city’s postage meter for non-city business.

“I’m running on my own merit, my own experience, and my commitment to the people who live here,” Chanda King said. “This decision is mine. No one recruited me, no one raised me, no one gave me permission that it’s my turn. I stand on my own feet. I believe women can be strong, capable leaders without abandoning faith, family, or traditional values. I don’t believe strength requires apology, and I don’t believe leadership requires abandoning who we are.”

VanValkenburgh, 51, was elected Johnstown’s town supervisor in 2023. She was elected to the town board in 2021 and named deputy supervisor in 2022.

She built her Assembly platform from issues she’s worked on at the town and county level: establishing a county animal abuse registry to track offenders and reduce repeat offenses; establishing solar development regulations similar to what the town passed in October; and calling on her experience as a former Fulton County sheriff’s deputy and investigator, and the owner of the Johnstown Agway. VanValkenburgh’s campaign will focus on expanding rural broadband, supporting public safety and small businesses, protecting agriculture and farmland and pushing back against state mandates that hurt communities.

Potter, 53, has represented Gloversville on the Fulton County Board of Supervisors since 2011 and was its chair in 2016. He remains the chair of the Gloversville GOP and spent several months working for state Sen. Mark Walczyk, R-Sackets Harbor.

He said he would build his campaign on a four-issue platform: emergency response, education, economic development and agriculture. Technology and communications infrastructure play a large part in each area, including erecting cellphone towers that can improve emergency response and civilian communication.

A motorcade makes its way down the FDR Drive after leaving Manhattan Federal Court where Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was arraigned with his wife Cilia Flores, Monday.

Venezuela US

NEW YORK (AP) — A defiant Nicolás Maduro declared himself “the president of my country” as he protested his capture and pleaded not guilty Monday to federal drug trafficking charges that the Trump administration used to justify removing him from power in Venezuela.

“I was captured,” Maduro said in Spanish as translated by a courtroom interpreter before being cut off by the judge. Asked later for his plea to the charges, he stated: “I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country.”

Maduro’s court appearance in Manhattan, his first since he and his wife, Cilia Flores, were

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