Olympic gold medalist Sarah Hughes files to run for Congress in New York
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Olympic figure skating champion Sarah Hughes has filed to run for Congress in her native New York state, a spokesperson for her campaign confirmed Tuesday. Hughes, 38, will vie as a Democrat to represent New York’s 4th District, located on Long Island. The seat is currently held by a Republican, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, who is in his first term.
After unexpectedly winning gold at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City — making her the most recent American woman to do so — Hughes competed for another year before attending Yale, from which she graduated in 2009. She went on to earn a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and, per her LinkedIn page, recently spent 3½ years as a corporate associate at a law firm in Manhattan. Hughes is now in full-time pursuit of a business degree from Stanford University.
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While stunning American favorite Michelle Kwan and others in Salt Lake City, Hughes was still a 16-year-old resident of Great Neck, N.Y. Her hometown lies in New York’s 3rd District, which embattled Republican Rep. George Santos currently holds. Hughes’s spokesperson confirmed she has filed to run in the neighboring 4th District and is “putting the pieces into place to make an announcement in the next few weeks.”
“Born and raised on Long Island, Sarah is concerned about where we’re headed, whether it’s rising prices, public safety and gun violence, or threats to women’s health,” the spokesperson, Max Kramer, said in an email.
On a campaign webpage for Hughes, which as yet has few details about her candidacy, she is quoted as saying: “I’ve always been hopeful about our future; about our ability to come together and achieve great things in the face of difficulty and adversity. Long Island can be a great place to live and raise a family. We can tackle the rising cost of living. We can restore the SALT deduction so families don’t have to forego their kids’ education to meet their financial obligations. We can get assault weapons off our streets and keep our communities safe.”
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In 2022, D’Esposito, 41, won a seat vacated by retiring representative Kathleen Rice (D), who had held it since 2014. He defeated by a 51.9-48.1 margin Democratic nominee Laura Gillen, who announced last week that she is running again for the seat.
Hughes, whose younger sister Emily Hughes competed at the 2006 Olympics in Turin, is following Kwan into the political world.
The bronze medal winner in 2002 after earning silver at the 1998 Olympics and a five-time world champion, Kwan is now the U.S. ambassador to Belize. She joined Joe Biden’s presidential campaign team in 2019, following years of working with the State Department.
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Source: The Washington Post
