State Supreme Court judges serve 14-year terms.
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Economist, author, and former talk show host Larry Kudlow spoke to the annual meeting of the New York Republican State Committee last month in Albany.
The self-proclaimed Reagan supply-sider said he likes the big tent philosophy espoused by the 40th president.
“We can disagree on matters of conscience, morality and religion. I get that. I’m a pro-life Catholic but that’s not the issue,” he said. “I don’t feel like having this fight all over again. I don’t. [I believe in a] big tent, there’s room for everybody. There’s room for Catholic conservatives like myself, and there’s room for Log Cabin [gay] Republicans also.”
The rest of his message was simple and basic. “You [Republicans] have to remind voters that it is in their own self-interest to choose the party of free enterprise and you have to remind everybody that you are the party of free enterprise, not redistribution and not handouts,” he said.
Kudlow, 68, was born Jewish but converted to Catholicism nearly two decades ago after struggling with alcoholism and drug abuse. A Connecticut resident, he is strongly considering a run against U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
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The 39-member Albany County legislature is poised to get a Jewish member, the only one. Last month, Sam Fein, 25, a Newton, Massachusetts native, won a primary in a minority district that runs along the Hudson River in downtown Albany. This was the original Jewish community in Albany dating back to the 1880s.
Fein says his great-grandparents moved to the area after fleeing Eastern Europe, mostly Lithuania and the Ukraine, in the early 1900s. Fein, a 2012 Union College graduate, works in the New York State Assembly writing news releases for members in the Democratic majority.