NJ Voters Guide: 33rd Legislative District
New Jersey’s 33rd Legislative District lies along the Hudson River. It covers Guttenberg, North Bergen, Secaucus, Union City, Weehawken and West New York in Hudson County.
Long a blue district, Democrats make up 57% of the registered voters, while 14% are Republicans and most of the rest are unaffiliated.
Incumbent Assemblyman Gabriel Rodriguez, the former mayor of West New York, and Larry Wainstein of North Bergen won a contested primary. Assemblyman Julio Marenco did not seek reelection.
The Republicans are frequent candidate Anthony Valdes of West New York and Cynthia DePice of Secaucus.
Editor’s note: All candidates were contacted multiple times for the NJ Decides 2025 voting guide Q&As. Click on a candidate to see any answers provided.
The candidates
The candidate did not respond to the questionnaire.
Age: 48 Hometown: Secaucus Occupation: Teacher Personal or professional background: 23 years teaching at the school system I attended. Currently I am the cooperative education coordinator, in short I help students find work and/ or use work as part of their curriculum and learning In this capacity I am out and about in my community regularly. What is your top issue this year? Wasteful spending, we have learned the hard way that throwing money at the problem isn’t fixing anything. What are your specific proposals for making New Jersey more affordable? Stop funding programs that are ineffective. Do you support the state law designed to increase the amount of affordable housing and if not, how would you make housing less costly for residents? I do not. There is plenty of housing, the residents need to have time limits for the housing subsidies. How would you manage potential federal funding cuts to social services, health care, education, and other areas, particularly in light of the state’s budget challenges? Perhaps there is a solution that doesn’t exist yet. Perhaps something like a coalition between schools and existing communities resources for some of these populations. I see a lot of opportunities for teenagers that would use their time and energy in a positive way that would get them out from behind their screens and actually contributing to society.
The candidate did not respond to the questionnaire.
Age: 44 Hometown: West New York Occupation: NJ State Employee Personal or professional background: NJ Civil Servant for the past 14 years. NJ DCA Hotel and Multiple-Dwelling Inspector. Lifelong resident of West New York What is your top issue this year? Eliminate wasteful spending, affordability, lower taxes, bring down energy costs by ramping up energy production, and bail reform. What are your specific proposals for making New Jersey more affordable? Building new power plants to increase energy production, which would lower energy prices across the board, contributing to affordability. Do you support the state law designed to increase the amount of affordable housing and if not, how would you make housing less costly for residents? I support affordable housing but with amendments to the current law. Forcing certain municipalities to build affordable housing is wrong. By eliminating wasteful spending as a whole at the state level we can build more affordable housing where it’s needed, which is mostly in the urban high-population density areas. How would you manage federal funding cuts to social services, health care, education, and other areas, particularly in light of the state’s budget challenges? By eliminating wasteful spending such as unnecessary vendor contracts and special interest programs costing NJ Taxpayers billions each year
