State Sen. John Brooks (D-Seaford) has had a “change of heart” and will now seek re-election in the 5th State Senate District, after previously announcing he would retire this year, his communications director confirmed Friday.
Brooks, who currently serves District 8, will hold a news conference on Saturday to formally announce his run in District 5. Brooks initially announced on Tuesday that he would not run again due to the redrawing of his district map, which shifted the 8th district north and east, losing the coastal Nassau communities from Baldwin to Seaford that Brooks served for the past six years.
“The new district map provided for the district where I live and my family has resided since before the founding of the United States was clearly created by someone with no understanding of Long Island,” Brooks said in a statement.
Shortly after his announcement Tuesday, news broke of an elementary school shooting in Uvalde, T.X., which claimed the lives of 19 children and two adults. According to a news release sent on Friday, Brooks’ reversed decision comes “in light of New York’s redistricting and the gun violence plaguing our state and country.”
At Saturday’s news conference, Brooks will be joined by several community leaders, including Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and Linda Beigel-Schulman, a gun violence prevention activist and founder of the Scott J. Beigel Memorial Fund, who lost her son, Scott, in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, F.L. in 2018.
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