Long Island's Edward Ra, new Assembly GOP leader, was bitten by the politics bug at an early age

ALBANY — If you want to know if Edward Ra got the politics bug early, consider this: How many 10-year-olds asked to have a surplus voting machine hauled to his house?

"They were throwing them away at the board of elections and a friend knew I had a big interest in politics and kind of dumpster-dove and gave it to me. And every year, I used to go the polling place with my parents to vote and I would take the sample ballot, I would cut it out and put it in there," Ra said.

"And I still have it in my office across the street."

Some 34 years later, across the street means the Legislative Office Building, where all 213 members of the New York State Assembly and Senate have office space, across from his even more spacious office inside the State Capitol as one of the most powerful Republicans from Long Island and in the state.

Ra, 44, is two months into his tenure as Assembly minority leader — the first Islander to hold the post since Perry Duryea in 1978.

Granted, the word "powerful" is limited in this context because Republicans are outnumbered better than 2-1 in the Assembly and their influence is confined largely to poking holes in Democrats’ arguments during debates, stalling floor proceedings to put a spotlight on bills and raising issues or proposing measures the opposition might eventually swipe.

Such as utility rebates.

With monthly bills skyrocketing, Ra, in his first news conference as leader, proposed issuing $400 rebates to consumers, tapping into funds stockpiled for future "green" energy projects. State agencies and utilities have accumulated about $2 billion in sort-of escrow accounts and though some other Democratic and Republican legislators called for returning the funds to New Yorkers in some form, Ra’s conference was the first this year to specifically propose a rebate check.

A few weeks later, the Democratic majority in the Assembly approved its version of a state budget: including a $300-$500 utility rebate based on homeowners’ incomes. Doing so put the rebate issue on the table for negotiations with Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat.

If it makes it into a final budget deal, "that would be a big one for us," Ra said, even if, because they are in the minority, it might be hard to get the bulk of the credit.

But back to how he got here.

Ra was steeped in government from the get-go. His father, Joe Ra, worked for the Town of Hempstead for about 40 years: deputy town attorney, town board member, then town attorney for the final 21. He inspired his son to seek elected office, a goal the younger Ra has fixed on since high school.

"If you look at politics as an outsider, you see a lot of the negative of politics," Ra said. "But I saw my father, I probably was in fifth or sixth grade when he was on the town board, people would come over with problems and he had an ability to go and find a way to help. Sometimes, it was those simple things like a stop sign" for a neighborhood.

Ra didn’t get a chance to run for something till 2010, when, at 29, he won an open Assembly seat in Nassau County. He won with 53% of the vote; it remains his closest race.

His father, who died in 2019, would watch the Assembly proceedings, even the late-night, pass-the-budget ones, Ra said. When Ra hopped in the car to leave Albany at the end of the week, his father always was the first phone call.

"He wanted to know all about what’s going on in Albany, what the political gossip was," Ra said.

His mom died of cancer when he was in law school. A bone-marrow transplant, though, had extended her life and one of his proudest legislative accomplishments was to co-sponsor a bill to make it easier for donors to sign up.

Edward Ra is Mets-Jets-St. John’s-Taylor Swift. He’s Loyola University of Maryland and St. John’s (N.Y.) Law School.

He is one of triplets. His sister, Jillian, is a schoolteacher; his brother, Joseph, works at the Nassau County Board of Elections. An aunt and uncle dubbed him "the brain" in high school and it kind of stuck.

Here’s what they say about him in Albany.

"He’s smart. He’s no nonsense. He doesn’t go for the low blow," said Assemb. Charles Lavine (D-Glen Cove).

"On the numbers, he knows his stuff. I enjoy his poker face," said Assemb. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-St. James).

"He’s not tricky. He’s a good communicator. Around Albany, he has a stellar reputation," said Sen. Siela Bynoe (D-Westbury).

"He’s very knowledgeable. He’s a great debater," said Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx).

Sen. Anthony Palumbo (R-New Suffolk) served seven years in the Assembly, where he and other Long Island Republicans sat in a cluster of desks. He said Ra rose in his colleagues’ eyes by "spearheading" their fight to roll back the "Common Core" curriculum and standards in New York school districts.

"He was a fairly new assemblyman and took the reins and ran with it and the fact that [Republican] leadership leaned on him to do so is certainly emblematic of his reputation and their confidence in him," Palumbo said.

Ra worked up the ladder to ranking Republican on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, meaning he’d be a lead debater on every budget matter and put him in a prominent leadership role. When Assembly Republican Leader Will Barclay (R-Pulaski) announced he would not seek reelection, it launched a short but brief internal skirmish with the party quickly selecting Ra as successor.

Leader is more about politics than wonk, though Ra is still a bit of the latter. On March 31, during an otherwise ordinary a debate on the Assembly floor, Ra stepped to his microphone to interrupt for a parliamentary "point of order" to defend a fellow Republican whose questions were essentially ruled out of order. It’s the first time longtime staffers could recall a leader doing such.

Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) served eight years in the Assembly with Ra before being elected to Congress and the pair, in their early 30s, spent a lot of their free time in Albany palling around downtown haunts after the day’s business.

They played on the bipartisan indoor soccer team — "Ed was the goalie. He was terrible," Garbarino said.

But for the serious business, Ra was always prepared. The two would regularly have breakfast over notes at Jack’s II, a then-diner two blocks up the hill from the Capitol to review bills they wanted to support or block for the week.

"Ed was always prepared and I think people saw that and said, ‘This is the guy,’ " Garbarino said in a phone interview. "When you wanted, well, you don’t bounce ideas off me; you bounce ideas off Ed. He was the guy you would call when you had a political or policy question. I still call him for advice."

By Yancey Roy

yancey.roy@newsday.com@yanceyroy