Gabriella Romero went from representing indigent clients in Albany County courtrooms to representing Albany itself in the New York State Assembly in under four years, becoming along the way the first Latina ever to represent an upstate New York Assembly district.
Now in her first term, she’s emerged as a lead sponsor of some of the Legislature’s most contested responses to federal immigration enforcement, putting her at the center of a fight that stretches well beyond Albany.
So who is Gabriella Romero, how did a public defender become one of Albany’s fastest rising legislators, and what’s at stake as she heads toward her first reelection this fall?
Quick Facts
- Party
- Democrat, Working Families
- Born
- Circa 1992 (estimated from her 2014 college graduation; exact date not publicly available)
- Hometown
- Albany, N.Y.
- Current Position
- New York State Assemblymember, 109th District
- Background
- Attorney; former Assistant Public Defender, Albany County. Former Albany Common Council Member, 6th Ward
- In Office Since
- 2022 (Common Council); 2025 (Assembly)
- Current Term Through
- January 2027 (seeking reelection in November 2026)
EARLY LIFE
Romero was born and raised in Albany, the daughter of two unionized state workers. Her official biography credits that upbringing with instilling, in its words, a deep appreciation for public service and the transformative power of collective action.
A precise birth date for Romero has not been made public. Based on her 2014 undergraduate graduation, she was likely born around 1992, though no news outlet has confirmed her exact age.
She attended Shaker High School in nearby Colonie before earning a psychology degree from Union College in 2014, and was later selected as a Minerva Fellow, spending a year serving in Estero de Plátano, Ecuador.
Romero welcomes members of Girls Inc. of the Greater Capital Region to the Assembly Chamber, May 2025. (NYS Assembly)
She went on to graduate from Albany Law School in 2018, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Government Law Review and as a Pro Bono Scholar, distinctions that marked her out early as a rising legal talent.
A CAREER AS A PUBLIC DEFENDER
After law school, Romero worked as a felony trial attorney in the Albany County Public Defender’s office, taking cases to verdict and handling what her official biography calls extensive mitigation work.
That work was aimed, in her office’s words, at contextualizing the root causes of criminal behavior, an approach she has said deepened her understanding of the systemic criminalization of poverty, housing instability and food insecurity.
Reflecting on the career switch years later, she told Spectrum News, “I’ve undoubtedly had challenges and sticky situations where people have literally said, ‘you’re just a public defender.’ You know, I keep it moving.”
ENTERING POLITICS
Romero’s run for office grew directly out of the 2020 protests over policing. “I was driven to run for Common Council after widespread demand for police accountability and transparency in 2020,” she later said.
ROMERO'S PATH TO THE ASSEMBLY
Romero moved from a 2020 policing-protest campaign to the Albany Common Council in 2021, then to the State Assembly in 2025, succeeding Patricia Fahy in the 109th District.
When longtime 6th Ward Councilman Richard Conti declined to seek reelection in 2021, Romero entered a four way Democratic primary, campaigning on releasing police disciplinary records and giving Albany’s Community Police Review Board subpoena power.
She won the primary and general election, becoming, according to Ballotpedia, the first Latina elected to represent the 6th Ward, and took office in January 2022, just over a year after launching her campaign.
COMMON COUNCIL TENURE
Her first bill to become law, Ordinance 9.41.22, repealed a decades-old ban on skateboarding in downtown Albany. The mayor initially vetoed it, and the council unanimously overrode that veto, an early sign of Romero’s willingness to push legislation through resistance.
On the council, Romero focused on tenant rights, criminal justice reform and youth recreation. Her signature legislative achievement was Local Law Q, a bill requiring the police commissioner to formally justify any disagreement with the Community Police Review Board’s discipline recommendations.
She has said the measure cemented powers Albany voters had already approved by ballot referendum in 2021, closing what she saw as a gap between what voters authorized and what the police department actually had to do.
In 2024 she introduced an ordinance requiring project labor agreements on certain city construction projects, steering public work toward unionized labor, and co-sponsored a local law updating Albany’s eviction protections after the state’s own Good Cause Eviction law superseded the city’s original 2021 version.
ELECTION TO THE STATE ASSEMBLY
When 12 term Assemblymember Pat Fahy left to run for the State Senate in 2024, Romero entered a crowded six candidate Democratic primary to succeed her in the 109th District, winning with a 29.8 percent plurality.
She then defeated Republican Alicia Purdy in the general election, taking more than 72 percent of the vote in a district that has favored Democrats by wide margins for more than a decade.
She was sworn in on Jan. 1, 2025, becoming, as Working Families Party officials later noted, the first Latina to represent an upstate New York Assembly district, a distinction that drew statewide attention to her win.
PRIORITIES AS ASSEMBLYMEMBER
In her first term, Romero has continued pressing on tenant protections, joining a coalition of Capital Region legislators who called on the state Health Department to address more than 500 staffing law violations at Albany Medical Center.
She has also directed state grant funding to organizations including United Tenants of Albany and the New York Immigration Coalition, and in May 2026 helped secure a new round of multi year state funding for the city itself.
She has also sponsored legislation expanding the state’s MERIT scholarship program for the families of veterans and, with Sen. Fahy, introduced a bill renewing direct-sales certificates for electric-vehicle manufacturers, part of a broader push on affordability that includes calls for utility bill relief.
She has become one of the Legislature’s more visible voices on holding federal immigration agents accountable, co-sponsoring the New York Civil Rights Act with State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, a bill that would let New Yorkers sue federal officers in state court.
“Across the country we have seen federal officials repeatedly violate people’s civil rights,” Romero said in introducing the bill, which drew swift attention given the political stakes of taking on federal immigration enforcement directly through state legislation.
Gov. Kathy Hochul later included similar language in her executive budget, and Romero and Myrie agreed to narrow the bill’s scope somewhat after negotiations with the governor’s office over how broadly it should apply.
CONTROVERSIES AND CRITICISM
Romero’s immigration enforcement legislation sits inside a broader, sharply contested fight between New York State and the federal government, one that has drawn national attention well beyond her own district.
Romero joins advocates and the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Caucus at an Albany press conference opposing a rollback of discovery laws, April 2025. (NYS Assembly)
A related state law bars local police from cooperating with ICE on civil immigration matters and restricts the use of face coverings by federal agents, and has drawn a Justice Department lawsuit arguing the measures unconstitutionally interfere with federal enforcement.
More than a dozen New York sheriffs have separately sued the state over the cooperation ban, calling it dangerous to public safety and arguing it puts their own officers in an impossible legal position.
Supporters, including Gov. Hochul, have said the laws “don’t interfere with lawful enforcement or public safety” and simply give New Yorkers a path to hold bad actors accountable. Federal border czar Tom Homan has said he would respond by sending more agents into the state.
LOOKING AHEAD
Romero is on the ballot for a second Assembly term this November, in a race that had not been finalized as of this writing, with both major parties still sorting out their eventual nominees.
With the fight over state immigration enforcement law still working through the courts, and her own civil rights legislation still being negotiated in Albany, both are likely to remain central to her first reelection campaign.
For more on Albany’s legislative delegation, see PagPol’s profile of her predecessor, Patricia Fahy, and PagPol’s Albany County page. Sign up for PagPol’s Albany County newsletter to follow this story.
