Toby Ann Stavisky
D · New York State Senate, District 11 · Tier 1/2
Tier 1/2, between “Firmly pro-Israel” and “Mainstream pro-Israel”
Jewish; in the State Senate since 1999. Delivered a floor speech supporting an Israel resolution (April 2010) and engages Agudath Israel. She signed the October 2023 “New York Legislators Stand With Israel” letter but has no located Gaza-era position on a ceasefire, arms, or BDS. A mainstream liberal Democrat whose main legislative focus is higher education, she also signed a 2023 letter criticizing Yeshiva University that drew Orthodox rebukes.
A 1/2, on a thin record. She spoke for an Israel resolution in the State Senate in 2010, signed the October 2023 “New York Legislators Stand With Israel” letter (“As we stand in solidarity with the Jewish state…”), and cosponsors S7034-A, the Senate bill to codify the IHRA definition of antisemitism in New York. None of it is leadership: she wrote none of these texts. In January 2016 she voted for S6378A, the Senate bill to bar state contracts with, and investment in, businesses that boycott “American allied nations,” Israel among them; its sponsor’s memo named BDS as the target. In December 2023 she signed the “Women’s Rights Leaders Condemn the Atrocities of October 7th” statement, which condemned the sexual violence of the October 7 attack and added, “We mourn the deaths of so many Palestinian and Israeli civilians who have been killed in this war,” saying it did not “signal support for the bombings in Gaza”; Gov. Kathy Hochul, the leaders of both chambers and dozens of legislators from across the spectrum on Israel signed it, so it does little to set any one signer apart. No position of hers on a ceasefire, arms or the genocide has been located. Her legislative focus is the state’s colleges and universities; the 2025 law she sponsored, putting a Title VI coordinator at every college in the state, is a general civil-rights measure rather than an Israel one.
Open the full card, with votes, money and every source, on elect26 →
elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).