In a historic shift, the Town of Poughkeepsie will now have its first Democratic supervisor in more than 20 years. 

Rebecca Edwards beat out incumbent Supervisor John Baisley for the seat. 

The 54-year-old longtime town resident previously served as a county legislator and also ran on the We Are Pok line. 

Edwards says she decided to run for office again after the town proposed a multimillion-dollar municipal and police department building. She says she just felt things could be done better.  

“I was not planning to run, but it just seemed that there were really good things that we could do,” says Edwards. "The town has a little bit of a Rip Van Winkle quality to it, and there are things that we could wake up and get done that could be really exciting.” 

Edwards says she wants to make resident accessibility improvements such as making online bill payments easier and creating better town summer camps for children and families. She says her administration also plans to focus on a new location for the police department. 

“We certainly need a new police station, and that’s on the top of the list. We need to work with town employees to make sure that we are a town that’s a good place to work,” Edwards says. 

Edwards ran on the Democratic and We Are Pok lines with three town board candidates who also won their seats, including incumbent Ann Shershin for Ward 6 and newcomers Barbara Laird for Ward 2 and Ryan Sharpe for Ward 5.