My name is Alexandria Wojcik; friends call me Alex; my pronouns are she/they.
Get To Know Alex:
A dedicated public servant and passionate grassroots organizer, Alexandria Wojcik has been working and fighting to change the world for real ever since finding her home – and voice – while attending college at SUNY New Paltz, earning a BA in English in Spring ’07 and an MA in English in December ’09. Alex is serving her second term as a Village of New Paltz Trustee, currently as Mayor.
Early Life and a Family Committed to Public Service
Originally from Bay Shore, Alexandria was born to working class parents who instilled in Alex a deep reverence for helping others, and enjoying New York’s many parks as well as live music at local venues. After the family lap sponge factory went out of business, her dad Peter (who passed away in 2025) worked as a nuclear physicist in the medical imaging field, and her mom Juliana became an RN. Alex is the oldest of 4 children: Jacquelyn is a teacher, currently a stay-at-home-mom to Alex’s nephew George; Peter Logan is a recently retired Lieutenant with the US Navy most recently deployed as Operations Officer and Air Boss for the USS Miguel Keith; and Victoria just started her new career as a paramedic with Nassau County Police after years doing the same with FDNY. Alex grew up believing her 24 first cousins were her siblings, and maintains that closeness with her large, loving family full of military members, teachers, nurses, police officers, and artists as it continues to grow and spread-out all across the country.
Alex the Teacher and Academic
Throughout college, but especially in graduate school, Alexandria honed the ability to combine her passions for social justice and the power of the written word. Alex believed that she could help foster a more beautiful world, one in which history does not repeat itself to the detriment of everyday people just trying to get ahead, through teaching college-level writing. While teaching composition and rhetoric (aka “writing 101”) at SUNY New Paltz and SUNY Ulster, she shared with her students her passion for digging into archives to find primary sources. Alex loved applying the skills she learned at her college work-study jobs in the Sojourner Truth Library to her ethos as a Teaching Assistant and an Adjunct. Her belief that history is the foundation of any solid argument, the warrant of every sentence, manifested itself in the syllabi she crafted and taught – each semester culminated in Alex grading a few dozen self-published “zines” rather than traditional papers, and offering extra credit for any letters to the editor students got published.
In addition to teaching writing, Alex focused her graduate academic pursuits on researching and writing about 20th century literature – specifically Holocaust studies, as well as a deeper dive into the works and world of Ernest Hemingway. Alex helped organize SUNY New Paltz’s Holocaust literature symposium in 2008, and presented her research on the topic of “witnessing” through reading literature about the atrocities of WWII. Alex did her comprehensive exam translations in Middle English, the prototype of the “Early Modern English” used by Ulster County’s settlers prior to the Revolutionary War.
Since Alex’s departure from academia, she has remained an active member of the International Hemingway Society, continuing her work with Ernest Hemingway’s manuscripts (housed at the JFK Library in Boston), which she believes tell some of the truest stories of 20th century America and offer countless insights for navigating life today. Alex has presented her Hemingway research at conferences in Switzerland, Italy, Michigan, Illinois, and up in Lake Placid. She eagerly awaits the call for papers for the 2026 conference. Alex also remains deeply involved with her Alma Mater: in 2024, she was honored as a SUNY New Paltz 40 Under 40, and was a panelist at the university’s Women’s Leadership Conference.
Alex Finds Activism
In 2011, fracking was on the table in NY – big oil and gas companies were knocking on our doors here in Ulster County! – and Alex felt an urgent call to pivot away from teaching towards work in which she could more directly help people and the planet. For the next few years, Alex worked for the New York Public Research Group (NYPIRG), the consumer and environmental protection advocacy organization for which she served as a member of the Board of Directors and worked as a canvasser every summer during college. As a public interest advocate and campus coordinator with NYPIRG, Alex learned the nuts and bolts of issue-based campaign work focused on banning fracking and labeling GMOs. During the summer months, Alex directed the organization’s Hudson Valley outreach office, where she recruited, hired, and trained hundreds of paid canvassers who raised an average of $150,000 each summer in the door-to-door fundraising and educational outreach efforts.
Alex the Deputy Village Clerk
In 2015, fracking was banned in NYS, and Alexandria changed gears yet again. Her tenure with NYPIRG had elucidated some of the shortcomings of state and local government when it comes to helping people – especially the working class – and Alex sought out new opportunities that would help her learn even more about how things work, and how they could work better. The Village of New Paltz had a new mayor, who then hired Alex as Deputy Village Clerk. In that role Alex developed a deep passion for records management and learned that her calling in life is to democratize processes and systems so that local government works for working people.
Alex the Campaign Organizer
Alexandria has been an integral part of Democratic and Working Families electoral campaigns in our region since Zephyr Teachout’s 2016 congressional run. During that cycle, Alex worked with the People’s Empowerment Project organizing door-to-door canvas efforts in which the focus was Teachout’s strong stance on keeping big money out of politics. She also volunteered as a “Woman With Zephyr.” That same year Alex joined the New Paltz Democratic Committee and attended the “campaign school” workshops hosted by groups like Ulster County Democratic Women and the League of Women Voters. A year later, Elliott Auerbach took Alex on for his final campaign as Ulster County Comptroller, and Alex learned the ropes of a successful countywide campaign. Through those experiences, Alex realized that applying her grassroots issue-based campaign experience to electoral politics could be the ticket to not only winning elections, but changing the world forever.
In 2018, Alexandria got the call that shaped her path from that point on – an invitation to work as a Field Organizer on Dave Clegg’s Congressional team during that cycle’s historic 7-way primary. After Clegg’s defeat, Alex continued in the same role with Antonio Delgado’s team during the General, where she played a vital role in flipping NY’s old 19th congressional district from red to blue, successfully electing the rural 11-county-wide district’s first-ever Person of Color to Congress. Alex found her niche that cycle by turning-out SUNY New Paltz voters in record numbers. There were weeks during that cycle when Alex held the title of “most volunteer shifts shifted” of any Field Organizer working on any Congressional campaign in the country.
Alex has continued to serve as the “go-to” person when it comes to getting out the student and youth vote, while wearing a variety of hats on campaigns, perhaps most notably as Co-Field Director for Manny Nneji’s campaign for Ulster County DA, successfully electing the first-ever Black countywide elected official and first-ever Nigerian-American District Attorney. In 2020, Alexandria was elected as the first-ever Vice Chair for Fundraising for the Ulster County Democratic Committee, and over the course of the next 4 years she helped the county party get out of debt and to finally have the tools and funds necessary for the organization to become the powerhouse in the state that it is today. Through working on these campaigns, Alexandria realized the significance of human contact in the public sphere. Winning campaigns are driven by human contact at the door, over the phone, at events, everywhere; winning campaigns are thus grounded in love and radical empathy. Alex believes that field-driven political campaigns are truly changing the world forever – changing attitudes around contentious issues and healing our divides – one election cycle at a time.
Alex for Senate External Relations
Following the landmark 2018 campaign cycle, Alexandria began working with the NYS Senate Democratic Majority Conference as an External Relations Associate, where she applied the same passion for human connection to the government side of things. In this behind-the-scenes role in the district offices of former Senator Jen Metzger and current Senator Michelle Hinchey, Alex pitched, planned, and executed the 1000s of Mobile Office Hours, and the dozens of resource fairs for veterans and seniors, and countless other events that ensured the members and their teams meet constituents where they are at. Alex also developed an intensive District Office internship program which she ran for both of these offices, overseeing 100s of interns in that time. Alex’s experiences with the Senate taught her that public service centered on radically inclusive constituent services absolutely makes her heart sing – and is what the people both need and deserve.
Alex for the Village of New Paltz
Also in 2019, Alexandria applied to volunteer on the Village of New Paltz’s Zoning Board of Appeals. Her friend and mentor Dr. KT Tobin, who was the Village’s Deputy Mayor at that time, responded with a text that changed Alex’s world forever: “why don’t YOU run for Trustee?” So Alex threw her hat in the ring as 1 of 4 candidates vying for 2 seats on the Village Board of Trustees. She successfully ousted 2 longtime incumbents via a people-powered grassroots, non-partisan, zero-dollar campaign, becoming the only tenant to serve on the governing body representing a municipality in which over 80% of constituents are also tenants. Four years later, once Village elections were moved to the general cycle via referendum, Alex still chose to run her Working Families Democrat campaign without accepting any donations or expending any funds, in order to demonstrate that a world in which there is no money in politics is possible.
As Village Trustee, and Deputy Mayor, Alexandria has continued to explore her passion for inclusive, intersectional constituent services. Since 2019, she’s set a new bar for constituent services on the hyper-local level by hosting dozens of “know your rights” trainings and informational workshops with groups like Legal Services of the Hudson Valley, NYPIRG, For The Many, Mid-Hudson Democratic Socialists of America, and countless student organizations based at SUNY New Paltz. She regularly hosts pop-up paperwork parties to assist individuals with their applications for the Village’s affordable housing waitlist. Her favorite part of this position is finding new ways to meet everybody where they are at, breaking down barriers, and democratizing processes and systems so that local government works for the working class.
Being Acting Mayor of Ulster County’s gem of a mountain-university village means so much more than balancing a $15 million dollar budget and other perfunctory duties. Alex serves as liaison to the Village’s Landlord-Tenant Relations Council, Environmental Policy Board, and Climate Smart Taskforce; she is also the Village’s Fair Housing Officer and Housing Smart Communities Taskforce Coordinator, and a dozen more Village boards, commissions, and councils. She has directly assisted 100s of tenants by connecting them with resources and information, and championing the passage of pro-housing legislation such as the Village’s short-term rental and good cause eviction laws. She has supported smart development, too, with the Village’s housing stock increasing by 25% since she took office. Alex is lead drafter of the Village’s countless memorializing resolutions which amplify the experiences of and advocate for the community’s most marginalized populations, as well as the planet. One of Alex’s proudest accomplishments has been providing the Free Food Fridge a permanent home outside Village Hall. Alex’s pet project has been to build a skate park in Hasbrouck Park, with the community’s skaters co-leading the process every step of the way; the project is set to break ground within the next year.
During the COVID-19 crisis, Alex stepped-up as the Village’s Pandemic Public Information Officer, sharing-out vital information to the public as we faced the shutdown and eventual reopening that drastically shifted our community’s perspectives on the services provided by local government, and a broader definition of accessibility. These experiences – as well as her personal lived experiences as a domestic violence survivor, a working class individual facing housing instability, and the eldest daughter of aging parents – have largely informed Alexandria’s vision for elected office.
Since 2021, Alexandria has been a lead coordinator of New Paltz’s annual Pride March and Festival. Serving in office as an “out” queer woman, Alex has been hyper-sensitive to the importance of safe spaces for LGBTQ+ people. She is a founding member and Vice President of the New Paltz Pride Coalition, whose mission is to build a LGBTQ+ Pride Center in New Paltz.
Alexandria lives with her two cats in downtown New Paltz, and spends her spare time writing poetry, hiking, camping, and attending music events all over the region. She is proud of her work as an activist-in-office, and excited to be serving as the Village’s first-ever openly queer woman Mayor – and to be running to be the Village’s first-ever woman elected to the position of Mayor!