UTICA, N.Y. (WUTR/WFXV/WPNY) – Current Common Councilwoman for the First Ward, Katie Aiello, announced that she will officially run for reelection.

“Very excited, the constituents are excited,” said Aiello. “It seems like we’ve had a really good year, we’ve seen a lot of results come through, and yeah, we’re excited to see where this next year goes.”

She explains that it was her understanding that she would be the Democratic party’s choice but instead was blindsided by a sudden change.

“I will say I am still concerned and disappointed in the decision for my party,” she said, “And not just in their decision to not endorse me, because it’s pretty rare for an incumbent to not get an endorsement, but more so the silence that there was on the matter.”

When Aiello screened with the executive committee for the party on January 21^st of this year, she was informed that she was endorsed, only to find out a few weeks later that this was no longer the case.

“I was told that ‘endorsement’ now is just a ‘recommendation,’ as it goes, so from that point I got up and I screened with everyone, and when it came time for nominations, I was not voted in to be the endorsed candidate,” said Aiello.

“And I think the concern here for me is that it was all a secret up until that night,” she explained, “Nobody from my committee communicated anything with me if they had concerns, this past year or leading up to what they decided on that night, I was never made aware of it.”

However, despite not receiving her party’s nomination, Aiello says this isn’t discouraging her efforts.

“I am going to continue being a representative that they can trust, they can come to, I will share any detail with them that they want to know, and if people have more questions about the details of this matter you can go to my website, katieforutica.com, I’ll provide a whole timeline.”

She continued, “But for the most part, moving forward, we’re going to be talking about the constituents’ needs, but I did want to shed light on this process that I’m very troubled by and I hope other people – whether they like me or not, it’s not about that – it’s about the principles of what is it that we stand for either as a party or as a city.”