Gates Town Supervisor Mark Assini will resign from his position next month.

In a phone interview with Assini on Sunday, the longtime politician said he will be exiting to take a job at a private company. He is set to meet with the employees of that firm on Monday, Oct. 8, and declined to name the company until he has talked to them.

Assini has already spoken to staffers in the town of Gates. He plans to resign after the next town meeting in November. Assini's term as town supervisor ends Dec. 31, 2019.

The Republican would have been up for re-election next November. An interim supervisor will be named and the Republican and Democratic parties will nominate their candidates for town supervisor next spring. There are 7,019 enrolled Democrats versus 5,603 enrolled Republicans in the town of Gates as of 2017 and 4,412 blanks or voters who did not register with a political party.

The one-time rising star who almost upset stalwart Rep. Louise Slaughter in the 25th Congressional District race in 2014 — losing by 868 votes — said last spring that he would take a few months to consider his future after declining to challenge James Maxwell for the Republican nomination for the 25th Congressional District, when Maxwell received the Conservative Party endorsement.

Assini had said in spring he did not want to split the vote.

Assini said he had no regrets about his life in politics and funding his own congressional race during his first run.

Assini drew on his father's life for inspiration. An immigrant from San Marco dei Cavoti in Benevento province in Italy, Vincent Assini was one of the few lawyers in the community in the 1950s who spoke Italian. People who had little money but needed his help could count on him, no questions asked, Assini recalled.

The inheritance that his father and mother left him helped him launch a bid for Congress back in 2004 in the old 29th district. He lost the primary to Randy Kuhl and lost his entire $150,000 inheritance.

"No regrets," Assini asserted.

His second opportunity came a decade later in 2014 in the race against Slaughter. No one wanted the nomination after Slaughter handily defeated former Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks two years earlier and no one took him seriously. It was a grass-roots campaign that gained traction, Assini said.

It took eight days for Assini to concede. On his mind was the Independence Party endorsement that he earned earlier that year. He could not get on the ballot as an Independence Party candidate because he did not have enough volunteers to get the required number of signatures.

"We came up short," Assini said. "If we had that line, we would have won."

Slaughter soundly defeated Assini in the rematch in 2016 with 56.2 percent of the votes.

A former finance and accounting manager at Eastman Kodak Co. and American Rock Salt, Assini said private practice opportunities exist in those fields.

Monroe County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo, the top elected Republican official in the county, wished Assini well.

“I thank Mark for his many years of dedicated public service as Supervisor of the Town of Gates and in the County Legislature, and I wish him all the best as he pursues this new professional opportunity,” Dinolfo said in a statement.

MCHAO@Gannett.com

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