Claudia Tenney is tired of Albany's business-as-usual routine. She's been there as an Assemblywoman for two terms, and she wants to go back for a third to continue her fight.

Claudia Tenney is tired of Albany’s business-as-usual routine.

She’s been there as an Assemblywoman for two terms, and she wants to go back for a third to continue her fight.

“It’s about freedom and individual rights and enabling an individual to survive in our society successfully without the overreach of government,” said Tenney of New Hartford. “It’s hard to do in a state like New York.”

She’s challenged in Tuesday’s Republican primary for the 101st District seat by Herkimer County Sheriff Chris Farber. No Democrat or other candidate has entered the race, so the primary could determine who gets the seat.

No matter who wins Tuesday, there could be a rematch in November. Tenney has the Conservative Party line and Farber has the Independence line, so each could remain in the race.

This is the second Republican primary Tenney has run in this year. She challenged incumbent U.S. Rep. Richard Hanna, R-Barneveld. She lost that race, but her conservative message attracted a healthy 47 percent of the vote, far more than many experts had predicted.

The state’s new election calendar, in which federal primaries take place in late June, enabled Tenney to switch her focus back to her Assembly seat after the loss.

Now, she has endorsements from the state Conservative Party and the National Rifle Association. She also has high rankings from the National Federation of Independent Businesses and conservative Unshackle Upstate.

Tenney, 53, is the mother of a U.S. Marine. She also is an attorney and co-owner of her family’s business, Mid-York Press. She worked for former Assemblyman Dave Townsend from 2002 to 2009, serving as his chief of staff for most of that time.

Like Townsend, Tenney has not been shy about bucking her party, and also has continued Townsend’s opposition to the Oneida Indian Nation’s push to place land into federal Indian trust.

Tenney said she wants to make Albany more supportive of small businesses and family farms.

“We need less taxes, less government, less regulation and better energy costs,” she said. She also wants to pull back the costly mandates the state imposes on counties and schools.

Tenney is strongly critical of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is facing re-election and an ethics investigation.

“The governor creates an anticorruption commission and is being investigated by the federal government for corrupting it,” she said. “Where else would that happen?”

She also criticized Cuomo’s Start-Up New York initiative, which gives tax breaks to new businesses that locate near state colleges and universities, calling it a “phony initiative” and “crony capitalism.”

She said if elected, she would continue to stand up to Cuomo.

“Everybody just sort of goes along with it because they are afraid they are going to lose their job or be punished,” she said. “It’s time to break away from that. We are hitting rock bottom.”

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