In the heated race for Westchester County executive, Republican Christine Sculti rarely misses an opportunity to go on the offensive against incumbent Ken Jenkins, a Democrat — particularly for his handling of Playland and on the hot-button issue of immigration.
Jenkins, meanwhile, rarely utters Sculti’s name during interviews unless pressed to do so. Instead, he portrays himself as someone willing to work across the aisle, as well as ethnic and geographic lines.
It’s classic politics, said Jenkins, who is running for his first full term in the executive office.
“When you are the opponent, you need to knock someone off their perch,” he said. “My job is not to be shrill, but to listen and come up with solutions.”
A longtime Yonkers resident, Jenkins served as deputy county executive from 2018 to 2025 under George Latimer before taking his place when Latimer was elected to Congress.
Prior to that, he was also a member of the Westchester County Board of Legislators from 2007 to 2017, including a stint as chairman.
Jenkins already beat Sculti by 28 points — even with President Donald Trump backing her — during a special election in February to fill out the remainder of Latimer’s county executive term, which ends this year.
Sculti, who lives in Mamaroneck but spent her high school and college years in Rye, is the Republican deputy commissioner for the Westchester Board of Elections. A holdover of the Rob Astorino administration, Sculti spent seven years as the former county executive’s chief advisor — 2010 to 2017 — and as the highest-ranking woman in his office.
She’s hoping the third time is the charm in her own bid for county executive. Besides losing to Jenkins, Sculti was also trounced by Latimer in 2021, losing by 24 points.
As she did in the special election campaign earlier this year, Sculti is attacking Jenkins for making Westchester “a magnet for criminal illegal aliens” through a law he co-sponsored as a county legislator in 2019, she said.
Repealing “Ken Jenkins’ dangerous sanctuary county law” would be the first thing she’d do when sworn in as county executive, she told The Record.
Westchester is not a sanctuary county, Jenkins argued. County law requires local law enforcement to work with federal authorities on criminal matters, but not on purely immigration matters, he said.
“No county, city, or state is required to do the federal government’s job,” Jenkins said.
In August, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem omitted Westchester from a revised list of sanctuary municipalities, Jenkins pointed out, though she included New York state and New York City.
Federal, state, and local statistics also show crime is down in Westchester this year.
Sculti’s other main criticism of Jenkins is his management of Playland. The Republican painted him as the mastermind of a “socialist” takeover of the county-owned amusement park that was doomed from the start to suffer “financial overruns, legal battles, and shuttered rides.”
The historic amusement park suffered through a tough season with as many as 14 rides closed throughout the summer, including its main attraction, the Dragon Coaster. When the waterfront park opened in May, roughly two-thirds of its rides were shuttered.
The Democrat countered that the troubled state of Playland stemmed from a series of bad agreements with Standard Amusements to operate the park that originated during the Astorino administration.
The county’s contentious relationship with Standard, under Jenkins’ watch, resulted in the management company’s January refusal to continue running the park. Considering the condition in which Standard left the park, Jenkins said, it was “miraculous” that Westchester officials were able to open the park even at reduced capacity this year.
With more time to prepare for next season, Jenkins said he is confident the county will be able to field a full slate of rides in 2026. Before the agreement with Standard, the county had operated Playland almost exclusively since the park’s opening in 1928.
“We are back in the business of running Playland,” Jenkins said. “We are not going to go with an outside company again.”
No polling has been conducted in the race for Westchester’s top elected official, but Sculti acknowledged that she faces “a deep blue county.”
“We need every person who reads this to vote and take back their county,” she said.
Jenkins, meanwhile, said he has his foot “on the gas” as he continues to campaign as the county’s first Black county executive.
“I believe the job I have done will be rewarded by the people of Westchester,” he said.
