Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Democrat Shreya Gupta is challenging Republican incumbent Richard LaMarca for Oyster Bay town clerk, saying she wants to improve efficiency in the office and make its services easier for residents to navigate.
The town clerk serves a two-year term as the custodian of town records, and handles a range of services for residents, including Freedom of Information Law requests, licenses and permits.
Gupta, 27, faces an uphill battle, with Republicans accounting for 35.5 percent of registered voters in the town, compared with 30.8 percent Democrats and 29.4 percent unaffiliated voters, with the remainder registered with other parties. LaMarca won re-election in 2025 with 64 percent of the vote. He had to run again because of a state ruling that moved many county and town elections to even-numbered years.
A Queens native who now lives in Bethpage, Gupta graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in upstate Troy, in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in civil engineering. She works for an international engineering firm specializing in transportation infrastructure.
Gupta said that her professional background has shaped both her approach to problem-solving and her decision to seek public office. After hearing concerns from residents and through her own experiences, she said, she believes town government could be more responsive to infrastructure and other quality-of-life concerns.
“You shouldn’t have to hit a pothole every time you drive,” Gupta said, referring to the condition of some town roads, which she described as “pretty bad.” Although infrastructure work is not among the town clerk's responsibilities, Gupta said that such concerns fed her interest in becoming more involved in local government.
If elected, she said, she would rely on the experience of the town clerk's existing staff while looking for ways to streamline the office's operations. Among her priorities would be making Freedom of Information Law requests and the permitting process easier for residents to understand and navigate.
Gupta also said she would seek additional funding for the office if needed, arguing that additional staffing could help it handle the volume of requests and services it provides.
Her goal, she said, would be “to make life better for our residents.”
Her engineering career, Gupta said, has taught her to approach problems analytically while considering how projects and decisions affect the people who rely on them. “I’m a structural engineer,” she said, “and my job requires me to be a critical thinker, and also requires me to care a lot about the well-being of the people who are affected by what I do. I would bring that to the position of town clerk.”
She said she also wants residents to have a clearer understanding of what services the town clerk's office provides and how they can access them.
Gupta said her immediate goal is to serve Oyster Bay and focus on the responsibilities of the town clerk. At the same time, she views the position as a possible starting point for a broader career in public service. “It’s a good place to start for me,” she said, “and I don’t intend on holding on to a position very long if I have outgrown it.”
Her candidacy, she said, is rooted in a belief that local government should be accessible and responsive to the people it serves. For her, she added, that begins with making the town clerk's office easier for residents to navigate and ensuring that its services are delivered efficiently.
