🗞️ PRESS STATEMENT — JASON S. ARNOLD, CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK (JSA2026)

“I’m not a good candidate. I’m the right one.”

📞 Phone: (516) 586-0660
📧 Email: jaysarnold@icloud.com
🌐 Website: https://jsa2026.com
📆 Issued: May 10, 2025

A CANDIDACY BUILT ON TRUTH: WHY I’M RUNNING

My name is Jason S. Arnold, and this isn’t your typical political press release. Because I’m not your typical candidate.

I’m not a trust fund baby. I wasn’t groomed for politics. I wasn’t polished by prep schools or sheltered by privilege. I was raised in the broken spaces that polite society pretends don’t exist.

I’m here to tell you who I am—all of it. Not just what you’d put on a résumé, but the kind of truth that makes people uncomfortable… and makes others finally feel seen.

MY LIFE STORY, UNCENSORED

I was born in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1979. My mom never made it past the 8th grade. My dad drank his feelings in a parked car while my older brother and I played in the Winthrop Coliseum. I don’t remember them ever being together. I remember broken homes, broken promises, and broken people trying to survive.

By age 13, I was smoking weed and drinking. By 15, I was sent to a Marine Institute. It saved me for a time. But I came back to a world that hadn’t changed.

By 16, I was arrested. I took a fall for a friend who betrayed me, and I never even had a lawyer when I took the deal. I was charged as an adult. That betrayal and that prison sentence shaped me.

By 17, I was in an adult prison. I found out my older brother Andy had died by suicide while I was still behind bars.

By 20, I was homeless in Florida.

By 23, I took a bus to New York City with $20 and a suitcase. That’s it. No family. No friends. No plan. I walked into a church and said, “God, I need help.” And He delivered.

FOR THE PEOPLE STILL FIGHTING

This campaign—JSA2026—is for those of you who never got a second chance. For the ones who got pushed into plea deals just because you had a record. For the ones who fought addiction in silence. For the ones who aged out of ACS or were swallowed up by CPS.

This is for my brothers and sisters in shelters and sober homes, for those who still believe a better day might come, even if today is hell.

This is for the people I slept outside with, the ones who gave me their last sandwich, or shared a cigarette and a story when I thought no one saw me.

This is for the ones in prison right now who are there for being poor, not evil.

This is for the mothers and fathers trying to raise their kids right with no help, no stability, and no mercy from the system.

And this is for the ones who already got a slice of the pie but haven’t forgotten what it cost to get there—and who still know we haven’t done right by the rest.

WHY I’M RUNNING

I’m running because New York doesn’t need another politician. It needs a survivor.

Someone who knows what it’s like to sign a plea deal just to go home.

Someone who knows what it’s like to lose a brother to suicide and still carry the silence of that unanswered phone call.

Someone who knows what it’s like to eat government cheese, wear donated clothes, and raise kids while battling addiction and eviction.

Someone who knows what happens when people give up on you—and what it means to keep going anyway.

THE TEARS I’VE SHED—AND THE ONES I’LL EARN

When you read about my childhood, I want your heart to break.

I want you to feel the moment I watched my mother get hit.
The moment my stepfather knocked my teeth out.
The moment my little brother died in a motorcycle crash trying to visit me for the first time.
The moment I stood in court without a lawyer while adults made deals about my life.
The moment I learned my brother Andy took his own life while I was locked away.

And the moment I stepped off that bus in New York and chose to become more than my story.

I’M STILL HERE. AND SO ARE YOU.

I’ve made peace with my past. Now I’m turning it into policy. If you’ve ever been forgotten, discarded, lied about, locked up, or left out—I’m running for you.

This isn’t just my campaign.

This is our comeback.

“I’m not a good candidate. I’m the right one.”

Let’s take New York back—and give it to the people it forgot.