Candidate touts ‘strong record of public service’
WOODSTOCK, N.Y. » A local teacher who is a former U.S. intelligence officer and diplomat has launched his bid for the Democratic nomination in New York’s 19th Congressional District.
Jeffrey Beals, 40, is part of a crowded field of candidates hoping to unseat first-term U.S. Rep. John Faso, R-Kinderhook, in the November 2018 election.
Beals lives at 35 Mill Hill Road in Woodstock and is a history teacher at the Woodstock Day School. He kicked off his campaign with an event last week in Kingston.
“I am running because I have a strong record of public service in my life,” Beals said by phone Wednesday. “I am a teacher and educator, and I believe I can unite the people in this district.”
Beals said that there is a “solidarity” of people in the 19th District who “want a living wages for workers, health care for our families, a clean environment and a stronger country.”
Beals’ speech at his kickoff event outlined an “Eleven County Strategy,” a reference to the makeup of the district.
“Some people think that we just have to give up on some parts of the district,” Beals said. “But I’m on the side that says our message can resonate everywhere, and we can win everywhere. We can do it by opening our minds and our ears and working to win every last vote.”
The 19th Congressional District comprises all of Ulster, Greene, Columbia, Sullivan, Delaware, Schoharie and Otsego counties; most of Dutchess County; parts of Rensselaer and Montgomery counties; and a small piece of Broome County.
Beals said he will hold a series of policy forums, led by citizen experts, over the next several months. The first, focusing on health care, will be held in July.
Beals graduated from Harvard University in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in government and earned a master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies the same year.
He served with the CIA from 1997 to 2001 and was U.S. diplomat for four years in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Iraq.
Beals was sent back to Iraq as a special envoy by the National Security Council in 2007 and again in 2008 to sit on a commission to review the war effort..
Last year, he worked on the foreign policy team of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
He lived on his family’s farm in Putnam County before getting a job at the Woodstock Day School in the summer of 2016.
He’s been married for 10 years and has two sons, Abraham, 7, and Joseph, 4.
Beals said the Republican health care bill being drafted in the Senate doesn’t strike him as dealing with health care.
“It is not a health care
bill. It is a tax break bill for the rich,” he said.
A draft of the bill, so far kept under wraps, is to be made public Thursday.
Regarding North Korea, Beals is not keen on U.S. military intervention.
“I don’t know that there is a discussion of war,” he said. “I think the United States has to be a force for peace in the world and a bulwark against dictatorship and totalitarianism regimes.”
Beals also said more investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller is needed to determine whether the Donald Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.
“We all want to see that
investigation completed,” he said.
Closer to home, he said issues of importance in the 19th Congressional District include “the need for living wages for workers,” “protection of our environment” and mounting a “fight for health care so that people are not wiped out by medical bills and labor under debt because of simple misfortunes of being sick.”
Other Democrats who have declared their intention to seek the nomination in the 19th District, or are considering it, are Steven Brisee of Walden, Antonio Delgado of Rhinebeck, Brian Flynn of Elka Park, Gareth Rhodes of Kerhonkson, Sue Sullivan of Plattekill, and Pat Ryan, a Kingston native who plans to return to Ulster County from Brooklyn.