U.S. House race has national importance
The 19th Congressional District seat to be decided Tuesday, Nov. 6, features a closely contested race with potential national significance as Democrats bid to retake the House of Representatives.
All signs are that the race between the two major party candidates is a close one between Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. John Faso, of Kinderhook, and Democrat Antonio Delgado, of Rhinebeck.
Also on the ballot are Green Party candidate Steve Greenfield, of New Paltz, and independent Diane Neal.
The 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.
Faso, 66, is an attorney who has worked for real estate and lobbying firms. He moved to the district in 1983 and three years later won a state Assembly seat that he held until 2002, serving as minority leader over the last four years. He was unsuccessful as the Republican candidate in the 2002 race for state comptroller and in the 2006 race for governor.
He is a freshman congressman, having won election in 2016.
Faso is married and has two adult children. He graduated from Molloy High School in Queens, from SUNY Brockport in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in history and from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1979 with a law degree.
Faso is a lector at St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church in Valatie and a member of the Knights of Columbus John J. Curran Council in Valatie.
“The Upstate economy continues to be the main issue Upstate and the population loss which Upstate faces,” he said.
“What I propose is to preempt the Scaffold Law on any federally funded project,” Faso said. “This is the absolute liability statute that New York has which greatly increases costs for all construction in our state. We are the only state in the nation with this law, which dates from 1885, and it doesn’t help workers and it’s an onerous burden on homeowners, businesses, and local governments throughout the state.”
Faso added that he has sought to use federal legislation to end New York’s Medicaid mandate on county property taxpayers, saying that “in our district alone, that’s $220 million of statemandated cost that virtually no other taxpayers in no other state absorb.”
Faso said the Affordable Care Act needs further revision.
“The premiums and deductibles are too high and I have supported the bipartisan efforts of the Problem Solvers Caucus,” he said. “Two major pieces on that would be to raise the employer mandate from 50 employees to 500 and the second thing would be to create a reinsurance model so that the cost for very-highcost patients could be borne by the reinsurance, which would be federally and statefunded.”
Milk has been a central theme of the Faso campaign: “I continue to push for things like getting whole milk into our school lunch program, which would help increase the demand for fluid milk and also be beneficial from a health standpoint for kids since whole milk is much more nutritious than skim or low-fat milk.”
Faso added that he supports provisions in a trade agreement with Canada.
“I’m really pleased by the agricultural provisions, particularly the elimination of the discriminatory Class 7 milk rule that the Canadians had imposed, which was highly discriminatory against New York farmers,” he said.
Faso notes that he is “cosponsor of a bipartisan bill to fix the agricultural guest worker program. It would, in essence, normalize the status of workers who are currently not in legal status in the country. It would create a framework by which they could touch back into their home country and get permission to work in the United States.”
Faso says he would like to revise immigration policy and supports building walls across some parts of the U.S.Mexico border.
“We should get rid of things like the diversity lottery and change to a more merit-based, skills-based system to bring people in the country, not based on the random luck of the draw, but based on their skills and ability to be beneficial in the U.S. economy,” he said.
“We do not have operational control of the border right now,” Faso said. “The last month I saw data for was June, I think there were 38,000 people who illegally entered the United States, including 8,000 to 10,000 unaccompanied minors.”
Faso said there are about 1 million people registered for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and about 800,000 who are qualified, but have not registered.
“Fixing DACA by creating a legal process for these
young adults who were brought here as children and know no other country but the United States to have a normalized status and eventually allow themselves to apply for ... a green card and, then, ultimately citizenship by getting in line behind everyone else that’s already in line,” he said.
Antonio Delgado, 41, is a first-time candidate who moved to Rhinebeck in 2017. He is an attorney who worked with the firm Akin Gump. He is married and has two children.
Delgado graduated from Notre Dame Bishop Gibbons High School in Schenectady in 1995, earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and political science from Colgate University in Hamilton in 1999, a master’s degree in philosophy and political theory from the University of Oxford in England in 2001, and a law degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., in 2005. He is a member of Temple Emanuel in Kingston.
Delgado has campaigned on providing a public option to participate in health insurance programs through the government. He also contends prescriptions for medicine could be less expensive if government programs could negotiate for lower prices in the the same way private markets are allowed to do.
“Medicare (should) have negotiating power with Big Pharma,” he said.
Delgado rapped the Trump administration for failing to keep a promise to seek a massive program to improve the nation’s infrastructure.
“We need an infrastructure bill as discussed by President Trump (to implement a) robust public works infrastructure,” he said.
Delgado contends the economy also suffers because
the current Congress does not see alternative energy sources as a burgeoning industry that could provide jobs and serve to give the nation energy independence.
“They need to stop propping up fossil fuels with billions of dollars of tax credits and subsidies and incentivizing investment using those same subsidies in the renewable energy space,” he said.
Delgado says he would like to see education funding used to teach marketable skills and provide early classroom opportunities.
“We need to reintroduce vocational schools (and) trade schools apprenticeship programs,” he said. “We need to properly fund our public schools. We need universal pre-K and we need to stop having the federal government profit off of higher education loans.”
Delgado said he would also like federal funding to help farmers acquire technology and to improve distribution.
“We need investment in small and mid-tier farming rather than subsidies that go to corporate and megafarmers, which was the case in the farm bill that’s being debated right now,” he said. “We need food promotion, we need market access programs, and we need regionally based infrastructure to help our farmers deliver their goods and their products.”
Greenfield, 57, is a musician who previously served on the New Paltz school board from 2008-11 and from 2014-17. He was unsuccessful in a school board re-election bid in 2017, a bid for Congress in 2002, and the Ulster County Legislature in 2003 and 2011.
Greenfield, who has lived in the district for 16 years, is married and has three children. He graduated from John Adams High School in
Queens in 1978 and earned a bachelors degree in economics from Columbia College in New York City in 1982.
Greenfield is a member of the New Paltz Fire Department, Hudson Valley Local American Federation of Musicians No. 238-291, member of the Ulster County Firemen’s Association, and the Jewish Congregation of New Paltz.
As a Green Party candidate, Greenfield is focus on having the campaign focus on how elected officials need to shift away from fossil fuels and do it quickly.
“We need to honestly face that the crisis is already upon us and we need to convert all of our power generation systems to renewable energy sources and we need to do that and we need to do that by 2030,” he said. “So we need to have government action, legislation to fund and build new power generating systems that are exclusively renewable energy sources.”
Greenfield also emphasizes that his college studies have focused on economics and says he considers the legal backgrounds of the major party candidates to be a detriment to accomplishing meaningful change in the
lives of people who rely on paychecks.
“Wages are falling and poverty is increasing,” he said. “Despite reports of a roaring economy, it’s only roaring for 10 percent of the population, which is unsustainable because people need to be able to consume if the economy is going to be sustainable. We need to have dramatic increases in wages, we need to have minimum guaranteed income for the poor, we need to have Medicare for all.”
Greenfield also faulted Republicans and Democrats for being unable to recognize failed foreign policies.
“We’ve been at war for 17 years,” he said. “We have a $1.5 trillion military budget. We have to redesign our (military) force posture in the world to one that’s defensively oriented rather than occupation and global policing oriented.”
Time on school board dealing with local budgets and the impact on local taxpayers have given Greenfield six years of experience closely reviewing spending that directly affects class sizes, programs, and infrastructure.
Greenfield said federal priorities for “public education (needs) substantial increases in funding, ending of support for charter schools and religious vouchers, and additional support for impoverished communities.”
Neal, 41, is a first-time candidate who has worked as an actor and gained acclaim for a recurring role on “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.” She moved to the district on a full-time basis in 2015 and is seeking to change her party affiliation
from Democrat to unaffiliated.
Neal graduated from Heritage High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1993, and earned a bachelor’s degree in humanities from Harvard in May 2018. She is a member of Urban Arts Partnership, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights and Justice, Waterkeeper Alliance, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“We need classic infrastructure,” she said. “Bridges, road work, a (passenger) train line on this side of the Hudson, the west side with more stops, and we need better education
infrastructure (such as) things like BOCES.”
Neal said a building program would provide both construction jobs and longterm employment.
She said improvements also would help residents to work at their own businesses.
“Since our district is often neglected, what is of immediate importance are the infrastructure that we need,” she said. “Specifically, we need ... internet that is affordable and reliable, at competitive speed and connectivity.”
Neal said resolving technology infrastructure problems would go a long way
towards providing a boost for education and recreation.
“Without (high-speed) internet service, ...the majority of the district people can’t do their homework, just can’t,” she said. “You can’t do any online education, you can’t take advantage of any kind of online retail opportunities, or remotely commute into work.”
Neal said that even though the district is wellsuited for a tourism economy, access from one of the world’s largest potential customer bases has not been given enough attention.
“Most people in New York
City, even if they have disposable income, do not have cars because it’s inconvenient and, yet, we can’t take advantage of their tourist dollars,” she said. “That’s why Rhinebeck is beautiful, because the train station is there, but they can’t have access to other parts of the district, other places that could use it.”
Neal said transportation funding also needs to be focuse on marketing farm products.
“Our agriculture here, without roads and other means of transportation for their goods, especially organic, they risk perishing,” Neal said.
“I would love the Hudson Valley and the surrounding region to be the Silicon Valley of renewables,” she said. “It would provide more jobs. It’s obviously more environmentally friendly and that’s one thing everyone can get behind in the district, whether you’re conservative and a hunter or whether you’re a super-leftwing organic farmer, everybody cares about the environment.”
Neal said if the district were focused on developing an alternative energy industry, it could increase employment and keep young people from leaving the area.