The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Libertarian candidate wants to fix New York
WAMPSVILLE, N.Y. » While everyone looks at the red and blue candidates for governor, one candidate is asking the people to go gold.
Larry Sharpe is running for New York state governor as a libertarian and wants to make an impact on the political landscape. Sharpe owns his own trucking business, is a native New Yorker and a Marine Corps veteran.
Sharpe’s campaign approached the Madison Bistro in Wampsville a couple weeks ago and asked owner Victor Ramirez if Sharpe could host a meet and greet.
“Sharpe’s people put together the event on social media and I’m interested in learning what he has to say,” Ramirez said.
Before the event, Ramirez admitted he didn’t know much about Sharpe’s platform, other than that he was a libertarian.
Sharpe said that when hosting events, he doesn’t pre-screen questions or set down any real ground rules. If someone wants to be nice or insult him, Sharpe said they’re welcome to and he’s taken his fair share of beatings at meet and greets.
“This is now what I do. This is hard work,” Sharpe said. “I have a business. I’m a trainer, a consultant and a teacher. I can’t see my clients and lost 50 percent of my income running this campaign last year, and I’ll lose about 75 percent next year. I have a wife who doesn’t work, two kids and I live in New York City. You can imagine what my bills are like. And you might say ‘wow, why would you do that? What in the world made you do something like that’?”
Sharpe said the reason why is because almost
everyone in the room knew someone who left the state and about half are thinking about moving themselves.
“I do over 30 events every month and I ask if anyone is thinking about leaving New York state. And every single time, half the hands go up in there. And I was one of those people,” Sharpe said. “I was looking at buying land in North Carolina.”
Sharpe said while looking to move out of New York, he started to ask himself why he wanted to move.
“I was born in the state, I live in the state, my family’s in the state, my business is in the state,” Sharpe said. “Why am I thinking about moving? So I decided to do something. And I didn’t want to be one of the over 100,000 New Yorkers who leave every year.”
But Sharpe said he still loves New York, not because of New York City, but because of its diverse regions.
“In this area now, you can drive three hours and be in amazing mountains as beautiful as Colorado, amazing waterfalls that are the best in the continent, great lakes, great rivers and the biggest city in the country. All of that in around a three hour drive. That’s so amazing and we’re so amazing. But what we have is a great state with a bad government.”
Sharpe said there is a divide between the left and right that can be overcome by focusing on outcomes that bring people closer together.
“One thing that everyone wants, no matter who you are, is better education. By focusing on the outcome, you can often have a better conversation. It won’t mean we’ll have a great conversation, just a better one. We all want more opportunity,” Sharpe said.
Sharpe talked about a number of issues, one of which was big business. To the candidate, bringing big business in is not the answer.
“Here’s what we do right now,” Sharpe said. “We bribe big business to come to our state. They come up and have an advantage already. Now they have tens of millions of dollars and they destroy all the small businesses in the area. The bribes go away in five years and they leave. You get a ghost town. And then rinse and repeat. We need big change.”
Sharpe also said he is against economic development corporations and wants them gone, saying they are a source of corruption.
“They are a petri dish for corruption,” Sharpe said. “All these people who have been arrested or indicted, almost every one of them are on a board, committee or commission. It’s a way to hide corruption. And when these people are arrested, their defence is that it’s how it’s always been done.”
One of the topics brought up by attendees was education. Sharpe said he is in favor of a total overhaul of the education system, first by letting teachers be teachers and getting rid of unnecessary administration that bloats schools. Next, Sharpe said he wants to restructure schools to be kindergarten through 10th grade and not kindergarten through 12.
Sharpe said the last two years of school are not needed, since most are loaded up with study halls and gyms. One attendee backed up Sharpe’s opinion and said her son is in 12th grade and has three gym classes a day.
Sharpe said the education system is in a death spiral and he wants to see it fixed; first by stopping all standardized testing before high school and then getting rid of the Regents Board.
With two free years from ages 16 to 18, Sharpe encouraged plans for aspiring teenagers no matter their path, whether it was a two year prep school to prepare for college, right to a trade school, the job force, straight to college or if they want to start their own business.
Other topics Sharpe tackled from the audience was the state of welfare and how he wanted to end unfunded mandates, his plan to raise money for infrastructure by leasing names of bridges and roads, and a revamp of the welfare system that doesn’t punish those disabled or on assistance for seeking work.
Sharpe wants change across the board in New York, but asserts that it’s not going to happen if the same old people are elected to office.
“We’re going to have an impact no matter what, even if we come second or third,” Sharpe said. “If you vote red or blue, you’ll get the same thing. If you vote gold, there will be change.”
Ramirez said after hear- ing Sharpe talk, he said it was interesting and that people were leaving with new ideas.