Vitollo: Clinton should be prosecuted
Infamous emails mentioned during debate with Tonko
NORTH GREENBUSH >> In a live TV debate Thursday, Rep. Paul Tonko’s GOP challenger Joe Vitollo said Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted and suggested Gov. Andrew Cuomo blackmailed legislators into voting the SAFE Act gun law.
“If anybody else did what she did, they would be in jail today,” Vitollo declared, referring to Clinton’s use of a private email server. “For anyone to say that an independent prosecutor, an independent investigator took at for look at this and said, look, everything is OK — I don’t believe it.”
He said if his Naval officer son did the same thing as what Clinton has admitted to doing, “he would be court-martialed and sent to jail. And she’s going to become the commander in chief of the armed forces? I’m sorry, she’s not eligible, she’s not qualified. She should be on trial.” Asked by a panelist about Cuomo’s signature SAFE Act pushed through on the
opening day of the 2013 legislative session, Vitollo said the bill was “rammed through ... because our governor Andrew Cuomo had the goods on a lot of people that he held back while he was attorney general. I believe that he held it over people’s heads and if they didn’t go the way he wanted them to go, he was going to spill the beans. Of course, many of them did get the beans spilled on them anyway.”
Cuomo’s signature gun control law passed the state Senate on the first day of session with the cooperation of then-Majority Leader Dean Skelos, who was arrested two years later and convicted on corruption charges. Cuomo signed the bill into law within minutes of it passing the Assembly on the second day of the 2013 session.
The debate broadcast by WMHT Public Television in a co-production with the Times Union followed Tuesday’s League of Women Voters debate in Clifton Park that saw Vitollo hit the veteran congressman over immigration, U.S. involvement in the wars in Syria and Afghanistan, Obamacare and other issues.
They returned to many of the same issues Thursday. Tonko stayed low key, sticking to highlighting his record and repeatedly talking about the need to “invest” in programs and businesses that will create jobs and help those in need.
He did not directly rebut Vitollo’s incendiary remarks about Clinton. On the SAFE Act question, Tonko noted that it was a state and not a federal law and he was not serving in the Legislature when it was enacted.
Thursday’s debate came one day after the third and final debate in this fall’s main event, the presidential contest between Clinton and Donald Trump.
“They found nothing there valid of prosecuting,” Tonko said of the email server controversy. He said Clinton “has worked the issues so very well ... Just a sound thinker. Her cerebral qualities are tremendously strong. And also her experience — you know if you hire anyone for any job, surgeons for your personal care, you want the very best
and her experience speaks to that.”
The 20th Congressional District strongly favors a Democratic candidate based on voter enrollments, and includes Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga Springs and Tonko’s hometown of Amsterdam, as well as the affluent suburbs in Clifton Park and Halfmoon. Most of its residents live close to the I-87, I-90 corridors, though the boundaries run from the Mohawk Valley down into the northern Catskills.
Tonko, 67, served as a local official in Montgomery County before making the jump to the state Assembly in a special election to succeed Gail Shaffer when then-Gov. Mario Cuomo appointed her secretary of state in 1983. He was later named chair of the Energy Committee and in 2007 Gov. Eliot Spitzer appointed him to head the NYS Energy Research and Development Authority.
Tonko ran for Congress in 2008 and succeeded U.S. Rep. Michael McNulty (DGreen Island), who retired after decades in office.
Vitollo, 60, is a political newcomer who made his first run for office in 2015, challenging Albany County Executive Dan McCoy. The Coeymans resident is employed as a registered nurse, a second career he pursued after breaking his back in a fall when he was a building contractor.
In the debate, Vitollo said he grew up poor on Long Island, shining shoes at the train station, and moved upstate after being discharged from the military. He accused Tonko of supporting policies over a 40 year political career that have raised taxes and chased away jobs for working people.
“He says he’s done things to help the area, I want to know where the jobs are,” he said of Tonko. “I want to know why there are empty buildings in Amsterdam and why there are empty buildings in Troy, factory buildings in the city of Albany and Schenectady. I want to know why they are not filled with manufacturing and industry where we can put the average common working man back to work.”
Tonko closed by saying government programs and spending were vitally necessary.
“The engineer in me says look at the facts, develop the solution ... We are 4.7 percent of the world population and consume 80 percent of the world’s illicit drugs. There is a need for investment,” Tonko said.
Vitollo closed by criticized politicians for “spouting off the great things they have done, the people they have met when in essence they’ve done nothing ... verbose conversations haven’t done anything. It’s time to get someone in Washington who will do something when he gets there.”