Ratigan looks to address issues
He is seeking seat currently held by Elise Stefanik
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » Dylan Ratigan tells potential supporters that he has been dedicated to political and economic reform for the last 10 years.
“[When] I was an eightyear old boy living in Lake Placid, who watched the U.S. hockey team beat the Russians in Saranac — for me that was a defining moment and I believed that anything was possible,” he said.
Ratigan continues to bring that energy and fiery passion to his current crusade — this time for the 21st Congressional District seat.
Ratigan is one of five democrats running to replace incumbent Elise Stefanik in one of the largest districts in the country. The district that Trump won in the 2016 presidential election. However, it is a diverse region, with more than its fair share of Independents, Bernie Sanders supporters, as well as more traditional Republicans and Democrats. The district includes a portion of Saratoga County.
After leaving his career as a business journalist on CNBC in 2009, during the banking crisis and what he saw as the unbridled corruption of our nation’s large financial institutions, Ratigan hosted another program on MSNBC as a political reformer. He is also the author of “Greedy Bastards,” in which he outlined the causes of the nation’s current socio-economic problems and the role of what he refers to as a broken political system in perpetuating those problems.
During that time, Ratigan said he got to see firsthand the fundamental corruption of large financial institutions. But he does not confine the corruption to financial institutions, saying that healthcare and “Big Pharma,” the oil industry and other monopolistic systems are not sig-
nificantly different from the “robber barons” of the 19th century.
In a recent interview, Ratigan said that, “When you are dealing with greedy bastards, you must focus on the solutions that are available to fix our broken system.”
After leaving broadcast journalism, Ratigan became involved in the creation of Helical Holdings, a company that develops and manufactures sustainable energy systems, while creating jobs for U.S. veterans.
As part of his campaign platform, Ratigan said he intends to focus on the solutions that are available to fix problems being faced by people in the 21st District, namely, the lack of investment in job creation, healthcare, education and development of sustainable energy.
If elected to Congress, Ratigan intends to tackle campaign finance reform, dismantle gerrymandering, and work using antitrust laws to break up monopolies. On what he calls a “micro-level,” he promises to take an inventory of the district to define and measure where jobs are being created and lost. Other issues on his agenda include increasing wireless access, making healthcare affordable for all, improving the educational system and attacking the opioid problem in the region.
He is currently the only candidate in race with a Union endorsement. He has also hired a public relations firm, Mercury LLC, to help him in his campaign. His career on cable news has made him a more recognizable and more visible on cable program and national media than the other candidates in the race.
Ratigan envisions the creation of a “district dashboard,” an online scorecard of sorts, that would be accessible to constituents and would focus on priorities for improvements in the district. He said it would also create accountability for the congressional representative, something he said is currently non-existent.
“By looking at the dashboard, people will be able to see if the representative is making things better. They can ‘grade’ the representative on his or her performance.” Ratigan does not believe that the incumbent, Elise Stefanik, has been held accountable and he refers to her as a career politician
He also said that the “dashboard” would allow specific conversations about what works and what doesn’t.
On the issues of healthcare, Ratigan said there is no better example of the broken political system. “We couldn’t even introduce a public option — that’s an example of the powerful stranglehold the healthcare and big pharma industries has on us,” he said, adding that the obvious solution is Medicare for all. “It should have been done a long time ago.”
Ratigan, who is running against four other candidates in the Democratic primary, has strong views about issues surrounding women’s rights. “We continue to defend a line that is still too far back. Real equality is about finishing the job; not just about preserving the line where it is.”
Ratigan said there must be a shift to a more offensive posture in the fight for gender equity and that the bar is set too low around the issue.
Ratigan’s obvious fiery passion for political reform and the issues affecting people in the 21st District do not come without a certain amount of controversy and drama. In his cable programs, Ratigan tended to erupt in anger, sometimes abruptly ending interviews with guests. In a recent interview on MSNBC’s “The Beat,” hosted by Ari Melber, he was asked about his temperament and how it would affect his ability to be an effective congressman.
He responded that “everybody learns to harness the anger. When you see the real-life consequences of the un-serious and reckless nature of our government, it can create anger.”
He also came under scrutiny for comments he recently made about his voting record. When asked, he said that he did not vote in the 2016 presidential election, but he could understand why some people ended up voting for Trump. He said that his comments were taken out of context and were part of a hostile reaction on the part of Democratic supporters of other candidates. In a recent interview given to the Watertown Times, he added that the comments were an attempt at character assassination and another example of the broken political system.
He added that he felt Republican and Independent voters are as frustrated as Democrats, and he believes they will welcome somebody like him, who is not running in a way that is “tribal.”
When asked how he thinks he would do in a run against Stefanik, he replied that he would do extremely well, referring to Stefanik as a poster child for career politicians and adding that “she has never worked a real job.”
“Over the past four years, we have watched the unemployment rate stay the highest in the northeast and she has done nothing to make herself accountable,” said Ratigan. He added that his proposal for the “district dashboard,” combined with his history as a political reformer will distinguish him from other candidates.