Minor-party entrants jab at Faso, Delgado in 19th District debate
A Monday debate among all four candidates in the race for New York’s 19th Congressional District seat featured the two major-party hopefuls sniping at each other and the other two contenders pointing to those arguments as a reason not to send lawyers to Washington.
The 90-minute event, hosted by Albany-area public radio station WAMC, included U.S. Rep.
John Faso, R-Kinderhook; Democrat Antonio Delgado of Rhinebeck; Green Party candidate Steve Greenfield of New Paltz; and independent candidate Diane Neal of Hurley.
Faso is seeking a second two-year term in the House representing the 19th District, which includes all of Ulster, Columbia and Greene counties, most of Dutchess County, and some or all of seven other counties.
On the issue of whether she’s playing the role of spoiler in the Nov. 6 election, Neal offered: “[In] our district, the largest voting bloc are unaffiliated voters. So technically, I’m not spoiling anything.”
Neal, who played a prosecutor on the TV crime drama “Law & Order: Special
Victims Unit,” has said she is in the process of giving up her enrollment as a registered Democrat. She also said the major-party candidates seem more interested in winning than in solving problems.
Greenfield offered a slightly different assessment about who can shape the outcome of an election.
“The biggest group is people who don’t vote at all,” he said. “People who don’t vote at all in this district outnumber people who do ... by a two to one margin.”
Faso and Delgado kept their focus on each other, and each said their positions were being mispresented.
Greenfield gained Faso’s attention once — in a dispute about a Faso-supported bill to provide immigrant farm workers with “normalized” status.
“As far as the reform that Congressman Faso
is talking about ... it includes a ridiculous clause of a 45-day period of returning people to their home[lands] while they’re in the middle of working,” Greenfield said.
He said the cost of the provision is unexplained, the law should cover all industries, and there is a simple process that could protect farms from losing employees while providing workers a path toward citizenship.
Faso responded that the proposal for workers to return to their native countries or consulates was misrepresented.
“We would have a 45day touch-back every three years ... [which is] standard immigration practice,” the congressman said. “Otherwise, we would be setting up parameters for this class of immigrant to legalize themselves that other people who followed the law do not have to follow.”
Neal and Greenfield received a nod of appreciation from Delgado for saying Faso continues to misunderstand lyrics that Delgado rapped a dozen years ago and become the subject of ads attacking him.
“I’m very happy to have seen so many folks independently come out and take these [ads] to task,” Delgado said.
Faso noted his campaign did not create the ads, but he stood by contentions that the lyrics were “antagonistic” toward police and about the U.S. economy.
Delgado’s lyrics included references to the government not standing by minority communities during such crises as Hurricane Katrina, and he said his words have been “taken out of context to feed into divisiveness and hate.”
Neal framed Delgado’s lyrics in commercial terms.
“You work in the genre
of which you are using,” she said. “That’s your medium . ... So if Antonio were a country singer, there’d be a lot of pickup trucks and broken hearts.”
Neal and Greenfield both said the two majorparty candidates seem to only present arguments that their campaign donors can appreciate.
Neal used a question about support for the Second Amendment to note that both the Democrat and Republican seem unable to grasp the concepts involved in gun control.
“I’m OK with your right to own a gun as long as it does not infringe on my right to be alive,” she said, adding that registries and background checks are useful.
“It’s not prohibitive,” Neal said of . “It took me 15 minutes when I bought my rifle at Dick’s Sporting Goods. That’s not that long . ... If you care about law enforcement, you want them to be able to track the guns that are used in crimes.”
Greenfield said his experiences as a school board member in New Paltz and as a volunteer firefighter have allowed him to understand better than Faso or Delgado how major issued affect local residents.
“If you live in New York state, 15 to 20 percent of your property tax right now is going to public employee health insurance on the private market,” he said. “Both of the [majorparty plans] would continue that and continue to drive their costs up and challenge the [state’s] 2 percent tax cap and force the firing of teachers. If you’re a producer, 20 percent of your product cost is made up by your health care costs for your employees, and that’s why our products are not competitive on the global market.”