With the dust settled from Tuesday’s primaries, the candidates are preparing for the general election in November. New York voters will have to choose between a tea-party sympathizer and the current state attorney general for governor. For Syracuse’s congressional district, voters have the option of electing the incumbent or a former state assistant attorney general. The Daily Orange provides a glimpse at the candidates and their issues.

Ann Marie Buerkle (R) — 25th Congressional District

Ann Marie Buerkle, an Auburn native with 13 years of service as a New York state assistant attorney general, is the GOP’s candidate against Democratic incumbent Dan Maffei. Buerkle, a 58-year-old registered nurse and a mother of six, recently won endorsements from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Despite Maffei’s massive fundraising advantage, Buerkle said she plans to prevail with a ‘bottom-up campaign’ that skips expensive marketing and brings her message directly to voters.

Buerkle’s message is to keep government out of prosperity’s path, she said. She favors permanently adopting the 2001 Bush tax cuts and reducing or eliminating the capital gains tax, taxation of profits on sold stock-market assets.

The candidate also promotes a comprehensive audit of all government departments. She said these measures will remove some uncertainty from the market and give businesses the confidence to hire American workers, especially graduating college students. The economic policies that solved the Carter administration’s economic problems, she said, are bound to work with the current economic times.

‘We just need to do what works,’ Buerkle said.

Rep. Dan Maffei (D) — 25th Congressional District

A 1986 graduate of Nottingham High School in Syracuse, freshman representative Dan Maffei plans to overcome anti-incumbent sentiment by highlighting his two-year voting record in the House of Representatives, said Marcus Cerroni, Maffei’s press deputy, in an e-mail.

Maffei supported this year’s student loan reform bill, which saves taxpayer money and streamlines student lending, and reform bills ranging from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to direct aid for small businesses, Cerroni said.

This year, Maffei proposed legislation to close tax loopholes that encourage outsourcing, as well as a 13 percent reduction in the corporate tax rate. The desired result is to ‘even the playing field in order for there to be jobs waiting for students when they graduate,’ Cerroni said.

Andrew Cuomo (D) — Gubernatorial

After a four-year term as attorney general and a failed 2002 bid for governor, Andrew Cuomo is taking another run for the governor’s office. Cuomo holds a large lead over GOP nominee Carl Paladino, a real-estate titan in Buffalo, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Sept. 1.

Cuomo pledges to rebuild Albany under his five-point ‘New New York Agenda,’ a policy book that includes proposals for a constitutional convention, strict redistricting reforms, tight control of state spending, a reevaluation of the state’s 1,000-plus agencies, an employment and renewal program named NYWORKS, anti-discrimination reforms and more effective regulation of Wall Street, according to his campaign website.

Carl Paladino (R) —Gubernatorial

After tapping into the anger of New York Republicans, Carl Paladino defeated Rick Lazio with 62 percent of the vote in a surprise primary victory Tuesday.

Paladino, a second-generation American and conservative Democrat until 2005, proposes declaring a fiscal state of emergency, arranging a constitutional convention and making a 10 percent tax cut in his first six months of office, according to his website.

He also proposes cutting the size of government and 20 percent of spending, as well as a $20 billion downsizing of Medicaid in his first year, an end to what he calls ‘bureaucratic harassment of the private sector,’ according to his website. He is also proposing an eight-year term limit for all state, local and county officials wherever possible.

geclarke@syr.edu

   

Published on September 15, 2010 at 12:00 pm