Candidate forum sees heated exchange from Brindisi, Tenney

Oct. 17--ROME -- Tempers ran hot at the first candidate forum Wednesday between U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney and Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi at The Beeches in Rome.

Jobs, Medicare, Social Security, immigration, education and infrastructure were among the many topics covered during the one-hour event, which was hosted by the Rome Area Chamber of Commerce and the Professional and Business Women of Rome.

Following Robert's Rules of Order for forums and debates, each candidate in the 22nd Congressional District race was allowed 2 minutes to respond to each question, alternating back and forth between who answered each question first. The candidates were also each allowed an opening and closing statement.

Tenney, R-New Hartford, highlighted what she has done in Congress over the last almost two years, saying she has worked with Democrats and President Donald Trump to make better policies and give people back more in their paychecks.

"I got involved because I wanted to help our small business community," the incumbent said. "And this is what this is all about; this is what drives our economy, this is what helps people; and you're going to have a clear choice in this election. You're going to have someone who's talking about divisiveness already in his opening statement, talking about how much big government can do for you instead of how much our small business community does for us."

Brindisi, D-Utica, focused on his record in the state Assembly and explained stories he had heard from residents in the district that made him want to run for Congress. Among them: a father worried his son will lose health insurance because of a preexisting condition; a single mother who works two jobs yet is still burdened with student loan debt; and a woman on Social Security concerned about not making her bills.

"These are people that I want to fight for in Washington," he said. "They are real people in this community who are struggling; they are Democrats, they're Republicans, they're independents, but that does not define them. What binds all these people together is their desire to have a representative in Congress who does not look for ways to try and divide people; their desire (is) to have a representative in Congress who brings people together to solve big problems."

Things got heated at times, with each candidate exchanging barbs and Tenney asking at one point if she could interrupt Brindisi's two-minute answer to explain why he was wrong.

The Observer-Dispatch newspaper was mentioned by name a handful of times, including two times when Tenney made accusations that the newspaper had removed negative comments from its own website because those comments would make Brindisi look bad. The O-D asked for details of these allegations two weeks ago, and again Wednesday, but has yet to receive anything from the Tenney campaign.

A number of students from area high schools were among those in attendance at the forum, including a group from Rome Free Academy.

Jerome Gordon, 17, of Rome, said he's always been interested in changing his community, but to do that, he believes he must get involved in things like politics.

If Gordon could vote in the November election, he said he would vote for Brindisi because of his education policy and approach to health insurance.

"I am supporting Anthony Brindisi because, in my opinion, he's trying to help (with) education, trying to get money toward education and help the kids get education and anything they need in order to be in school and go to college and get good jobs ...," he said. "I think that's a good thing to do and I don't see that happening with Claudia Tenney."

Classmate Tori Wright, 17, said she also would vote for Brindisi in November if she could vote, but since she can't, she's just paying attention to the candidates and the issues. She said it's a trend she's noticed among her generation.

"In this modern age, everyone is more into politics," Wright said. "I've been seeing it on the news, so it got me interested in what they said and what their views were. ... I'm starting to pay attention more and more, especially when the presidential (election) came on; that's when everyone started going around social media and that's what I started to get more interested in politics."

The audience also included local residents, such as Paula Flisnik, who paid $32 to be there, with $1 from every ticket donated to a scholarship fund for the chamber.

Flisnik said she came to the event undecided but now knows who to vote for, which encourages her to support having more community events.

"They both were very respectful of each other, very informative ...," she said. "They didn't really slander each other too much, but that's kind of how it goes."

Here's a look at some of the questions that were asked and a small portion of each candidate's two-minute response:

How do you propose to strengthen and preserve Social Security and Medicare?

Brindisi: "We can do that by making sure that we're not raiding the system .... We need to protect and preserve Social Security and Medicare. One way we can save costs is do what the president called for when he was campaigning; why don't we let Medicare negotiate drug prices? That would save $240 billion if they could just negotiate drug prices with the drug companies."

Tenney: "President Trump just passed a bill we signed into law that is going to help the pharmaceutical company drive down the cost. ... He has voted four times for government takeover of your health care, which means all of you, any of you who have private health care, you get your health care through a union, you are going to lose your health care; that and it's going to cost the taxpayers of New York somewhere between $92 billion and $100 billion annually in new taxes."

What is your opinion as to the effectiveness of the president's action on the National Trade and Tariffs Act?

Tenney: "I think the president is taking a bold stand; he's certainly changed the conversation on trade. We have a few companies right in our community who are very excited about the trade. ... Some of the tariffs I know have been a tough thing; it's been harder on a lot of our farmers out in the Midwest. The president understands that, but he's trying to do a basic thing: He's trying to bring our jobs back. And it's really important that people understand that we have been in a huge trade deficit and a huge disadvantage in New York and across this country because of our imbalance in trade."

Brindisi: "$1 trillion may be coming back, but that trillion dollars is being used for stock buybacks that help the rich shareholders of those companies, not the actual workers who are working in those companies. On trade, I actually applaud some of the president's moves on trade, this is something that's hurt our area, we received some bad trade deals and it hurt workers in this area. What I want to focus on is a trade deal that's going to help American workers, American farms, American business. That means negotiating trade deals that have strong labor protections on both sides, strong environmental protections, which we have here in the United States, but other countries don't have, there needs to be balance on both sides."

What are some of the way you are going to increase educational funding to lower-income school districts in the state?

Brindisi: "Our educational funding system here in New York is broken; we need to do a lot better job of trying to make sure that funding is targeted to those school districts that need it the most. ... Those are the schools that really need help right now. We need to make sure that we're increasing our funding to those schools. It's not about raising taxes, it's about making sure that the money that goes into the pot is evenly distributed to make sure it goes to the schools that need it the most."

Tenney: "I served on the education committee and I watched time and again all kinds of reforms coming to the education committee, my opponent voted it down, voted with Sheldon Silver, over and over -- 97 percent of the time -- and held good bills from coming to the House floor just because they were sponsored by a Republican. ... When teachers were forced to use 40 percent on their (performance reviews), they were forced to use those in determining what their ratings were going to be and what their pay was going to be, that's wrong."

Contact reporter Samantha Madison at 315-792-5015 or follow her on Twitter (@OD_Madison).

___

(c)2018 Observer-Dispatch, Utica, N.Y.

Visit Observer-Dispatch, Utica, N.Y. at www.uticaod.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.