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Democrat Ed O'Shea is challenging incumbent Republican Mike Nozzolio for his New York State Senate seat.  O'Shea, a SUNY Oswego English professor, got into the race about six months ago after returning from India, where he was a Fulbright-Nehru Lecturer.  Originally from Chicago, O'Shea and his wife Kathy have lived in Marion, Wayne County since 1988.  He has been vice chairman of the Wayne County Democratic Committee since 2005

He was in Tompkins County last month at the county Democrats' 'Meet the Candidates' event at Stewart Park.  Although the 54th Senate district only includes Lansing among all the Tompkins County municipalities, O'Shea asked all Tompkins County Democrats for support.  We talked to him earlier when he attended Lansing Harbor Festival, where he spent much of the day meeting people and talking about his campaign.

LS: Have you been in government before?

EO: No.  I'm the vice chair of the Democratic Party in Wayne County.  I teach at SUNY Oswego in the English department.  I'm on leave because I just came back from India where I was a Fullbright lecturer.

Everybody is just so incensed about what is happening in Albany.  We just can't go on like this.  It's dysfunctional.  Somebody said to me, 'Why are you running for the Senate rather than running for the Assembly?'  The Senate is the epicenter of the problem.  That's where it's really bad.

LS: The New York government is primarily Democratic.  Does the Senate still have a Republican majority?

EO: No, the Senate has a slight Democratic majority, but that's only been the case for a year and a half.  For forty years before the the Republicans were in power.  So there is plenty of blame to go around.

LS: What specifically do you want to go to Albany to fix?

EO: The late budgets.  This is ridiculous.  There is no reason why they couldn't have passed that budget April 1st. 

The other thing is that we need to get senators to really do their jobs, and not just rubber stamp the bills that are given to them by the leadership.  They have to take charge and become engaged in the process.  That's not really popular for some people to hear, but that's what we need to do.

LS: It seems as thought there is more and more to tax, but there hasn't been serious cutting.  What is the solution to that?

EO: You have to have cutting across the board.  There is a lot of waste in government, too.  The other thing is enforcement.  The DEC, for example, has a lot of enforcement powers, but they're not collecting the revenue that they should be collecting from the people who are breaking the laws.  Enforcement of laws that already exist can also bring in revenue.

LS: Do you think that the school aid cutting that the state is doing right now should be happening?

EO: Of course, you are talking to a teacher, someone who has been in public education for some years.  So I never like to see teachers cut.  Also, I don't like to see teacher positions made into part time, not fully professional kinds of positions.  That, unfortunately , is what's happening at the university system particularly.

So the simple answer to your question is no.  I don't like to see teachers cut, because education is what it's all about.  We have to be educating our kids.  Small class sizes...  everybody knows they're more effective when you can reduce the teachers/student ratio.


LS: So where should the State cut?

EO: I think there are a lot of ways to cut the state bureaucracy.  I think we can look at pretty much every state agency.  The other thing is -- quite honestly, this is what is going to be tough to hear -- member item spending.  That's between $70 and $80 million a year.  That's not popular, because people say cut somebody else's project, but leave ours alone.  But if we're going to be serious about lowering taxes we have to all look at ourselves and say we're all responsible and we've got to give up something.  If it's our favorite baseball stadium, maybe someone else has got to build a baseball stadium.  Taxpayers can't build it.

LS: Aren't member items a drop in the bucket?

EO: I'm not going to say $80 million is a drop in the bucket.  That's real money.  We have tax groups now that are looking at every penny in local budgets.  For them $80 million is significant.

But I think you're right, it is somewhat symbolic.  People don't want to talk about the big picture.  If we're going to spend we have to find the taxes for it.  But people say don't cut my project.  We need to look at the big picture and say I'm all for cutting taxes, but what am I going to give up?  Let's have that total conversation.

It's like when we talk about combining municipalities.  This is another hot issue.  People should have the information.  They should know what am I going to lose?  What am I going to gain?

LS: What specifically are is your platform?

EO: Certainly reform in Albany is a big one.  Economic development.  Up where I live these small towns are hemorrhaging.  Because the young people move away.  Businesses are closing.  We need to do something to maintain the economic base in these small towns.

Another big issue, of course, is environmental.  The hydrofracking issue is big down here.  I have been very clear about this, that I would have voted for the moratorium that was just passed by the Senate.  That was the right thing to do, to wait until we know what we're doing in terms of drilling.

Those things that affect the quality of our life, education, of course, being another one.  The viability of upstate life.  That's really what we're talking about here, that we can maintain that.

LS: What can save New york from people leaving?  A lot of politicians have been talking about making New York a center of green technology over the past few years.

EO: What we need is a trade workforce for that if we're going to attract business.  I just visited the new Victor campus of Finger Lakes Community College.  I interviewed a guy that is starting a new partnership with industry to train the workforce that these people need for instrumentation work, for example.  For various kinds of quality control technologies...  So what we need to do is to bring in the industry, but also to train the workforce.  We are a long way from that.  New York is really pretty good in terms of our educational base here, but we need to do more.

LS: People run every election cycle saying 'we have to reform Albany.  We have to reform Albany.'  What is really going to do it?

EO: Getting new people in there.  You might say that's self-serving, and it is, but people who say 'this has got to change'... I'm going to find the other people in the Senate that are like-minded.  And I know who they are because they are the ones who have tried to pass legislation that makes sense, and I can tell you what those bills are.  I'm going to seek them out and I'm going to say we have to work together as a coalition to change whatever needs changing.  If it's our leadership, if it's the dynamic, if it's the rules of the Senate we need to change it.  Unfortunately that's the only solution.  We've got to get new people in there who say it's not the status quo.  It's unacceptable what's happening.  It's unacceptable to me.  It's unacceptable to people back home.  We just can't have it.

LS: In the last election Paloma Capanna actually won Tompkins County.  It was really the only area in the district where she was successful.  This area obviously have a very strong Democratic base.  Are you going to spend a lot of time campaigning down here?

EO: Yes, I am.  I have a good organization down here already, and going up into Auburn.  I have a coordinator in this area, and she is helping me with local issues.  Honestly I'm depending on this area, because, as you said, it's really the only district that went for Paloma Capanna the last time.

LS: It's a relatively small area compared to other parts of the district.  What's your strategy for winning them over?

EO: I'm not going to give you my strategy right now, but I do have a strategy.  It does, in part, involve student volunteers.  I'm a university person.  Students are my natural constituency.  You know there are certain colleges that are located in the big towns in the area.  I'm going to look for their help.

It's easy for me to talk to young people, because I do it all the time.  And we need to get more of them to vote.  When I walk around here I go to the young people, and I say I need your vote, because they're not participating in the electoral process the way they should be.  Do you agree?  We need them to get out and vote, and not just for presidential elections, but to say 'state politics is something that I can get energized about, too.'

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