25th Congressional District: Incumbent Dan Maffei for Dems

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As Democrat Dan Maffei tells it, his political career was nearly an accident.

“I was a walk-on,” Maffei said. “You know how people get drafted for sports in college? Well, that wasn’t me.”

Maffei, D-DeWitt, is running for re-election for a second term in the 25th Congressional District. His challenger is Republican Ann Marie Buerkle, an assistant New York state attorney general from Syracuse. The 25TH Congressional District includes Onondaga and Wayne counties, as well as parts of Monroe and Cayuga counties.

The election is on Nov. 2.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for re-election, and Republicans would need to gain 40 seats to gain control of the House. Many polls show voters frustrated with incumbents and many political analysts suggest Republicans are in reach of control of the House.

In the 25th Congressional District, Maffei has a slight edge in voter enrollment. Of the 434,271 total voters in the district, 149,769 are Democrats and 146,415 are Republicans. Another 107, 755 are not registered with any party, according to the state board of elections.

To support Maffei, the Democratic Party has brought out its big-name campaigners. Former President Bill Clinton rallied supporters for Maffei at a packed airport hanger on Oct. 11. Clinton repeatedly urged the crowd, “You’ve got to vote for Dan Maffei.”

In his re-election campaign, Maffei is pledging to defend the financially threatened retirement program, Social Security; pursue regulations on the financial industry to avoid future mortgage crises that helped fuel the recession; and continue overhauling the nation’s health care system. He defends a controversial vote last spring to overhaul nation’s health care system as the “best decision” for the district and the country.

Maffei, 42, was born and raised in Syracuse. He now has a home in DeWitt with his wife Abby. In 1990, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in Providence, R.I. He has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and another master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Between earning his two master’s degrees, Maffei worked as a reporter and producer for WSYR-TV, Syracuse’s ABC affiliate, and then as a part-time reporter in Watertown, N.Y.

He credits his birthday — the Fourth of July — with fueling part of his interest in public affairs and politics. Friends and relatives consider him self-deprecating with a dry sense of humor. That sense of humor landed him an interview on Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report” last April. In the episode, he revealed that he is a nerd who likes “Star Trek” and did a skit playing his own evil twin. Those close to him also describe him as “awkward” and “cerebral.”

Of his graduate studies at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Maffei downplays early electoral ambitions. “The reason I was going wasn’t because one day I was going to run for Congress, or any office, but clearly I thought it was a possibility,” Maffei said. He went because he wanted to work on campaigns, he said.

Pursuing that ambition, he has been a press secretary for Democratic Sens. Bill Bradley of New Jersey and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York; worked on Bradley’s presidential campaign and the 2005 Syracuse re-election campaign of Mayor Matt Driscoll; and spent six years working for Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-New York City, as a senior staff member for the House Ways and Means Committee.

In 2006, Maffei decided to run for office and challenged the 25th Congressional District’s incumbent, Republican James Walsh. Walsh had held the office for 20 years. Walsh won that race by a slim margin and decided to retire in 2008. That year, Maffei defeated the Republican candidate, former county legislator Dale Sweetland.

Of his two years in Congress, Maffei calls his vote on the health care overhaul as “the single toughest issue,” with his constituents divided about it. He voted for the overhaul that requires individuals to buy health insurance as the best compromise Congress could craft, he said. He would have preferred a public option, Maffe said, to create a publicly funded health insurance program to compete with private insurance providers.

In the negotiations for the health care bill, Maffei won some concessions for the district, said his communications director,  Abigail Gardner. The bill originally included a tax increase for medical device manufacturers such as Welch Allyn in Central New York. In negotiations with the House leadership, Gardner said, Maffei worked out a compromise to lower the proposed taxes.

In his re-election bid, Maffei is promising support for Social Security, the publicly financed retirement system. It is facing a financial crunch with the baby-boom generation retiring over the next decade.  On Syracuse.com, Maffei pledged to support Social Security, which has 133,190 beneficiaries in the 25th Congressional District.

(Heather Duggan is graduate student in broadcast and digital journalism.) 

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