Republican David Gay (right) is challenging 12-year Democratic incumbent Bill Magnarelli (left) for his state assembly seat.
A 12-year Democratic incumbent from Syracuse and a former singer in the punk band Crash Martinez are voters’ choices for the 120th State Assembly District in the November 2010 election.
The 12-year Democrat incumbent is Bill Magnarelli. He has been the state assemblyman for 120th Assembly District since 1998 when he won the election for an open seat. Magnarelli has also served on the Syracuse Common Council and ran unsuccessfully for Onondaga County executive in 2007.
The former punk-band singer is Republican candidate David Gay. Gay, 28, is also a former baseball scout for an independent agency and a Syracuse native. Gay first hit the political scene when he served as the Onondaga County recruiting coordinator for Texas Congressman Ron Paul, an icon to Libertarians and a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
The general election is Nov. 2, 2010.
The 120th District covers the towns of Van Buren and Geddes. It also includes the Northside, Westside, Eastwood, Strathmore and Valley portions of the city.
The 120th Assembly District is heavily Democratic. It has 74,731 registered voters. Of that total, Democrats account for 42 percent, or 31,824 registered voters. Republicans account for four percent, or 3,398 registered voters. The Independence Party has one percent at 1,021 registered voters. The Conservative Party has less than one percent with 437 registered voters. And 25 percent — or 18,677 registered voters — are unaffiliated with any party.
The New York State Assembly is made up of 150 members. Now, Democrats have control of the Assembly with 107 seats. Republicans hold 42 seats and there is one vacancy. Every two years all 150 members are up for election.
An incumbent like Magnarelli has clear advantages, said Grant Reeher, a political scientist at Syracuse University. “There is a general rule of thumb that if you win a seat and you are successfully reelected once, you are probably going to be okay for future races,” Reeher said. “Magnarelli is in a relatively safe seat given his success so far.”
For incumbents, Reeher said, a “shock to the system” is the only real threat to reelection. Such a shock could be deep voter dissatisfaction, a shift in the public’s views about government policy or if the individual is in a scandal, said Reeher.
That means Gay, a first-time candidate who is challenging a six-term incumbent, will face obstacles, Reeher said. And Gay, a Republican, will be fighting the Democratic party’s dominance in the district. “Gay has a tough uphill battle,” said Reeher.
But special elections, off-year elections and polling data all have shown that incumbents could have a difficult time come November, Reeher said. “This year could be a year where there are some surprises because dissatisfaction seems to be high,” Reeher said. “If there would be a time for non-traditional candidates, it would be this kind of year.”
Here’s an early look at the candidates for the 120th Assembly District seat:
Bill Magnarelli (Democrat, incumbent)
Bill Magnarelli has deep political and civic roots in Syracuse.
As a student at Our Lady of Pompei School and St. John Baptist Academy, Magnarelli learned about President John F. Kennedy and decided then and there he would pursue a career in politics. “I grew up in the sixties and I remember JFK and the idea that it was a citizen’s duty and responsibility to give back at some point,” Magnarelli said in a recent interview. “Because of Kennedy in particular I became interested in politics and have been for as long as I can remember.”
He earned a bachelor of arts degree in history from Syracuse University as a history major and graduated with honors from Syracuse’s Law School in 1973. Magnarelli was in the Army Reserves for six years and became a captain. He is a partner in the Scolar, Shulman, Cohen, Fetter and Burstein law firm in Syracuse.
After his and his wife Karen’s three children were grown, Magnarelli moved into politics. In 1996, he ran for Syracuse Common Councilor and was it its majority leader until 1998.
“Law came first and my family, but then I found myself in a position where I could give something back,” Magnarelli said. “I felt it was something I could do and wanted to do.”
One of the law firm partners, Barry Shulman, met Magnarelli in 1970 when Magnarelli was still in law school. For Shulman, Magnarelli’s political ambitions were no surprise.
“He has always cared hugely for the community,” Shulman said. “Lots of people are in a political position because of the income. But Bill is a person of the community. He cares deeply.”
An example of Magnarelli’s caring nature, said Shulman, was a birthday treat for Magnarelli’s sister when he was still in law school. For her party, Magnarelli got her high school marching band to march down their street, Shulman recalled.
Magnarelli is a good candidate because he is smart but also detailed and careful, said Shulman. Shulman is a longtime Republican. But, he said, he still has great respect for Magnarelli. “We have humanity in common,” Shulman said. “He has a huge deep-seeded caring philosophy. The blend of being really smart and really caring makes a great candidate.”
In 1998, Magnarelli was elected to the New York State Assembly’s 120th District. In the State Assembly now, he is chair of the Ethics Committee and chair of the Task Force on University-Industry Cooperation. He is also a member of the Steering Committee and committees on economic development, job creation, commerce and industry, education, health, and veterans’ affairs.
This year Magnarelli has just over $1.3 million in member items, according to Project SunlightNY, a database for tracking government actions run by the state attorney general’s office: Member items are taxpayer dollars given to members of the senate and assembly to distribute in their home districts to organizations they choose.
Here are some of the beneficiaries of Magnarelli’s member items, according to Project SunlightNY:
- $485,000 to the Legal Aid Society’s criminal justice services, to give legal services to the poor in New York City.
- $273,700 to the Legal Aid Society’s criminal justice services, to give legal services to the mentally ill in New York City.
- $250,000 to the Metropolitan Development Association of Syracuse for research and development of indoor environmental technologies.
- $125,000 to Syracuse University through a state Urban Development Dorporation for a project in which SU students work with businesses and give them legal and marketing feedback on a product.
- $100,000 to SU’s Renaissance Internship Program, which recruits graduate engineering students and pairs them with Central New York businesses.
For the upcoming election, Magnarelli describes his main concern as overturning a growing mistrust of government. He wants to show people, he said, that officials in Washington and Albany are not corrupt and are in politics for the right reasons. “I hope I can show voters I want to do what is best for the people I represent,” said Magnarelli.
Now, that means getting the state back on its feet economically, said Magnarelli. This time around, he said, his main focus is helping get the state out of the recession, especially with job growth in Syracuse and Onondaga County.
For job growth, he calls for the “commercialization of ideas” from the state’s colleges and universities. “I have made a little name for myself trying to put higher education systems and businesses together,” he said, “so they can take ideas generated at our universities and commercialize those in New York state and create jobs.”
He cites two examples at SU: the Center of Excellence and the Commercialization of Law Clinic. The Center of Excellence is a group of more than 200 businesses, colleges, universities and other institutions working on getting sustainable technologies into commercial products. The Commercialization of Law Clinic takes people from the Syracuse University Law School and the School of Management and sets them up with companies who have a product and the students analyze it. They tell the company how to go through marketing and legal procedures and if they feel the product will be successful.
For the upcoming campaign, Magnarelli says: “I just do what I have done and that is get out and see the people. I want to make sure I can touch as many people as I can between now and November. That never changes.”
David Gay (Republican, challenger)
As a 12-year-old boy growing up in Syracuse, David Gay had two loves—baseball and multiculturalism.
Most of his friends were Cuban and Vietnamese and that fueled his interest in multiculturalism, Gay said. After graduating from Nottingham High School in 2000, he worked for the Syracuse Chiefs grounds crew. In 2002, he recalled, he decided to fuse his two passions and went to Latin America as a baseball scout. He worked for an independent scouting agency, he said.
Gay credits his passion for politics to his experiences in Central America. “Every single person I met overseas I debated with about something political,” Gay said. “Politics was on my mind.”
In 2007, he returned to Syracuse and was caught up in the emerging presidential ambitions of Congressman Ron Paul, a Republican of Texas with broad appeal to the Libertarian Party and an opponent of the Iraq war. “The first thing that attracted me was that he was a Republican and was anti-war,” said Gay.
He agreed with Paul’s free market principles, his message of obeying the Constitution and protecting individual liberties, said Gay. Gay became the Onondaga County coordinator for recruitment for Paul’s presidential campaign. Paul lost the Republican nomination to Arizona Sen. John McCain.
“I put my heart into that campaign,” Gay said. “It is how I formed the philosophies I have now.”
In politics, Gay is staunchly conservative. He opposes abortion rights and traces his view to his parents. Gay was raised in Schenectady as an Orthodox Presbyterian. His parents took him to pro-life rallies in Albany every couple of years. When he turned 18, Gay said, he registered with the Right to Life party.
But to vote in primaries, Gay said, he registered as a Republican and he has sought support from the Libertarian Party. In 2008, Gay tried to run for the 25th Congressional District seat as the candidate of the Republican party or Libertarian party. He ran to “get the Ron Paul message out there.” Gay failed to get either party’s nomination and did not collect enough voters’ signatures to get his name on the ballot.
In 2009, he planned a run for the Republican nomination for the 25th Congressional District seat. But on Feb. 1, 2010, Gay dropped out of the Congressional race, supporting fellow Republican Ann Marie Burkle against the incumbent, Dan Maffei, D-Dewitt.
In targeting the 120th Assembly District, Gay said, he will have more of a local effect. “In this office, there is a lot of stuff to be done on the state level that cannot be done on a federal level,” Gay said. “As a drop in the ocean, you won’t see a difference. As a drop in the bucket in Albany, I can make a difference.”
Gay supports the local Tea Party movement, which protests taxes and what members see as growing intrusion into Americans’ personal lives. He is the 25th District coordinator for Campaign for Liberty. The Campaign is a not-for-profit group that advocates a constitutionally limited government, said Gay.
He opposes the recently enacted federal legislation to overhaul the nation’s healthcare system. The law will extend health insurance coverage to 37 million more Americans partly by requiring Americans to have health insurance and offering subsidies to help some buy it. If he’s elected to the State Assembly, Gay said, he will work to nullify that and leave health insurance up to the state.e. Some states are threatening Constitutional challenges to the law, with hopes that the Supreme Court will overturn it.
“We do not need the government to tell us how to protect ourselves,” Gay said.
Gay is a resident of Rosewood Street in Syracuse and is married to Yusimy Gay-Martinez, a political refugee from Cuba. The couple has a young son and another child on the way. They speak Spanish at home, he said. In addition to Spanish, Gay said, he speaks Vietnamese.
With the punk band Crash Martinez, Gay was the lead singer with his brother and two other friends. The band “has been on hiatus for a few years,” said Gay, because three of the four members got married.
For the 120th Assembly District race, Gay said, he is banking on his outsider status as an asset.
“In effect, the state is out of money and you would think a long-term politician would have had some solutions to that,” Gay said. “They had a hand in bankrupting our state. I haven’t had the opportunity to be corrupted. I have been outside the Albany bubble.”
(Rachel Stern is a graduate student in magazine, newspaper and online journalism.)
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