For voters’ choices for the state’s senior senator, incumbent Democrat Chuck Schumer will face Republican businessman Jay Townsend in the November general election.
In the Sept. 14 Republican primary, Townsend beat retired CIA officer Gary Berntsen for the party’s nomination. Townsend had 213,758 votes to Berntsen’s 170,993.
For the Democratic nomination, Schumer had no serious competitor, though political satirist and social activist Randy Credico had launched a protest campaign against Schumer. Credico gained some headlines but did not collect enough voters’ signatures to get on the primary ballot.
The election is Nov. 2.
In the Senate, Democrats now have a majority with 57 seats to 41 Republicans and two independents. Pollsters and political analysts are predicting several losses by Democrats in the November election, threatening the party’s control of the Senate. In heaving Democratic New York, Schumer is not considered by pollsters to be among the vulnerable senators up for re-election.
Here’s a look at the senate candidates:
Charles “Chuck” Schumer (incumbent, Democrat)
Schumer has held the seat for 12 years. In 2004, Schumer won reelection with 71 percent of the vote over Republican candidate Howard Mills.
As recent accomplishments, Schumer cites helping win a long-delayed Purple Heart for 85-year-old Irving Mann of Brighton, N.Y., who was wounded in World War II; and two grants for Nassau County and Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Rockville Centre totaling $230,000 to combat human trafficking.
In 2004, Schumer became chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, overseeing the party’s campaigns to elect members to the Senate. He was widely credited with much of the fundraising and recruiting of many of the winning candidates who gave the Democrats control the Senate in 2006.
Jay Townsend (challenger, Republican)
Jay Townsend founded and owns a market research and consulting firm called The Townsend Group. He graduated from Purdue University with a bachelor’s degree in 1976 and his master’s degree in 1982. He, his wife Rebecca and their two sons live Cornwall-on-Hudson, a village about 64 miles north of New York City.
On his campaign Web site, Townsend says he was brought up in a family of Democrats, but found a better fit with the Republic Party in the era of Ronald Reagan. Now, Townsend aligns himself with the tea party movement and appeals to voters frustrated with the current government. One of his biggest platform pitches is outrage over government spending.
In his speech accepting the GOP nomination, he promised to vote for repeal of the overhaul of the nation’s health care system enacted under the Obama administration and backed by Sen. Schumer. Instead, he calls for creating tax-deductible health savings accounts to be used to pay for qualified medical expenses of families.
Townsend has praised the tea party movement as “what this country needed to get back on track.”
(Ana Yanni is a graduate student in magazine, newspaper and online journalism.)
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