For Al Stirpe, the driving force this election is economic investment.
“During these really difficult economic times we have to make sure that we continue to invest in very strategic areas. So that when the recession is gone we’re in a much better position to compete against not only the surrounding states but all the countries in the world.” Stirpe said.
Stirpe, D-North Syracuse, is seeking his third term filling the 1201st state Assembly District seat. The Republican challenger is Don Miller, a Clay businessman making his first run for public office after working on the campaigns of national and New York Republican candidates.
The 121st state Assembly District includes the towns of Cicero, Manlius, Clay, LaFayette, and Pompey. The district tilts toward the Republican Party. Of its 90,000 voters, close to 35 percent are registered Republicans, 31 percent are Democrats, and 25 percent are unaffiliated with any party according to the New York State Board of Elections.
The election will be Nov. 2.
In Stirpe’s first run for the Assembly in 2006, he campaigned on three major issues: Reforming the workers’ compensation system in New York State, creating universal health care, and economic development. In this campaign for re-election, 57, Stirpe, a former financial analyst and business entrepreneur, says he plans to bring more money to Central New York by allocating more funding into new high-tech jobs and supporting local agriculture.
In the assembly, Stirpe is the chair of the subcommittee on export trade and member of six other committees: Aging; Agriculture; Higher Education; Economic Development, Job Creation, Commerce and Industry; Small Business; and Veterans’ Affairs.
Among his accomplishments, Stirpe cites:
- Revamping the workers’ compensation insurance system in 2007 to increase weekly benefits for newly injured workers and encouraging the state to cut insurance rates 20.5 percent in the fiscal year.
- Working with Lockheed Martin and the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering to start nanotechnology educational programs in CNY middle schools and high schools.
- Helping to win $38 million in capital funding to help build new buildings at SUNY- College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
- Helping to get $10 million for the Connective Corridor between Syracuse University and downtown.
Patrick Mannion, former president of the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Syracuse, says Stirpe’s business experience helps make him a good elected official in tough economic times.
“Al is one the few members of either house — the senate or the assembly — who has real life business experience, who has real live experience in meeting payrolls, who has real live experiences of dealing with the ups and downs of running your own business. That’s a fairly rare quality in both the assembly and senate,” said Mannion.
Stirpe has lived in 121st state Assembly District for 29 years. He lives in North Syracuse with his wife, Chele, and their 13-year-old daughter. He has a stepson who is a navy veteran and a stepdaughter living in a home for the disabled in Syracuse.
Outside of politics and business, Stirpe says, he loves sports. He grew up playing football and basketball. While attending the University of Notre Dame, Stirpe was a kicker on the football team. Now, he said, he’s a big fan of the Yankees, the New York Giants, and Notre Dame football.
Stirpe grew up in Clyde, N.Y. There, he said, he picked up his hard-work ethic working in his father’s restaurant. “Everything I needed to know I learned in Clyde, New York,” said Stirpe.
While working at Albert’s Restaurant, Stirpe moved up from washing dishes to waiting tables and later becoming a short-order cook.
He appreciates, he said, the people skills he picked learned in that first job. “In a small town you kind know everybody, and you develop relationships. I probably waited on everybody in Clyde,” said Stirpe. Working in the state assembly, he added, is much of the same. “Government is a lot like that,” Stirpe said.
(C.J. Baker is a junior majoring in broadcast & digital journalism.)
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