Nurse. Lawyer. Businesswoman. Political and social activist.
As she campaigns for Congress, Republican challenger Anne Marie Buerkle of Syracuse stresses her multi-faceted career and concerns. She especially emphasizes her early career in health care.
“When you go into nursing, it is because you care about people,” said Burkle. “I think that is consistent with what we need in our elected officials.”
Buerkle, 59, is the Republican challenger in the race for the 25th Congressional District. She is running to unseat Rep. Dan Maffei, D-Dewitt, who holds the office since 2008. Maffei was the first Democrat to occupy the seat in 28 years.
Election Day is Nov. 2.
For Buerkle, a victory would be her first election to public office. In the late 1980s, she ran for Onondaga County legislator twice and lost. In 1994, she was appointed to the Syracuse Common Council but lost her bid for re-election that same year.
The 25TH Congressional District includes all of Onondaga and Wayne Counties, the northern part of Cayuga County, and the towns of Webster, Penfield and Irondequoit in Monroe County.
In Washington, control of the House of the Representatives is up for grabs. Democrats now have 258 seats to 177 for Republicans. All 435 seats are up for re-election. Anger and an anti-incumbent mood shows up repeatedly in polls. That’s inspiring Republicans with hope to regain control of the House.
In the 25th Congressional District, Republicans have a small lead over Democrats in registered voters. As of April 2010, there were 138,146 voters registered as Republicans; 137,792 as Democrats, and 18,095 as unaffiliated with a party.
Party officials describe Buerkle as a well-prepared professional fit for the job. One of her fellow Common Councilors in 1994, Timothy Cowin, a Republican from Skaneateles, says she was a public official who “always did her homework and was very concerned about education.”
“I think she’ll do fine,” Cowin says. “She is very concerned with taxes and health care and many issues in which she has a great background.”
- In her bid for the seat, Buerkle calls for:
Lowering taxes to spur job growth and jump-start the economy through consumer spending.
“It only makes sense that we lower the costs of doing business and let individuals keep more of what they make in order to encourage entrepreneurship, investment, and sustainable economic growth,” she says on her website. - Repealing the recently enacted legislation to expand health care coverage by requiring individuals to buy insurance.
- Shrinking government through repealing the health care overhaul, cutting ineffective government agencies and getting rid of earmark spending in some bills.
Among the agencies she would eliminate, she says, is the federal Department of Education. “It has failed our children. Their test scores are abysmally low and it’s an organization that is ineffective. The local governments and the state governments —that’s who should have the power,” she said. She has not specified which spending earmarks she would get rid of.
Buerkle is divorced and has six adult children. She graduated as a registered nurse from St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing and got her law degree from Syracuse University. In her nursing career, Buerkle worked as a registered nurse at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital and St. Joseph’s Hospital. She was also a substitute nurse in the school her children attended in Syracuse.
As a lawyer, she also served 13 years as an assistant New York attorney general representing SUNY Upstate Medical University. Buerkle has taken a leave of absence to campaign for Congress.
As a political activist, Buerkle is the former spokesperson for two Syracuse anti-abortion groups, Friends for Life and Operation Rescue. She is also a certified member of the Surrogate Decision-making Committee for the New York State Commission on Quality of Care, a committee that reviews medical decisions made for legally incompetent patients.
A personal experience led her to become an advocate for people with special needs, she said. She had a sister who was quadriplegic for many years and died when Buerkle was in her first year of law school. “She was fortunate because she had a family available to help her with her healthcare decisions. But I know there are folks out there who don’t,” Buerkle said. “I felt that I would like to be involved in helping them with their decisions.”
As a businesswoman, she owns a retail commercial property in Camillus and she leases out spaces to small businesses. Being a small business owner persuaded her that tax policy needs changing, she said. “That’s the real life experience that makes you understand what regulations and taxes do to small businesses in our country,” Buerkle said.
Buerkle supports lower taxes. She is a “proud signer of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge which binds me to oppose federal tax increases,” she says on her website.
That stand has prompted the Maffei campaign to attack her in a television ad that accuses Buerkle of having “double standards.” She has a payment plan with the county that allows her to make monthly payments that go towards paying off a tax debt of more than $44,000, according to the Onondaga County office of Real Property Taxes. But she opposed a tax amnesty that would give people a “second chance” when they defaulted in paying their taxes, the Maffei ad says.
In response, Buerkle says the tax debt is not hers but has been caused by the tenants of the property she leases in Camillus. When they were unable to pay their taxes, Buerkle said, she decided not to evict them. Instead, she said, she pays the county on their behalf.
To the tax assessor’s office, the debt is Buerkle’s. The property — and therefore the tax debt — is in Buerkle’s name, according to the assessor’s office.
In the money race, Democrat Maffei has a big lead in campaign funds over Buerkle. As of August, he had $1.1 million, compared to Buerkle’s $182,000, according to Federal Election Commission records.
In endorsements, Buerkle is scoring some big Republican names. She has won the support of prominent Republican figures like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and House Minority Leader John Boehner. In the district, she also received the support of the Conservative and Independent parties.
(Bianca Graulau is a junior majoring in broadcast and digital journalism and political science.)
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