We face a major, yet achievable challenge. We can make Western New York a place where our children can find quality employment, establish their families and continue the extended family relationships that make our communities and enrich our lives. We can summon the political will to end our decline and put the common good first. I am committed with your essential support to making the difficult decisions essential to reverse our direction. This reversal will require fundamental changes in Albany.

With your support I will go to Albany as your citizen legislator, in our NY Senate. I will dedicate myself to all of “The People” and the common good; not the special interests that have us locked in a spiral of decline. "The People” include:

• The middle class struggling to make ends meet and pay their taxes,
• The small businessmen and women struggling every day to make a living and create jobs in our communities,
• The working poor who cannot find good jobs,
• Our children who need the best, disciplined education possible,
• Our families struggling to instill good values in the face of a media that glorifies violence and that conveys both sex and debt are free and good,
• Our Seniors, some of whom are being taxed out of their homes, and
• The unborn whose hearts we do not have a right to stop beating.

Each of us is incredibly fortunate to be an American and Western New Yorker.   But with this good fortune comes a responsibility both to those who made it possible before us and to future generations.   It is our time to shoulder the responsibility of living the challenge —and gift— our forefathers gave us, of using democratic principles to develop strong, vibrant, and fiscally responsible communities.

To make our area competitive for business growth, we must make the significant, democratic reforms documented in numerous studies, proposals and former State Senator Seymour Lachman’s book, Three Men in a Room. We must reduce our highest state spending per capita, second highest debt per capita, high state/local taxes, and Albany mandates that negatively impact our local communities. We must make our schools directly accountable to parents and efficient. We must make our legislators accountable to you, the voters, through competitive, non-partisan legislative districts and term limits. Our citizens deserve to have their hard-earned dollars spent as carefully as possible.

My plan is on the following pages. It is based on the many lessons life has taught me and my years of listening to the people I have worked with, volunteered with and talked to from Canandaigua, Batavia and Warsaw, to Springville and Buffalo. I will continue to do for our communities what I have lived, believed and worked hard for over my twenty-eight years in business solving engineering problems for communities and companies, my six years in government increasing efficiency, my fifteen years managing and raising funds for disadvantaged youth educational programs, and as a grassroots education and government reformer. We can make the Western New York area as vibrant, prosperous and hope filled as the one of our parents and grandparents. We can cooperate and sacrifice for the common good. We can bring our forefathers’ values of honesty, openness and democracy to Albany. We owe it to our children.