NYSUT Makes Endorsements In Senate Races
The New York State United Teachers made its endorsements official 
today, adding 30 Republican senators and five Democratic senators to its list (right).
NYSUT had withheld its endorsements from Senate incumbents who voted in August in favor of a property-tax cap.
But Richard Iannuzzi, NYSUT president, said in an interview this morning that the union changed its stance after the senators pledged to hold harmless school aid as the state looks to close its growing, roughly $2 billion budget gap.
“It’s very important to us to get across the message that mid-year cuts in education are more devastating then they would be any place else, and we began to lobby that message,” he said. “And people who committed to support no mid-year cuts, we felt it was an obligation to demonstrate support for those people.”
One Democratic incumbent was left off the endorsements, though: Sen. Darrel Aubertine, D-Jefferson County, who is in a re-election battle against Republican challenger David Renzi.
NYSUT’s endorsements could be especially helpful to Senate Republicans who are trying to retain its majority as NYSUT will now send out its endorsements to its 600,000 members and provide money and volunteers to their campaigns.
Whether Democrats or Republicans would cut school aid has become an election issue. Republicans last week accused Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith of wanting to cut school aid, but then Smith quickly pledged to keep school aid off the chopping block.
Iannuzzi said that in conversations with Smith and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos , neither of them want to cut school aid.
“There’s obviously is a raising of the rhetoric between the majority and minority leader,” he said. “And that’s between them. For us, we’re getting statements from them that provide us at least some comfort” that school aid will be preserved.
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So, after all is said and done, they ALL have sold out to the special interests. Since there is no longer a definitive difference between state Republicans and Democrats, perhaps we are late in forming a state taxpayers’ party which will control a huge block of votes and apply them much like the teachers’ union does. Once you had to be a property owner in order to vote; now if you are a property owner, you are voted out of town. Send all these legislators back into the private sector where they can enjoy robbing each other one at a time instead of robbing us en-masse.
Thanks for the list. The NY Teacher’s Union has the highest per pupil cost in the nation while providing mediocre results.
Now I know who NOT to vote for!!!
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