New Paltz Times.

Primary concerns: Jonathan Tasini campaigns locally in bid to unseat Senator Clinton

by Erin Quinn

First Published in the New Paltz Times on August 3, 06

Hillary Clinton has a thorn in her side, and it’s not piercing her from the right, it’s coming at her from the left. Poughkeepsie-born Jonathan Tasini is engaged in a David and Goliath struggle of mass proportions -- taking on New York State Democratic senatorial incumbent Clinton for the Democratic nomination in the September 12 primaries. A Marist poll recently put Tasini at 13 percent, quite a large chunk for a grassroots campaigner with little funds -- but squarely where another little-known candidate, anti-war Democratic challenger, Ned Lamont was at the same time in his race against incumbent Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman. Lamont and Lieberman are now neck and neck, even with former President Bill Clinton’s recent endorsement of Lieberman.

Tasini, a union leader, political commentator and social activist, who has lived in Washington Heights for almost 20 years, stopped by New Paltz this past Friday night to introduce himself to the progressive Democrats in the area, to let them know why he thinks they should vote for him in the Democratic primary and mostly, to listen and answer questions.

While he arrived only five minutes after the scheduled 7:30 p.m. appearance at New Paltz Village Hall, Tasini opened his remarks with an apology for being tardy. “First of all thanks for having me and I apologize for being late. That’s one of the things that drives me crazy about being candidate is that you’re often late! My parents brought me up with the concept that it was important to be on time, to be late was not only rude it was disrespectful. We were stuck in traffic coming out of New York, which is probably one of the reasons many of you live here. I’m sure there are several New York City refugees here!”

The anti-war, pro-labor, pro-health care candidate went on to say that even if “there is a stunning upset on September 12 and I lose to Hillary Clinton, this campaign has been a huge success. We have not just waged a campaign to offer New Yorkers a true Democratic candidate, we have begun a movement. My hope is that all of the anti-war groups, labor unions, environmentalists, election financing reformists that have joined our campaign and worked with us to get the signatures we needed will continue to bring these critical, life and death issues to the forefront of every political race in this country. Why aren’t we talking about these things?”

What you can say about Tasini is that he is down-to-earth, listens to one and all and is not afraid to draw his line in the sand on where he stands on every single issue. In fact, his condemnation of Israel’s bombing assault on Beirut after two of its soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah thrust him into almost all of the New York daily papers.

“I’m a Jew,” he said. “And I’m critical of Israel because I love Israel, just like I’m critical of America because I love America. What Hezbollah did was a crime. How Israeli responded to that crime was so grossly out of proportion -- leveling Beirut and killing hundreds of innocent people. I’m not going to say that’s okay. And what disgusted me was to see my challenger, Hillary Clinton, address the UN and stop just short of saying, ‘go get them Israel.’ Not once did she mention the words ‘cease fire.’ I won’t stand by and let this unnecessary violence continue on either side. Where are the calls for diplomacy?”

Tasini is an advocate of a two-state idea where Palestine and Israel would be separate but equal states. He said he would also call for an immediate cease fire, just like he is calling for an immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, a war he calls “pre-emptive, unjust and immoral.”

“It was my frustration and anger over this unjust and immoral war that made me get into this race,” admitted Tasini. “I think we will look back at this war in history and say ‘what the hell were we thinking and how did we let the administration wage this horrific, immoral war in our names?’ For oil? Regime change? All of the complicated and unjust reasons they may have, ones that violate international law and have resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, tens of thousands who have lifelong brain injuries, amputations, injuries of all sorts and an unknown number of innocent Iraqi deaths and casualties. What for?”

What troubled Tasini was that he felt he knew where the Republicans stood on this issue and issues of civil rights and corporate power, but “to let a Democratic incumbent who has been for this war from the very beginning, go unchallenged…that I could not let happen. Not when the majority of Democratic voters agree with my platform and disagree with hers. If you listed my positions on one side and her positions on another side and took off the names of the candidates, we would win this race hands down.”

Echoing the words of New York State congressman Maurice Hinchey, who has been very outspoken about the war and the warrantless NSA wiretapping program and has called for Senate judiciary hearings on the president and vice-president’s role in purportedly falsifying intelligence to mislead the congress into this war, Tasini, like Hinchey, asked where are the Democrats?

“Where are they? Where are the Democrats? Running for cover? They should be holding investigations on how we got into this war and if those investigations prove that the president and vice-president did something illegal, which I believe they did, then they should be impeached! With the exception of three or four Democrats in the Senate everyone is cowering to this administration! My opponent is pro-war, pro-death penalty, pro-corporate business. She has sat on the board of Wal-Mart, one of the most abusive corporate retailers in the country. She has taken money from them, from insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News -- people and companies who really care about the average citizen. Molly Ivins wrote a column recently about how she’d never vote for Hillary Clinton and said you’d have to put up a magnifying class to see if and where you could determine the differences between her and the Republicans.”

On the immigration debate, Tasini, the son of two immigrants, “who were treated so wonderfully by this country,” said he was “appalled at the direction this debate has taken. Why do we think the Mexicans are dying, literally dying, to get into this country and leave their families, their homes, their culture? Because of economic disparity. Why such economic disparity? Because of bogus trade-agreements like NAFTA, which Clinton endorses, that caused American laborers and manufacturers to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs and put Mexico and other countries into such economic despair that they have no alternative. Let’s look at our economic foreign policy and how it is structured to create this scenario rather than penalizing people who are willing to risk their lives to get a job that could feed their family.”

One of Tasini’s big platform issues is against corporate power. “I support business, but I do not support the rampant abuse of corporate power that has been allowed to grow exponentially in this country with fat government checks to support them. We are the richest country in the world, and yet we can not find a way to fight back against insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies so that every American can have decent health care?”

Tasini supports publicly funded elections so that it’s not the richest candidate that wins, but the candidate who best reflects the concerns and beliefs of the people he or she is campaigning to represent.

When asked how he felt about third parties and whether or not he’d reached out to them, Tasini said that he “believes deeply in the right of third parties to campaign and have an equal voice in elections. But I’m a Democrat. I tell Green Party members to vote for Howie Hawkins, a nice, bright guy who is running on their ticket against Hillary and I ask Democrats to vote for me in the primary and Howie does the same.”

Tasini stayed on for hours answering intricate questions on his state, national and foreign policies, and then he was off, back to the campaign trail, which, he says, “I am enjoying immensely. I love talking with people and helping them discover that all of the values they hold dear as Democrats, I hold dear, and Hillary Clinton, unfortunately does not.”

Asked if he would debate Clinton, he said, “I’d love to! But she has not responded to our request. The League of Women Voters has scheduled a debate for September 6th. I’ll be there. Senator Clinton has yet to confirm.”

While Clinton, a celebrity with deep-pocket friends like Rupert Murdoch, has raised an estimated $42 million dollars for this campaign, Tasini, running a grass-roots anti-war, anti-death penalty, anti-abusive corporate power campaign, has raised pennies in comparison. But those few pennies, have given him a 13 percent wedge in this primary race, and every day, his numbers keep growing. Recently the New York Times Op-Ed page endorsed Ned Lamott, Tasini is hoping for the same kind of support.