Astorino announces candidacy for governor
Rob Astorino and family. Photo: RobAstorino.com
In an announcement that doesn’t come as much of a surprise, Republican Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino has announced his candidacy for governor. Here’s his press release, and a video announcement:
White Plains, NY–March 5, 2014….Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino today announced his candidacy for governor of the State of New York in a video message to New Yorkers. The twice-elected county executive emphasized New York’s myriad dead-last rankings among states in categories including high taxes, business friendliness, corruption and population loss. Mr. Astorino, 46, laid out a vision in his video to put New York “back in the winning column.” Today’s announcement will be followed by a campaign tour beginning Thursday with stops across the state.
Here’s that video:
Astorino indicated a few days ago he’d be running; with Donald Trump potentially in the race, it’s not yet clear whether he’d be the only GOP candidate for governor.
Astorino, a former radio executive, has twice won the county executive’s seat in Westchester County on the Republican line, in a region where Democrats now dominate.
This isn’t particular to Astorino but I’ve always wondered why criticizing a candidate’s family is, generally speaking, considered off-limits or at least boorish. But the candidate using his or her family in sympathetic campaign material and events is generally accepted.
This guy seems very articulate. This is the first time I have heard him speak.
This video is WAAAAAY too long. Most people can only pay attention for about a minute 2 max.
He may be articulate, but what about his “facts”? People moving in droves from New York to Alabama, Florida, Texas and North Dakota? OK, so Remington Arms is moving 2000 jobs to Alabama. There are almost ten million jobs in NY state, so that move subtracts 0.02 percent of New York’s jobs.
But New Yorkers moving to Florida? Boy, that’s new and different, eh? I don’t think any governor is going to put much of a dent in those figures, no matter what he does. The second most popular place for New Yorkers to move to is California– is that because of their stripped-down regulatory framework?
And it looks like substantial numbers of Texans are moving to New York, too, at least according to this cool but confusing site. (You have to hover your mouse over a state to see where its residents are going, and hover over the linking line to get the actual numbers.)
Meanwhile, big surprise, virtually every state in the northeastern U.S. is losing population, a trend that predates Cuomo’s term, and obviously can’t be blamed entirely on him.
I’m no fan of our glorious Gov., but I wouldn’t be too quick to buy a used car from this guy. He seems to be assuming no one will check up on his claims. Cuomo is “telling New Yorkers of faith that there’s no longer a place for them here”?! Really? I must have missed it.
Walker – your post did not discredit a single Astorino assertion; did you really expect him to list EVERY job lost in this state? The website you linked to is useless – “substantial numbers of Texans are moving to New York”? Where do you get that? How many? This site states that NY is losing population, and offers only a pictoral presentation for people to lazy or disingenuous to do real research. You can keep whistling past the graveyard if you please, but high taxes and eroding freedoms are like a rope around the neck of this state.
Am I the only one to want to donate money to a charity helping children genetically predisposed to having a very wide face?
Knuckle: Yes.
I think its good to look critically at New York and to at least try to address some of our problems. Certainly Coumo already recognizes these negative trends, which is why he has all of these tax free zones and his start up business marketing campaign running in large media markets in other states (including Texas) to lure business back.
Mervel, I understand your point but I’d contend that stuff like the tax-free zones are merely shell game gimmicks decide to pander to particular areas and permit Cuomo and others to give giveaways to their donors. Real tax reform (and its twin mandate relief) would be comprehensive.
“The website you linked to is useless – “substantial numbers of Texans are moving to New York”? Where do you get that? How many?”
Mark, I said the site was confusing– you didn’t try hard enough. Hover your mouse over New York, then hover over the line that shows up between New York and Texas: in round numbers, there are 20,000 people moving to Texas from New York, and 11,000 moving from Texas to New York.
The site offers an exact count of people moving in an out of each state. You just can’t be too lazy to figure it out.
“…high taxes and eroding freedoms…” God I’m tired of those rants.
It seems like both this guy and Cuomo have a pretty similar message. Also I don’t think he makes that claim that people are moving to those places in “droves”?
Those states he mentions (I am not sure about Alabama) are creating jobs at a pretty good clip. People (including New Yorkers) go where the jobs are. Florida is attracting many new companies and research institutions. The Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake was looking at the opportunity to move to Florida at one point. In that case we would not be losing some old retirees but some pretty young and smart people with jobs important to a small upstate town.
None of this really matters. Cuomo has a 30 million dollar war chest – He wins!
Cuomo certainly has the upper hand.
I agree Walker; I think just having a mantra about high taxes does get old. However the key is how hard is it to do business in a state? How hard is it for a normal middle income family to live in a state? How many hoops, how many financial hurdles, how complex is the tax structure and yes the tax level etc. New York in general is seen a relatively unfriendly to business and working individuals on those fronts. We tax the heck out of middle income people who own a home for example. So yeah even if you want to start a business and move to NYS, and get a tax free zone and can cross that hurdle, you get up here and we say well to live here we have the highest property taxes, income taxes and sales taxes in the nation, so enjoy. I mean that may work in Westchester, or Manhattan; but you know I move to Buffalo or Massena and say gee what am I paying for with all these taxes?
@ Walker – 20K leaving NY for Texas, 11K leaving Texas for NY – got it – that’s great news for us. Sorry you’re tired of hearing about high taxes, but that’s going to happen when you live in the highest taxed state in the entire country.
@ marvel – you wrote one sentence about the mantra of high taxes getting old, then go on to right a paragraph critical of NY’s high taxes? OooooK…. btw, I agree with you – our taxes are obscene
@KnuckleHead – you should be ashamed, but I have a sense you were beaming with pride as you hit the “submit comment” key. Just another hateful, angry liberal…
“People (including New Yorkers) go where the jobs are. Florida is attracting many new companies and research institutions.”
Right. But the entire northeast has been losing jobs and population for decades, regardless of who’s running the statehouse.
Why? Our manufacturing base is gone and our real estate prices are high– that’s what drives our taxes through the roof, and forces businesses to relocate if they can’t afford to pay workers a salary that will allow them to live here. I don’t think there’s a thing you could do that would cause a net in-migration.
Sorry Knuckle: Aside from that a candidate’s young kids should be off limits, I also don’t think your comment is substantively different than the monkey jokes made about Obama. Making cracks about an innate characteristic – sexual orientation, skin color, face shape, whatever – is beneath you.
Mark, Feel free to mix it up all you want, but don’t you dare misspell Mervel’s name. He’s an institution. Respect him. I’m serious.
Oa – thanks for bringing this to my attention!
Mervel – my apologies! I inadvertently misspelled your name as I marveled at your post!
“Right. But the entire northeast has been losing jobs and population for decades, regardless of who’s running the statehouse.”
True. But states like Florida are not attracting manufacturing jobs. They are attracting high tech jobs.
New York should be able to do this but we can’t because the costs of doing any kind of business in NY are too high. We attract some business for sure but companies have a fiduciary duty to their share holders to maximize profits. Doing that in NYS is difficult.
That is why Cuomo is desperate with things like these No Tax zone gimmicks.
The stinking kids are cute! Who said they weren’t. Am I now being politically incorrect to express that they are cute?
Mark, not hateful or angry, just making a point – the same point that Brian made in a different form. This candidate, though most all of them do it, releases a photo of their family basically for propaganda purposes. We are supposed to be impressed at how loving and happy and attractive they are. We are supposed to be swayed in our political opinion as if they are the best looking package of butter in the grocery store.
If I were to comment on how charming they look nobody would think anything of it, but seeing them in a positive light is just as much a form of prejudgement as anything else – perhaps more insidious. So I create a nonsense issue that has to my knowledge never been used as a pejorative – having genetic predisposition for a wide face – and all of a sudden having a wide face is some sort of attack.
How do you know that I myself don’t have a wide face? Am I a self-loathing wide-facer? Perhaps I should start a support group PWWP (pronounced poop) People With Wide Profiles.
Add this to the nonsense about Stefanik having a funny look on her face in a previous blog post.
“This candidate, though most all of them do it, releases a photo of their family basically for propaganda purposes. We are supposed to be impressed at how loving and happy and attractive they are. We are supposed to be swayed in our political opinion as if they are the best looking package of butter in the grocery store. ”
Or maybe they are just proud of their family and want to show them off. Politicians are not robots?
Many of the kids on my wife’s side of the family have big heads! But they still look good on camera!
Oh get off it knuck. We all know what you meant. You took a crack at the kids and it backfired.
Upstate New York is losing jobs, downstate is gaining them. New York City is attracting huge numbers of high tech jobs. When I was growing up in California, conservatives complained that the high tax rate and regulation rate would drive out businesses. Yet Silicon Valley became a huge tech center instead of apricot orchards. It wasn’t till the price of real estate went through the roof that businesses started to move outside the state.
Yeah it kind of goes back to what we have talked about before.
New York City is NOT expensive when compared to it’s business competition, which is Paris, London, Tokyo, Bejing, Boston, San Fran. or LA.
However Upstate New York, effectively most of New York outside of the City is not competing with those cities, we are competing with other middle income areas of the country and other nations who are in manufacturing, and we are losing.
Well maybe that is why we can’t get any normal people from our district to run for Congress.
Knuckle: I guess you were the only one who considered “wide faced” to be a compliment. Sorry we don’t know your tastes.
Mervel: Perhaps a role in lower profile races. I think for federal office and governorships, normal people simply don’t want to have to whore themselves constantly to corporate interests and other fundraising demands… a requirement of modern politics for the two major parties.
Okay, wakeup, I guess just like with Hitler and Nazis, talking about people’s kids is off limits. My bad.
but get ready, because I am not making this up, “Wide-faced men are wealthier, more powerful and aggressive – and fertile women find them more attractive”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2506012/Wide-faced-men-wealthier-powerful-aggressive–fertile-women-attractive-dont-want-marry–study-reveals.html#ixzz2vJppSfN9
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Yeah, I agree Brian its all about fundraising, almost continual fundraising.
It just seems like our population could produce people with better talent than are currently running for office at all levels.
Knuckle: His son’s not a man, for one thing. For another, who cares? Save it for the tabloid forums where you got it from.
Though I fully expect someone to denounce NCPR for using a still from the campaign website. Apparently that shows “bias.”
uh-oh, bad news from the well respected glossy Popular Science. People perceive those with wider faces as being more aggressive so they act selfishly toward them.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/got-wide-face-youre-making-everything-terrible
The good news is that no matter what your face shape, wide, narrow, oblong… Oprah has advice on the proper sunglasses for you!
Just saw a movie the other night with Helen Hunt. I really love her, she’s a really good actress, and quite attractive even though she has a really big forehead, and I know I’m not the first person to notice.