When Jim Walsh announced he would not seek an eleventh term representing the 25th Congressional District a gaggle of Republicans floated their names as possible contenders, but only three carried any creds to the table. It seemed former State Fair Director Peter Cappuccilli’s to lose until he dropped out for health reasons. When Common Councilor Ryan McMahon stepped aside to avoid splitting the county’s vote {Onondaga make up 65 percent of the district} the way was clear for former County Legislature Chair Dale Sweetland, who received 94 percent of the county committee’s weighted voting.
Last week Sweetland’s major opponent, Wayne County state Assembly Member Bob Oaks, along with Walsh endorsed him at a Clinton Square press conference. Before the committee met Sweetland had released a poll conducted by Jeff Stonecash of 405 likely voters showing him and Democrat Dan Maffei {who lost to Walsh two years ago, neck and neck with about 36 percent each. Although Sweetland said that contributions have been coming since he won the designation, perhaps a more telling statistic was released earlier this spring showing him starting out with $0 in his campaign fund compared to Maffei’s $855,000.
The Q and A:
When you got the Onondaga County Republican Committee designation for Congress, you said your job would be to get out in the district and show people you were just like them. Is that why you shaved your beard?
No. I told my wife and kids on Christmas Day that I was going to shave my beard. They asked why. I said because it was getting too many different colors and it isn’t doing it everywhere. I would walk by a mirror and think I had gouged myself when I trimmed the beard. Then I’d touch it and it would be hair, but a different color. So I was going to shave it anyway. Then my daughter, who is 32, said Christmas Day, that I might want to wait until spring, when you can get some color in your face, otherwise it might be pretty white under there. I thought that was good advice, so I did it for my birthday, March 29. Then I announced on April 3 that I would run for Congress.
What are the people in the district like?
I think the people in the district are just like me. I live in a rural town. A lot of this district is rural, in Cayuga County and Wayne County. The suburbs of Irondequoit, Webster and Pennfield in Monroe County are much like DeWitt, Manlius and Camillus in Onondaga County.
Most people, I think, are like me, looking at things and saying, “What’s going on?” I think they’re tired of the partisan politics that has taken over Washington. It’s taken a long period of years, but I ‘m exasperated and frustrated with the people who are elected to Washington and the bureaucrats there live inside that world, and are often out of touch with what’s going on on Main Street, USA.
Jim Walsh has done a good job of being in touch, but I’m learning that a lot of folks, once they get elected to Congress, move to Washington and become residents of DC. Then they go home to visit. Jim Walsh came home every week. I think that makes a difference.
Is there general agreement that among the four counties in the district, Onondaga is the power?
With 65 percent of the district I think that’s true. People in Monroe County told me that. They thought someone who lived in Onondaga County should represent the district. I think my advantage is my business background, my agricultural background, and being a town supervisor, I know a lot of people in Wayne County and Cayuga County and the rural parts of the district. I spent ten years in the crop insurance industry, and I’ve been in almost every driveway of those apple growers along Lake Ontario. I understand those issues. I understand what town government does, and I understand what county government does. And somewhere along the line it all becomes interrelated.
Is this still a Republican district?
I think it’s a Republican district. More than that I think it’s a very independent district. I think people vote for people they can trust, and I think they vote on the issues people run on. I don’t believe they pay much attention to what political party people say about political party politics.
There are more registered Republicans. The numbers are close, but not as close as they are in Onondaga County, because Cayuga County and Wayne County are heavily Republican and the three towns in Monroe County are Republican too. The people who are not enrolled in a party are the ones who make the decisions.
What kind of Republican are you?
I think I’m a moderate Republican. I consider myself to be fiscally conservative. I hate to waste money. Let’s take one issue. I believe that Congress and the President this year said the best way to stimulate the economy is to let people have the money and spend it. My attitude is we can spend our money and take care of our families better than you can. Why did you take it from us in the first place. That’s why I say the mentality inside the Beltway is “We know how to do this better than you do.”
The Republicans nationally have a reputation as being conservatives. But the conservative Republicans of the south or the mid-west are not what conservative Republicans in New York State are. There’s a big difference. I recognize that there are things that government needs to help people do. There’s a place for government. But I do believe in individual responsibility, and I do believe that government needs to stay out of our lives as much as it possibly can. There are people who need help and deserve help. And there are people who don’t, and shouldn’t get it.
You haven’t operated a farm in over a decade, and on the County Legislature you were extensively involved in urban issues. Yet some media still portray you as the farmer in the dell. Does that piss you off?
(Sweetland laughs) It doesn’t piss me off. It bothers me that people don’t know what farmers are anymore. That’s what bothers me. If they were as open minded as they claim to be, they would understand that those farmers run businesses and most farmers take a risk just like any other businessman. And they put their families at risk every day. It’s not the stereotype some people have in their mind, someone walking down the sidewalk in bib overalls with a piece of hay hanging out of their mouth.
Is agriculture still the number one industry in the state? Is it declining?
It has kind of leveled off. The number of farms and the number of farmers has declined and continues to decline. But the farms have gotten bigger. So there are still young people coming into the business, but they need to be bigger. One thing that energizes me about going to Congress is being involved with farm bills. I was involved with agriculture for a long time, and the federal government has had its thumb on top of agriculture. Why? Because Congressional representatives from big cities and urban areas don’t want people to pay more money for food. So they keep their thumb on those prices, and farmers have dealt for 50 years with a price they get for their product that hasn’t kept pace with inflation, and hasn’t kept pace with all the expenses that they have. That has driven farmers to be bigger and bigger.
When I quit farming, the last time I got paid for my product, I got 28 percent less per unit than I got 20 years prior. And a lot of people don’t understand that the biggest portion of the USDA budget is the Food Stamp Program. Some of those social issues are wrapped into a farm bill.
With the first brick thrown in this race, the Maffei campaign accuses you of presiding over 20,000 people leaving the county. Is there something you can do in Congress to stem that tide?
You can to a certain extent. No one government and no one representative in any level of government is going to do it alone. I believe business does it. I believe business has a big role to play in it, so government needs to stay out of the way, as much as possible, so that business can compete and business can succeed and employ people. I believe the economy turns, and begins, when some entrepreneur opens a business, employs people, pays them, and those people in turn generate money flowing through the economy to take care of their families. Once people are elected to office it means you have to open up your mind and work with the other people in government, no matter which party they belong to, to actually get something done.
Is a brick that heavy, thrown this early, an indication that this is going to be a nasty race?
I hope not. I don’t think the other camp in this campaign is going to stand up and remind people that Hillary Clinton promised us 200,000 jobs when she ran for United States Senate. It’s really unfortunate. I’ve never run a nasty campaign. I’ve never run a negative campaign. That doesn’t mean that I won’t defend myself.
Two years ago Maffei benefited from opposition to the war in Iraq or how it was being handled. Is the war still an issue?
The was is an issue, but I don’t think it’s as much of an issue as it was in the last race. I think the economy is a bigger issue now. People are concerned about the economy now. But the war is an issue. Nobody wants us to be in that war. Nobody wants us to be in any war. But there are differences of opinion about when we should withdraw. I believe in citizen representation in government. If you truly have citizen representation, you have people who are experts in every field, and every issue that comes up before them. I truly believe the military experts, the people on the ground, will tell us when either the job is done or there is nothing more to accomplish. As soon as they do, they will lay out a plan for us to withdraw.
One of the things that bothers me is that I believe that all kinds of people all over this country have forgotten what happened on September 11, and if they haven’t forgotten what happened, they’ve forgotten how they felt. And I don’t want it to happen here again. And I’m not convinced that terrorism doesn’t exist out there. Some people say that that’s someone else’s civil war over there. I don’t know that I wouldn’t disagree with that. But I don’t know enough right now to say we should set a date certain. I seem to remember that we weren’t prepared to go. The president told everyone we were coming and it took ten or twelve months to get there. If we say we’re going to leave September 18, 2009, I think an awful lot of our enemies will sit back and say, “OK, we can wait ’til then.”
Can you reflect on why you lost the primary for County Executive?
When you lose a race by 21 votes you spend a lot of time wondering why. I spend a lot of time wondering why I couldn’t change eleven people’s minds. Eleven out of 22,000 is quite a small number. But there were lots of reasons why. The County Executive did a good job. She ran a good race. I think it helped contribute to the margin of victory that she had {in the general election} that she and I didn’t get nasty. The Democrats got nasty with each other.
What’s going to win in the race for the 25th Congressional District seat?
House to house. Neighbor to neighbor. Making sure people know who the candidates are. People will make a decision on who they can trust.
