His Challenge to Langworthy and His Vision for NY-23

0:00 Speaker 1 Well, let’s go to far west New York State. Well, it’s Congressional District 23. And that’s all the way across the state. And with us today is Aaron Guise. And he’s the Democratic Party and the Working Families Party running for Congress in that area. And he’s running against Nick Langworthy. And... Well, Aaron, tell us why you want to run for Congress and

0:34 tell us your big differences between you and Congressman Nick Langwood. Sure.

0:41 Speaker 2 Thanks, John. I appreciate you having me on. So, yeah, I’m speaking to you from way over far in western New York. I’m speaking to you from beautiful Corning, New York, sitting here on Market Street. Yeah. And I would say if I’m going to answer why I decided to run for Congress, it’s really because we’re in kind of an

1:01 affordability emergency. I was watching my neighbors where I live in Olean lose their homes, lose their health care, cancel their vacations because gas is so expensive. And I thought, you know, in my classroom at Bonaventure, I’m always telling my students to treat other people the way they want to be treated. You know, what right do I have

1:21 to go back to my comfy classroom and not do anything about this? So here I am. And I would say the contrast between me and Nick Langworthy come down to our policy approach. I would say it’s the war, the tariffs, and Social Security. So Congressman Langworthy has voted, I want to say, five times to keep the war

1:48 with Iran going. And I believe that that is a mistake. I think the Congress needs to take some control here and force the president to negotiate and try to get people’s fuel costs down. We saw, we’re driving all over the district right now, as you can imagine, and highway diesel is $ 6. 40 a gallon today. And that’s making everything

2:12 more expensive. And then on the tariffs, Langworthy’s voted to keep the tariffs going seven times. The tariffs are a tax on American consumers that nobody voted for. And over here in the northwest of the state, it’s really hurting our relationship with Canada, you know, where a lot of our trade, a lot of our tourism comes from. So

2:36 we need to reverse the tariffs. And finally, on Social Security, it actually came up during the debate. We were asked, you know, what do we do to keep Social Security solvent because we’re facing a cliff in 2032 where benefits are going to get cut. And Langworthy talked for 60 seconds and basically just said there should be a bipartisan commission.

2:59 And I think, you know, John, we might disagree on this, but I think we’ve got to eliminate the cap. We’ve got to make sure that folks who are making more than $ 185, 000 a year are paying into Social Security at the same rate that working folks and middle class folks are.

3:16 And if we do that, we can keep Social Security solvent and meet our promise to our seniors. So those are some of the big differences.

3:23 Speaker 1 Understood. Now, I mean, I understand some of his positions are that the way we got from a $ 5 trillion deficit when Bill Clinton was president to a $ 40 trillion deficit is because we took care of the entire world.

3:42 I guess we protected Europe, we protected Japan, we protected Australia, and they didn’t pay their fair share. I guess that’s one of the reasons it went up. The deficit. And I mean, I think, have you debated together with Nick Langworthy?

4:04 Speaker 2 Yes, we had one televised debate on WETM and Elmira. We pushed real hard for more, especially a televised debate in the Buffalo media market where 74% of the district lives. But Nick Langworthy wouldn’t do it. Actually, the local TV stations got pretty salty about it.

4:24 Speaker 1 Well, you know, I mean, I think a good debate amongst people always helps. And I’m glad to have you on WABC. And thank you for calling in this Sunday morning. And what can I say? Good luck on the people who vote on Tuesday and whatever will be will be.

4:47 Speaker 2 Thanks very much, Sean. This is a campaign about absolutely. Yes.

4:53 Speaker 1 Thank you so much.