WHITESTONE – David Bressler, born and raised in Whitestone, is the Republican candidate for New York State Assembly in District 26 in Northeast Queens. A retired Regional Manager for Entenmann’s, he recently visited the offices of The National Herald because of his concerns about the state of affairs in New York politics and to make sure voters, including many Greek-Americans, are aware of what is at stake in this election.

Bressler told TNH he decided to run because“I became involved with the Queens Village Republican Club about three years ago and I was always complaining about Albany, the dysfunctional system they have up there, the rampant corruption, and the waste of taxpayers’ dollars. I worked hard my whole life, like so many others, and they just waste it away, and it’s really unfair and you get fed up after a while.

“I live in the Bay Club, a beautiful gated community, like any other community it has its issues. I’ve been on the board for ten years, and gave up my presidency this year to devote my time to the campaign, and we’ve accomplished a lot there, but yet I saw some problems in the community and really nothing gets done. For 10 years, we focused on Bay Club because that’s what I was voted on, I ran for reelection this year and won by a landslide which is a compliment, with most boards the unit owners get tired of you after a while, but they know what I say I get done, and we saw so many things in our community, overdevelopment of the land, inequitable property taxes, the different assessment rates and tax rates. Condos and co-ops are class 2 and they definitely get the brunt of property taxes and then you hear about Governor Cuomo wasting $10 billion on upstate projects to create jobs and then very few jobs were created, part of that $10 billion was the ‘Buffalo billion,’ I’m sure you’ve heard of, and really the result of that $10 billion wasn’t creating jobs it was creating the fact that two of his closest aides were convicted of bribery, Joseph Percoco about two weeks ago was sentenced to 6 years, so this has just been going on and then a few months ago, our ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was sentenced to seven years which I thought was a light sentence. Then you had so many others, it doesn’t matter which party, there was a Republican Assemblymember in Rochester who was just indicted for bribery.

“My first legislation that I want to adopt and pass is term limits, because the city has it right, it has two, four-year terms, that should be for all state officials who are running for office, two four-year terms. This way they don’t get entrenched with lobbyists, land developers, and contractors. You earn the first four years and if you get reelected you go for another four years and then you’re capped. But right now you’ve got elected officials who have been there for 30-40 years, there’s no good that’s going to come out of that.

“I’m unhappy with the radical left Democratic Party taking over. I get along with moderate Democrats, as a matter of fact moderate Democrats are voting for me. Because my policies align closer to moderate Democrats than the radical left do. And the radical left is Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo is going left in this election since he was challenged by Cynthia Nixon, and all these crazy policies, felons are allowed to vote, and jails in our neighborhoods, closing Riker’s Island and we know there’s a land development deal going to be announced I’m sure, but why would you want to close Riker’s Island where it’s safe and secure? If God forbid, a convict escapes it’s an island it’s hard to get off. The population of Riker’s is 8500, they could only fit 5000, so the 3500 are going to be released. I know they’re not going to release the rapists and murderers, but if someone steals a pocketbook or a car or robs your house numerous times they don’t belong on the street, and that’s what they want to release, some bad people in our neighborhood. Heroin injection sites, heroin addicts in our neighborhoods, they’re going to want to get money to buy heroin, that could lead to theft and robbery, and my solution, and I was speaking at an engagement and I got a standing ovation for this, why don’t they put that heroin injection site with a rehabilitation center? We know, we’re not heartless, we know that it’s going to be difficult for heroin addicts to get over their addiction, but don’t have a standalone heroin injection site. Integrate it with a rehabilitation center, so the goal is to rehabilitate them, not a heroin injection site where they’re going to have good needles after good needles.

Maria Andrianos- Administrative Assistant for the campaign, and New York State Assembly candidate for District 26 David Bressler visited the offices of TNH. Photo by Eleni Sakellis

“The lack of commonsense and the lack of thought in these policies really drove me to run for office, because it’s difficult to run for office. Thank God I have a great staff, Maria [Andrianos] has been a great administrative assistant, she makes my life easier and I have a great campaign manager, so having a great staff and still the demands of running for office are extremely difficult, but rewarding, and I think the ends justify the means. At the end when I am elected, because I am confident that I will be elected, I could do good for the people, rather than do good for myself.

“It’s good that I had a career, and I’m financially secure because of 401Ks and pensions, etc., so I can give back to the people, I don’t have to worry about raising kids, putting them through college, this office will be for the people, because I don’t need anything from it to be honest, I just need for things to be thought out carefully with commonsense and also thought out to be efficient, effective, and fair, and a lot of these policies are not fair and they’re not thought out and they’re not safe.

“We also have the SHSAT issue, the students that work hard and study hard and get the best scores deserve entry into these specialized high schools and again, we don’t want to ignore the students who haven’t received good grades, there’s a free tutoring program that’s not publicized, so let’s get it out there to the parents, to prep the students who aren’t doing as well. You don’t fix a problem by punishing the good ones, you fix the problem by helping the ones that are a little bit behind, and de Blasio wants to punish the students that are already succeeding. I don’t believe in that, I believe in helping the ones that aren’t succeeding and finding out the reasons why they’re not succeeding. If there’s not enough free tutoring then spend on more of that, what better way to spend than on our children.”

More information on David Bressler is available at davidforassembly26.com.