Friday, January 23, 2009

watch me get my political rant on...

You know what? It's nice to finally have an Upstate Senator from New York.

As a lifelong resident of Northern New York, I have seen my region of the state virtually ignored in favour of New York (City), with occasional lip service paid to the soldiers up to Fort Drum, as well as to Syracuse and Buffalo.

Most political ads I heard when growing up stated, "We need real change in Albany." Albany to me was a far away concept. It takes me three hours to get home from Albany every time I go back up north. Sometimes it feels like Northern New York can be in its own little world.

I think that's the reason a lot of people up north voted for Secretary Clinton in 2000. She actually came up and visited us. It's rare for politicians to go up that far. Like I said, Syracuse is basically the cut off point.

But you know what, the thing about the senators that bothers me most is simply this: we haven't had an upstate senator since 1971. That's how long all of our Senators have been from the City or its suburbs. I'm even looking at you, Secretary Clinton. I get it. New York City is a happening place and a lot of our state's residents live there. But there are still a lot of us who don't live in the city, who do not have our interests strongly represented in the Senate.

I'm also very tired of the Senate seat being the plaything of the political families of this country. We had the Clintons, Kennedys, and Cuomos all jockeying for Senate seats. And remember Rudy Giuliani? He had his eye on that seat. So to me, it's quite refreshing to see that our new Senator is someone from upstate. I am very, very excited that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand will be representing New York.

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