Scott Murphy For Congress 2010
This was the official website for Scott Murphy's 2010 re-election run for the 20th District of New York in the United States House of Representatives.
This district had sent Republicans to Congress for decades before electing Kirsten Gillibrand in 2006. Gillibrand was re-elected handily in 2008. After her appointment to a Senate seat in 2008, Democrats held onto her district by a few hundred votes. Murphy won the seat in March 2009, beating Assemblyman Jim Tedisco by more than 700 votes in a special election. In the 2010 campaign Congressman Murphy's polling were strong early on, but he seemed to have faltered down the stretch. He ultimately lost to Republican Chris Gibson, a Kinderhook native and 46-year-old retired Army colonel who ran on a conservative platform.
Content is from the site's 2010 archived pages.
Meet Scott Murphy
Scott Murphy, 40, represents the 20th District of New York in the United States House of Representatives.
Saving and creating jobs, growing small businesses, and finding new ways to tackle old problems - these are the things Scott has done successfully for more than 15 years.
While professional politicians just talk about the need to create jobs, Scott has first-hand experience actually creating them. He's built successful companies, helped create over 1,000 jobs, and worked to make small businesses the economic engines of their communities.
Scott believes that strong families form the cornerstone of strong communities. Scott's father was a postal worker and his mother was a teacher. They worked hard and sacrificed to give their kids better opportunities than they had. Scott and his wife Jen Hogan get together with her 59 immediate family members nearly every week for Sunday dinner.
Scott's been blessed to live the American dream. After graduating from Harvard, Scott became a high-tech entrepreneur. He founded Small World Software, later sold to iXL.
For the eight years prior to being elected to Congress, Scott worked for Advantage Capital Partners. Advantage helps other businesses grow and create jobs for their local communities. Scott's job is to help these companies grow, expand, and most of all create and protect good-paying jobs here at home.
Scott is married to Jen Hogan, who grew up in Washington County next to her family's dairy farm. Scott and Jen currently live in Glens Falls with their three children, Simone, Lux, and Duke.
THE ISSUES
Fiscal Responsibility
As a small businessman, Scott knows what it is like to make payroll and responsibly balance a budget. Over the past decade, Washington has abandoned any sense of fiscal restraint, and during his short time there, Scott has been working hard to return to fiscal sanity to get our skyrocketing deficit under control.
Scott has led the charge to eliminate wasteful spending in Washington. He voted against giving himself a raise and against increasing his office budget while Upstate families are tightening their belts. He has also voted to eliminate nearly $40 billion in government spending from annual appropriations bills.
Soon after he was elected, Scott was successful in helping push to reinstate Pay-As-You-Go rules in Washington, which require any new spending to be offset by cuts somewhere else in the budget. These principles lapsed in the last decade, and Washington has neglected to make the tough choices to rein in wasteful spending and eliminate unnecessary programs.
Additionally, Scott has led the charge against Medicare waste, fraud, and abuse. He authored the Medicare/Medicaid Fraud Prevention and Control Act, which will curtail abuse in the Medicare system and prevent criminals from defrauding taxpayers.
Small Businesses
As a small businessman, Scott understands that small businesses create jobs and are the economic engines of our local economies. That is why Scott has fought for tax relief for working families and small businesses who are still struggling to make ends meet.
Scott has been fighting to help our businesses access the capital they need to create jobs and spur economic growth. He championed and successfully passed a commonsense reform of our banking rules to repeal an outdated restriction from 1933. The Business Checking Fairness Act will enable small businesses to receive interest on their checking accounts, putting more capital in the hands of our small business owners and opening up new avenues for investment.
Scott has also been fighting to increase small business lending, and has supported expanding SBA loan programs and increased funding for our community banks that partner with our local entrepreneurs to get businesses moving.
Openness and Transparency
All too often, Washington’s business is done behind closed doors. Upstate New Yorkers deserve a representative in Washington that is honest, accessible, and accountable. Since day one, Scott has worked to restore openness and transparency in our government and has led by example.
When Scott first ran for Congress, he pledged to visit all 137 towns in the district. Scott has fulfilled his pledge and has joined with business and community leaders to discuss the ways that we can work together to improve the economy and create jobs here in Upstate New York.
In addition to visiting all 137 towns, Scott has hosted over 120 public town hall meetings to discuss the important local and national issues facing our communities. Scott also posts his daily public schedule and funding requests online for the public to review and scrutinize.
Scott will continue to be open, transparent, and accessible to all of the people and communities in the 20th Congressional District.
Job Creation and Economic Recovery
Scott understands that private enterprise is the driving force of our economy, not the government. Small businesses are the economic engines that create jobs in our communities, and a limited government needs to be focused on creating an economic environment that is conducive for economic growth in the private sector.
Scott has been working with business and community leaders here at home to help create jobs and get our economy back on track. His plan to Renew Upstate New York’s economy identifies four critical sectors that can strengthen our economic future here in New York’s 20th Congressional District:
- Infrastructure
- Education
- Energy
- Small Business and Agriculture
By investing in these critical sectors, we can help create jobs and lay the foundation for long term economic growth here in Upstate New York.
Relevant: Having grown up in Saratoga, I watched this race with interest from my new home in Maryland as I was in the midst of planning another move. I was doing research chores for the search engine optimization rainmakers at TNG/Earthling NYC. One of things I love about this job is that the head guru Bob Sakayama encourages us to volunteer to work for causes we believe in, and we can work from anywhere. So working a set number of hours on the campaign was no problem, even if I was on the road. Scott is really the best candidate and we just need more folks to see why. The team really tried our best to spread the word and generate buzz. Boy was I disappointed when he lost to Republican, Chris Murphy. And although I was disappointed in the outcome of the election, I was definitely not disappointed with my move which went a whole lot smoother than I could have imagined. I have just been relocated to Chicago! I was glad to see the district has returned to a Democrat with the election of Paul Tonko.
Endorsement: Murphy is the right man for 20th Congressional District
Glens Falls Post-Star
October 30th, 2010
Both Congressman Scott Murphy and his Republican challenger, Chris Gibson, are good men.
They are both men of integrity. They are both very intelligent, very well spoken, and very well versed on the issues. They are both very committed to their particular points of view.
The difference in this race is that Scott Murphy has been working on solutions, and he has the business background, the political experience, the fiscal conservatism and independence to help bring about those solutions.
Rep. Murphy has been attacked during this campaign for being too partisan and too far to the left to serve our moderate congressional district. But despite Republican claims that he votes lockstep with the Democratic speaker of the House, neither his comments nor his actions indicate that he's a rubber stamp on anything.
The National Journal, a magazine that covers national politics, ranked the 435 House members as to their degree of liberal and conservative votes, and Rep. Murphy wound up among the 10 "in the middle" - not overly liberal or overly conservative. According to opencongress.org, Rep. Murphy voted with his party 91 percent of the time, but with Speaker Nancy Pelosi only 84 percent of the time. That's not an outrageously high percentage by congressional standards for either party.
Among the bills Rep. Murphy and the Speaker directly differed on were a bill extending the federal debt limit, setting a time line for withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and the first health care reform bill. Bills they agreed upon follow well-known, moderate Democratic positions on issues such as cap-and-trade global warming reduction legislation, pay-as-you-go budgeting (new expenditures must be offset by corresponding cuts), repealing the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy on gays, support of military spending, green initiatives, prevention of hate crimes, job growth initiatives and funding for veterans programs. No one should be surprised that Rep. Murphy voted with the Democratic majority. But like his predecessor, Kirsten Gillibrand, his positions correspond with the more moderate-conservative philosophy of his constituents, including his support of Second Amendment rights and veterans issues.
He publicly abhors the heavy partisanship in the Congress and tells horror stories about how leadership punishes members of opposite parties who work together. He also takes time to read bills - like the 1,900 page health care act. He raises questions and considers bills on their merit, not on whether they come from the left or the right.
Congressman Murphy has adequately explained his vote against the first health care bill and in favor of the second one, which some have characterized as a flip-flop. He said the second version was much improved over the first because it contained new cost-cutting measures, eliminated the employer mandate for small businesses, contained more provisions to cut down on fraud and waste, provided tax incentives, and allowed businesses to band together to negotiate better prices from insurance companies. Was he expected to vote for it as a loyal member of his party? Probably. But if the rookie congressman was going to be a lock-step loyalist and not ruffle Nancy Pelosi's pantsuit, he would have just voted for the first version and kept his mouth shut.
Is the bill perfect? Certainly not. Mr. Murphy doesn't think it is. But it is a reasonable attempt to curb the rising health care costs and ensure that Americans have access to health care. And there are still many opportunities to improve upon it.
If you were satisfied with the way the country was going prior to the last election, then by all means vote for Mr. Gibson.
Mr. Gibson loyally represents the party whose policies helped drive the nation into a near-Depression; that allowed the financial industry to run amok; that provided untold tax breaks for the upper class and created an unbridgeable chasm between the haves and have-nots; that precipitated an employment crisis and foreclosure crisis and a debt crisis; that took a $236 billion national surplus and turned it into a $1.3 trillion dollar debt; that started two wars we can't get out of; and that failed to face and address the growing health care crisis.
Mr. Gibson would repeal the health care bill and start over from scratch, which means going back to a failed health care system that precipitated the health care legislation in the first place. Do we really want that? A recent Associated Press-GfK poll shows that 57 percent of Americans either support leaving the health care bill as it is or expanding its scope, while only 41 percent said they'd like it repealed or reduced in scope.
Mr. Gibson also would go backward on education reform. As part of his plan to eliminate or consolidate government services, he would dissolve the federal Education Department - which has helped raise national educational standards - in favor of the old system that promoted poor performance and vast inequities in education among states.
His proposal could result in federal funding of education being shifted back to property tax payers in the state, something we can ill afford.
Mr. Gibson also wants to extend the Bush tax cuts to those making more than $200,000 a year, while Rep. Murphy opposes them at that level.
In less than two years in office, Congressman Scott Murphy has proven to be a responsive, thoughtful, moderately conservative representative who actively seeks solutions to the nation's problems.
He has established himself as a free-thinker who follows the Democratic philosophy but isn't chained to it. And his business background gives him unique perspective on issues relating to business development, taxes, regulations and the economy.
We encourage voters to support Rep. Scott Murphy for a full two-year term in Congress from the 20th Congressional District.