To the Editor:
Perennial candidate Tracy Mitrano J.D. ’95 — who announced her 2020 bid to unseat incumbent Congressman Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) just eight days after her loss in 2018 — continues to receive coverage in this newspaper suggesting that Mitrano can and deserves to win this November. Its readership is left to wonder why The Sun believes so ardently in Mitrano’s virtues as a candidate and as a potential representative.
In the latest reported piece on the coming election, Mitrano explains her viability in this cycle by citing the fact that in 2018, she had the disadvantage of having Governor Andrew Cuomo on the ballot. Mitrano goes on to insist that her campaign was plagued with “close to the ceiling of Republican turnout” in 2018. If Mitrano is counting on lower rather than higher turnout in a presidential election year when a Republican incumbent is on the ballot, she can expect to be sorely disappointed. A government major with even a single semester under their belt could have debunked Mitrano’s theory.
Furthermore, Mitrano’s moderation has been wildly overstated by this newspaper. In its September 2019 endorsement of her, The Sun’s Editorial Board maintains that Mitrano is a beacon of moderation while acknowledging that she once supported Medicare-for-All. Mitrano later recanted and reassuringly informed The Sun that she doesn’t “know exactly what that solution is” when it comes to healthcare. The Sun insists on said moderation while in the same breath lavishing praise on the Democrat for being an unyielding defender of abortion on demand, and while failing to name a single issue where Mitrano may break with her party. On the other hand, The Sun dismisses Congressman Reed’s bipartisan record by noting that he voted for the Republican Party’s healthcare bill. How easily the Editorial Board ignores the fact that Reed is the co-founder and co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus that he runs with Congressman Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) — how quickly it forgets his vote for the Equality Act. Moderation is about supporting the Democratic Party line on any given issue. The more issues you agree with it on, the more moderate you are. Game. Set. Match. Mitrano.
Tracy Mitrano will lose on Nov. 3. She will lose because she is not a moderate, because her values do not align with this district’s, and because Congressman Reed is an eminently reasonable and talented politician who represents his constituents and their values well. I’m sure he’d be thrilled to find out on Nov. 11 that his 2022 opponent will be none other than Tracy Mitrano.
Isaac Schorr ’20