GF Chronicle Matt Funiciello profile 2-20-14 by Mark Frost

Matt Funiciello: I want to change 2-party system Chronicle News Editor “It’s about time that somebody who does work for a living runs for office,” Matt Funiciello, Rock Hill Bakehouse owner and Green Party candidate in the 21st Congressional District, tells The Chronicle. “And I’m not saying that I’m the only one. But I’m the only one who is running for this office at the moment who is not a member of the two corporate parties.” Mr. Funiciello, 46, announced his candidacy on Sunday on Facebook. He joins endorsed Republican candidate Elise Stefanik and endorsed Democrat Aaron Woolf, a documentary filmmaker, in the race for Congressman Bill Owens’ seat in the vast 12-county district that includes all of Warren and Washington and northern Saratoga County. Mr. Funiciello said he will need to collect “50 or 100” signatures from Green Party members within the district to get on the ballot, if there isn’t a primary. All of the candidates could still face primaries. The Chronicle interviewed Mr. Funiciello Tuesday at his Rock Hill Bakehouse cafe on Exchange Street in Glens Falls. Why is he running? “I have intended to run for office for a very long time,” he said. “It’s one of the main reasons I was active in the Green Party for the last decade and a half. “The suggestion is always made that one should run for lower office. The problem is as a businessman and business owner and a worker, almost all of the issues that are of concern to me are national in scope — single-payer healthcare, our military budget, corporate welfare, a liveable wage. These are all things that impact me as a member of the working class that I can’t fight as mayor or dog catcher or city councilman. “I don’t really want to deal with sewer issues. I want to talk about things that impact all of us, and those have been the issues that are closest to me and the ones I am most informed about. The easy answer is I think the congressional office holds the key to at least be part of the dialogue on how these issues can be resolved.” Mr. Funiciello said he was born in Sara-

Likely Green candidate, Rock Hill Bakehouse owner, 46, has lived here for 16 years

Favorite U.S. president: Thomas Jefferson, for ‘embracing hypocrisy’ Asked his favorite U.S. President, Matt Funiciello said, “That’s a tough one, but I’m going to say Thomas Jefferson. I have a mantra that comes with being an American and having ideals that are quintessentially small-town and American, and it is, ‘Embrace the hypocrisy.’ “And I think Jefferson’s position as a landowner, as a member to a large degree to the ruling class at that time, and as a slaveowner, his position as someone against slavery is not remarkable to me. I completely understand that he could be a slave owner and still be completely against that structure and that system. “And I think that we need to sharpen our ability to recognize, as we participate in it, what is wrong with our system. And I admire other men and women who are capable of that, and he is one from history who I think is uniquely capable.” — Gordon Woodworth

What’s Matt Funiciello’s view of Democratic Congressman Bill Owens? “What I do know about him as a Congressperson is that I am not in agreement with his very weak stance on issues that are very important to me. Single-payer health care and a liveable wage in particular. His defense of the ACA [Affordable Care Act] and not understanding the negative impact of that on the working

Chronicle photo/Gordon Woodworth

By Gordon Woodworth

Funiciello: ‘Glad Owens is retiring’ & Obama is ‘a corporate puppet’

Matt Funiciello

Why vote for Matt? He says, so working people will have a seat at the table in Washington Why should someone vote for Matt Funiciello for Congress?, we asked. “That’s a good question. People ask me why I voted independent, and why I still vote independent in every election. “I don’t ever vote Republican or Democrat. I don’t ever vote Working Families party. I don’t ever vote for parties that are subsidiaries of the larger, corporate parties. And it’s not because there aren’t good Democrats or Republicans. There are many of them. I’ve met them. I know them. I respect them. I know them as principled people. “But I want to build an alternative. I want us to stop being a county in which a democracy comes in the shape of a two-party system. We all know that it’s wrong. And we all know that it’s undemocratic. And we all know that the control that those two parties have over the democratic system is disgustingly un-American. And we need to change that. “So people should vote for me because I want to change the system by which we have elected representation, so that not only corporate America is at the table, but the working class, who I believe are 95% of us, are as well. We need repre— Gordon Woodworth sentation.” toga Springs, lived in Ottawa, Canada, for most of his young life, and moved to Argyle when he was 26. He said he has lived in Glens Falls/Queensbury for 16 years. Does he believe he can win? “Interestingly, I do,” he said. “I would never run this race or any other political race without feeling that I had a good chance…I believe this is the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi. It’s 17,000 square miles, and it is the Adirondack Park. That makes the district very hard to cover, and media is key, and there really aren’t that many big pockets of urban population anywhere in the park. “Will the media cover a third-party candidacy, an alternative-party candidacy, an independent candidacy? “That’s really up to them, and it’s up to how much momentum we can gain if people ask the media to cover us.” “I have a chance to win,” Mr. Funiciello said. “I am actually a resident of this district, which is unique in this race so far. I was born here, in Saratoga Springs, which was part of the district until a very short time ago. This is my geographic home. “And even though I spent my young years in Ottawa from a very young age, I came back here at 21 because I feel at home here. This is where I belong.” Asked how he will win in a district that is majority Republican, Mr. Funiciello did not accept the premise of the question. “One of the things I think we need to start talking about in this campaign are the people who don’t vote Democrat or Republican nor are enrolled that way,” he said. “When we say majority Republican, what we actually mean is that there are more Republicans than Democrats.

“What I would say if everybody not enrolled in those two parties voted for me, I would win. “And the reality is, I think a lot of the people in those two parties will vote for me, because I am a businessman, because I am a worker, because I actually live here.” Mr. Funiciello said he did not seek the Democrat nomination “because I’m not a Democrat at all.” In 2000, Ralph Nader was vilified when his Green Party candidacy was seen as helping George Bush defeat Al Gore. Does Mr. Funiciello fear a similar consequence in this race? “I think that the power structure can do terrible things to really good human beings, and what the Democratic and corporate power structure did to Ralph Nader was one of those things. “They vilified someone I know is a great man, a very principled and honorable

Hot buttons: Funiciello on Obamacare, gay marriage, guns abortion, more The Chronicle asked Green Party Congressional hopeful Matt Funiciello his views on several of high profile issues. On guns and gun rights, he said, “I say this as someone who has defended gun ownership from my earliest of days and not someone who is pandering to someone who I think lives in the Adirondack Park. Guns are an incredibly important part of our lives. They put food on our table, and for a lot of people in the Adirondacks, that is real. I don’t expect people in a lot of other congression-al districts to understand that. But killing deer keeps people fed. And it’s good meat. If you don’t eat meat, then you don’t have to hunt, or own a gun. “If you don’t feel that we need to have guns to defend ourselves from tyranny, then you are not paying attention. “There are two reasons we own guns in this country, and in this congressional district, I am not only 100% behind gun ownership, but I’m from a long family history of people who have used guns. I have used and owned guns and hunted for much of my adult life, and most of my life when I was a kid.” Mr. Funiciello condemns Obamacare and favors a “single-payer” governmentrun health care system. “The Affordable Care Act is a travesty for the working class,” he said. “We are basically being told, ‘You already are subsidizing everyone’s health care in this country to the tune of 52 cents of every dollar, but you can’t have any unless you buy private insurance. And if you buy private insurance, we’re going to allow that for-profit mechanism to fleece you, and in fact we’re now going to force you to buy it. “It didn’t change anything. It didn’t reduce cost, it didn’t make things more efficient, it did not make things more accessible. Instead what it is doing is saying there will be penalties if you don’t buy a product. “What I have to say about that is, there

class, as most Democrats don’t. “They believe Barack Obama means well. They don’t understand that he is a corporate puppet. They don’t understand the health-care industries and health insurance companies own him, and have told him what to do. And the ACA is their bill. I do understand that. “I understand how it impacts me and my workers, and I’m angry about it. It’s wrong. When somebody like Bill Owens is out of touch enough with our reality, I don’t think they should be representing us. I’m glad he’s stepping down.” — Gordon Woodworth man. “And it’s mostly my outrage at what seemingly good people were willing to believe about him because they were being told to believe it, that has propelled me to run for office. I think it’s really important that we stop believing that this manipulated two-party system, which really is a one-party system, that it’s a logical thought process that we have no other choices. “Of course we have other choices. We’re just not being told about them. So as I said, I see this as: I am not going to be a spoiler in this race. I am going to be somebody who is going to fight for votes, and I’m going to fight for them equally among Democrats, Republicans and independent voters. And I don’t really care what people think about it when it comes down to Matt Funiciello spoiling the election for somebody.” is a model that works everywhere else in the industrialized world that we are not following, and is that willful ignorance or is it corporate manipulation? That model is single-payer health care. It’s improved, expanded Medicare for all.” “The two hot-button topics of abortion and gay marriage are non-issues for me. Roe v. Wade got decided a long time ago and it’s never been overturned and it won’t be because it’s a majoritarian issue. The huge majority of Americans want there to be legal abortion. “Gay rights is the same to me as the abortion issue, except we are watching that unfold before us in the last two decades. I don’t think that these issues have anything to do with the federal government, per se, because it has never been good at legislating morality. “But we’re not going to decide these things at the Supreme Court level any time soon, so I guess it’s important to ask people what they think so people can make a judgment about them, which people will do when they read this. “I say I don’t believe that human beings who are homosexual should be discriminated against because they are different than I am as a heterosexual. I think the very concept is xenophobic and narrow — and kind of scary and fascist.” On the Keystone oil pipeline proposed from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. Funiciello said, “Much like fracking, Keystone has very little to do, from my perspective, with what is going on in my backyard. In my backyard, we have a park that we declared many, many years ago was forever wild, and we have strip mines in it…We have the river running through the northern part of our district that is incredibly polluted.... “The Keystone pipeline is going to get handled the way the multi-national oil and natural gas companies want it to be handled, because it is not an issue we are empowered to handle at this level. We can be for or against it — and I am against it — but I don’t to waste a lot of my time on it because it’s pre-ordained.” Immigration reform? “Our position on immigration over the last two decades has been a real embarassment to a free country. To suggest that we are a free country but you aren’t welcome here is ridiculous. Not only are the incredibly hard-working illegals, as we call them, welcome in this country, we should also be fostering an immigration program that allows them a path to citizenship here.” — Gordon Woodworth