District 8, We Need New Representation

My name is Dylan Rice and I'm running to represent Assembly District 8 because I've had enough. For 18 years, my opponent, Michael Fitzpatrick, has left Smithtown and northern Islip with no seat at the table. Now, in the wake of COVID-19, we need a representative who is going to win for us now more than ever. Mr. Fitzpatrick, a lifetime politician, doesn't negotiate legislative wins; he lives inside his own echo chamber while even members of his own party vote against him. He's grandstanded for more than a decade about tearing away the pension plans that our public employees have worked for tirelessly while legislative wins on transportation, healthcare, and more go to New York City, not us.

Mr. Fitzpatrick has no clear solutions for Long Island's problems - from COVID-19 (praising the federal response and wanting to rush re-opening even as cases continue to climb) to racism (he denies systemic racism even exists), to ignoring the risk of climate change (voted against requiring future effects of climate change to be considered when building new infrastructure). And towing the party line provided by the likes of Sean Hannity, he tried to frame me as a “socialist” with echoes of McCarthy ringing through. Don't mischaracterize me, Mr. Assemblyman, my policies are not radical or new, just ask our former Governor and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It's your style of “trickle-down economics” that allowed Wall Street bailouts to executives who got fat bonuses instead of being brought up on charges for destroying working families and the Middle-class. "Corporate Welfare" is fine and dandy, yet you call me a “socialist”?

In this age of COVID-19, the rich are getting billions of dollars richer while working families are losing their jobs at a rate rivaling the Great Depression, and front line workers are about to be laid off in staggering numbers. The Performing Arts industry is effectively shut down, restaurants and retail shops are unable to keep up, schools are struggling to stay open without the proper PPE and staffing. We need proper funding otherwise entire industries and small businesses on Long Island could fail. And where is Mr. Fitzpatrick? He's chosen to align himself with the same extreme, far-right agenda in Washington that botched the COVID response and hid its collective head in the sand while over 230,000 Americans have died. And instead of fighting for a just tax system that would empower the Middle-class, he has instead chosen to fight for the interests of the industries and corporations that make up the majority of his political donations.

Watch our debate for yourself, and then decide which one of us is more in tune with not only the needs of our community but reality itself. I don't use political double-talk and party-line nonsense. I speak my own mind, sometimes disagreeing with my own party while my opponent seems to take cues from the far-right entrenched politicians whose talking points he parrots without a hint of self-awareness. Yet he tries to frame me as a “radical.” I’ve got thick skin and can take this kind of malarkey, but our district needs help now. The time for partisan bickering and entrenched politicians is long past over, we need action and we need it now.

Dylan Rice