Philip Christe Announces Candidacy For Assembly In The 89th District

Mt. Kisco resident and insurance agent, Philip Christe, is formally announcing his candidacy for the 89th Assembly District. He is endorsed by the Independence Party and the Right To Life Party.

Christe seeks the Assembly seat to restrain growth and reach of government undermining family life and commerce in our district.

Two issues the campaign will focus on will be the performance and financing of public schools and current State laws allowing unrestricted access to abortion.

The platforms of the Independence and Right To Life Parties directly address these areas of great concern.

Christe has developed an interest in education because of his long involvement in local board politics influencing the district's attention on wiser spending and, more specifically, an adoption of systematic and intensive phonics for elementary literacy.

"I focus so much on education because this is the one area where so much time, effort and tax money is spent and, ironically, where so much waste and inefficiency flourish,"

"Specifically, we can start with laws surrounding financing and management of our school districts." New York State could assist locally elected school boards by repealing tenure laws and several other arcane statutes making public school administration too costly and burdensome.

More fundamentally, the Assembly could hold open and thorough hearings to write school choice legislation wherein parents direct the tax dollars earmarked for education to the provider, public or private, that best meet their needs. A "G.I. Bill" for parents, as it were.

"Ours is not a problem of spending too few tax dollars on education, it is a problem of how we spend it."

As consumers of various goods and services, we are all fully aware of the need -to provide value to the customer. It follows that a competitive and comparative environment can only help all schools perform better for their direct customers, the parents. Christe notes that several states, including New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are undertaking such legislation now, so why not New York?

"A well-conceived and fair parental choice program will not only improve the quality of education but will also strengthen real estate values in this state." This cannot be said in the current state of affairs.
   Full legislative hearings on education issues could be followed by an examination of current laws favoring unrestricted and unlimited access to abortion.

"Unrestricted access to abortion, at any stage of  pregnancy and at any age of the pregnant woman, stand against the freedoms our Government should protect.

"The fundamental ideal that our Government exists

at our consent to insure life and liberty is dangerously 

inverted if one is unborn, too frail, too old, too retarded

or too something else."

Public policy dealing with life and death needs to be hammered out in public in an open legislative process. The public deserves a more thorough debate on abortion (and euthanasia) with a common understanding" about the definitions, means, and consequences of abortion on demand.

"We haven't been given the full story."

This "closed government" and education finance monopoly are largely behind the growing state bureaucracy fueling widespread taxation of our incomes in real estate, sales, excise and other Byzantine and hidden tax grabs making it too difficult for families and  commerce to thrive as they might in Westchester.

"Economic freedom is the soil in which family life and commerce can flourish. Public policy, in my opinion should be written in this context."

Voters have the, opportunity to vote for an independent citizen candidate, Philip Christe, who is not beholden financially or ideologically to special interest's, specifically the teachers' unions and abortion lobbies who clearly do not favor an open legislative process They undermine the idea that government exists to preserve and protect our freedoms and provide means for all to cooperate in the common welfare.

In future press releases Philip Christe will address: term limits which I favor; a balanced budget to restore fiscal solvency and budgetary sanity; a "referendum and recall" ballot to give greater participation in important legislation; and election and campaign reform sorely needed to open the process and encourage participation by citizens, not politicians looking for work.

Philip Christe is eager to address any group, sympathetic or otherwise. "This campaign will be Financed by good ideas discussed honestly and openly."

In 1995 he was a candidate for the Bedford School Board losing by less than 200 votes out of'4,600 cast.

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