With election season rolling in, Western New York Independent Living hosted a “Meet the Candidates” forum– where candidates spoke about their qualifications and relevance to the disability community.
All candidates, including democratic candidate Darci Cramer tied in their past involvement with the disability community to speak on what they can change. Cramer, who is a mental health professional, is running for the 147th Assembly District, which covers Wyoming County and parts of Erie County.
“Paraprofessional support, peer support, I think is crucial. I think it's crucial because nobody can understand what that patient is going through, other than somebody else who has something similar that they're going through,” Cramer said.
“And a lot of what I do as a therapist is to try to understand and relate my own struggles, my own background, to what somebody's going through.”
Cramer’s opponent is David DiPietro, who represents the republican party and is running for re-election. DiPietro did not attend the Meet the Candidates event but according to his website, he has a strong focus on addressing crime and Second Amendment rights.
To know who they’re voting for, each candidate opened the platform for questions at the end of every speech. The main question disability advocates asked candidates at the podium was what they could do to help people with disabilities in the current housing crisis– beyond affordable housing.
One solution, said Democratic candidate Thomas Carle, is for politicians in power to speak directly with experts in the disability community. Carle is running for New York’s 23rd Congressional District.
“I would get the people who actually know what the problems are. I'd get them together. We'd figure out everything we needed to do, build a consensus among us, and then take that strategy plan and go to people who actually can help us implement it.”
But things got heated when one advocate asked how Carle could make her life–going into retirement–survivable.
In response, Carle said he would want to address the housing crisis and other problems the aging population faces when entering retirement. This would include increasing the amount of social security people get.
Carle’s opponent, Republican Congressman Nick Langworthy, also did not attend the Meet the Candidates event but he has a strong focus on “employment opportunities and accessible resources for rural communities,” according to his website. Most races represented at this event only had one candidate show up to speak, despite both being invited.