Letters to the Editor: Wanted: Representative who won’t vote against the district’s people

Mike Sigler reinforces the massive evidence that if we are like him, a Republican supporter of Tom Reed’s incumbency as Congressman, only then will Reed cultivate a relationship with us. The rest of us find that Reed’s mind is closed.  Reed, like Sigler, will damn us with malicious labels a la Trump, that we “throw rocks at windows” or are “extreme liberals” when we try to help Reed understand what the large majority of the NY 23rd want him to do. We think it is stupid to take away health insurance, a universal need, from 23 million people, including many of us, but Reed voted for that, in spite of every single one of his public meetings, winter before last, being dominated by crowds trying to instruct him. Reed blithely ignored the message.  And we have found that when we calmly address him, such as when the congregation of St. Paul’s in Ithaca petitioned him on gun issues, we get no response whatsoever.

Tom Reed is in a public office but acts as a private dealer, where promoting his re-election is the price of his advocacy, and everyone else is a waste of his time.  He doesn’t understand what it means to represent the people.  He doesn’t seek to understand the mind of the NY-23rd and give it voice in Congress. If he did, he would propose full-bore efforts to stop climate change, to institute government-administered universal health care, and to reverse the decades-long trend of helping the rich get richer while making everyone else poorer, which are three of our biggest problems.  Instead, Tom Reed picks at legislative nits and brings a few well-publicized crumbs to the district, while quietly selling us whole-hog to the highest bidders.

Tim Lillard
Newfield, NY