Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Pinion Thursday threw down the gauntlet against his Democratic opponent U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, painting him as an out-of-touch politician entrenched in Washington DC politics and out of touch with the lives and concerns of regular New Yorkers.
“Here’s a man [Schumer] who holds press conferences on everything from a jar of jam to the Tide pods we use to wash our clothes. It doesn’t appear as if the safety of New Yorkers or Americans is his top priority. If it was we would hear about it,” said Pinion before speaking at a pro-police rally in Lower Manhattan.
“His silence speaks volumes when you compare it with everything he somehow finds a way in which to put his two cents in. At the end of the day, we have a state of New York with 19 million people and shrinking because of the policies that have been put in place,’ he added.
Pinion noted that Schumer vanquished former U.S. Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, who used to care about fixing potholes but was accused of spending too much time in Washington, and now the Senate Majority leader is too concerned with the DC politics himself to make sure that the issues affecting the lives of New Yorkers get fixed.
To this point, Pinion and others at the press conference argued that the criminal justice reforms enacted by progressive Democrats the past few years favored the alleged perpetrators over victims.
“With bail reform, the point that everybody sees is criminals being released back onto the streets, but it’s a lot deeper and darker than that. A lot of the discovery rules were changed. It gives the perpetrators of the crimes a lot more rights than the actual victim. It’s further victimizing the victims, and painting the perpetrators as the victims which is just really perverse to the way society should be,” said Bronx County Conservative Party Chair Pat McManus.
Pinion, whose official campaign kickoff begins after the petitioning process ends on April 7, said he welcomes debating Schumer.
“It [debate] would be in the interest of public discourse, and certainly the first black man ever nominated for U.S. Senate in the history of New York State by either major party, having a principal conversation with the Senate Majority Leader for the entire nation, about poverty and about crime, and about the fact that children not being at a proficient educational level should be of a national priority to be heard,” Pinion said.
