Too Little, Too Late For Astorino?

New York gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino has had a very busy week, as he continues to try to increase his chances of being the next governor of New York. He still trails Governor Cuomo by nearly 25% in the polls as of September 21st.

On Monday, Astorino had an Editorial Board session with the Poughkeepsie Journal where he discussed various issues and laid out plans for education and business growth in the state. Some of the main issues that he discussed during this session were the SAFE Act, Common Core, his stance on social issues like abortion and same sex marriage, and START-UP NY.

When speaking about the SAFE Act, which stops criminals and the dangerously mentally ill from buying a gun by requiring universal background checks, Astorino said “I would get rid of the whole thing.” Another thing that he said he would repeal was the infamous Common Core and he said he would replace it with his own system based on his 15-point educational plan that he just recently released.

 And although Astorino is pro-life and is against abortion unless it's cases of rape, incest, and cases where it is a health risk for the mother, he said that New York is a pro-choice state so abortion isn’t going anywhere. He took a similar stance in regards to same-sex marriage and said that even though he is against it ideologically, he respected the way that it was brought through the legislature, debated about and then fairly voted on by New Yorkers. So he claimed that he would not repeal it for those reasons.

He also vowed that if he were elected, his first 90 days in office would be focused on making a budget and looking at hydraulic fracking because it has the opportunity to create thousands of jobs.

 If all this wasn’t enough of the gubernatorial candidate, on Tuesday Texas Governor Rick Perry spoke in front of a small crowd in Buffalo in support of Astorino and the two attacked Governor Cuomo and his Moreland Commission scandal as well as many other policy issues that the governor has implemented or supported. Astorino holds strong views on governmental officials and corruption and has said that elected officials should lose their pensions if they’re found guilty of corruption.