There is no love lost between Frank Scaturro (C-New Hyde Park) and the Nassau County Republican Party.
Scaturro, who is challenging 4th District Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) and Nassau County Legislator Fran Becker (R) for a seat in Congress, lost to Becker in the Republican primary.
“If [Becker and McCarthy] were the ones on the ballot, I’d have to write in another name,” Scaturro said of his decision to run.
It may seem like deja vu for the lawyer and former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, who also lost to Becker in the 2010 primary.
But this year, Scaturro will be on the ballot in November. The New Hyde Park resident is running on the Conservative and Independent lines.
Scaturro’s campaign is a split from the Nassau County GOP, who Scaturro accuses of top-down leadership and being more concerned with local political positions than nominating the best candidate to challenge McCarthy.
“This may be the least democratic county in the least democratic state in the nation,” said Scaturro, referring to what he called the county GOP’s “authoritarian” structure.
Scaturro said Becker was not a viable candidate and had reiled on deceptive campaign tactics, including attempts to paint Scaturro as a liberal.
“His entire campaign… was based on telling constitutents of the district that I was a Democrat and an ultra liberal,” said Scaturro.
Scaturro endorsed a laundry list of conservative positions in an interview with Blank Slate Media, including a hard-line position on taxes, opposition to President Barack Obama’s health care law, and an endorsement of the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket’s plan to change Medicare into a premium support, or voucher, system.
The candidate also staked out positions on hot-button social issues. Scaturro said he disagreed with Roe v. Wade and opposed gay marriage, stating support for the Defense of Marriage Act, opposition to federal domestic partnership benefits and his belief that states should have the right to prohibit same-sex marriage.
Scaturro said he supports the tax plan advocated by Romney, which features a 20 percent across-the-board rate cut paired with the elimination of deductions to make the plan revenue-neutral.
A much debated study from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded that such a plan would not be possible without raising the effective tax rates of the middle class; Scaturro disputed the center’s study, and said that the exact rate cut could be adjusted the make the plan work.
Scaturro said that his primary concern was to reform Washington’s fiscal policy, which he said was responsible for unsustainable debt and spending.
He said that cutting deficits would have to be done without raising taxes. Unlike Obama and congressional Democrats Scaturro supports extending the entirety of the Bush tax cuts and said he would have rejected a proposed deal last year that would have established three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in revenue increases.
“If you only partially extend the Bush tax cuts… it’s going to be a tax increase,” he said.
Scatturo said like many GOP House members he opposes any tax increases.
Scaturro said that his solution to the country’s budget deficits would focus on entitlement reform, a law to cap federal debt as a percentage of gross domestic product and other measures to facilitate the cutting of discretionary spending.
He listed some federal departments, including Energy and Commerce, that he thought would be good targets for budget cuts or outright elimination, and said he was open to reductions in military spending.
The Medicare proposal that Sacturro supports – what he and Republicans call premium supports, and what Democrats call a voucher system – would, instead of having the program pay for insurance directly, give seniors a sum of money to spend on private insurance.
Democrats contend that because of the quickly rising cost of health care, such a program would shift the burden of health care spending from the government to seniors.
But Scaturro says that it, or another major reform, is necessary to prevent the program from going bankrupt, and that the plan would not apply to Americans currently over age 55.
“We’re going to face a situation where retirees have the rug pulled out from under them” if there is not a change to Medicare, he said.
On McCarthy’s pet issue, gun control and safety, Scaturro said that he thought regulations were necessary but that some proposals, including the assault weapons ban and prohibitions on high-capacity magazines, were not effective and posed a burden to legal gun owners.
“It’s an individual right… that doesn’t mean it can’t be subject to reasonable regulations,” he said.
Scaturro said he is an advocate of repealing Obama’s health care law, which he says is a step towards government control of health care. He did not give a detailed description of what could replace the law, but said that allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines and passing tort reform could help control health care costs.’
Scaturro also said that he supports Israel, and would favor allowing the state into NATO. He also said that he takes no issue with Israel’s building of settlements within the occupied West Bank territories.
Expressing support for the right of states to prohibit same-sex marriage, Scaturro said that he believed that equal marriage rights were not protected under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which mandates “equal protection under the law” for all citizens.
“It’s not an invidious discrimination,” he said, referring to the legal standard set by the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Loving v. Virginia, which overturned laws banning interracial marriage.
He also said that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, and that abortion laws should be decided by the states.
Scaturro indicated that a vote for him would be a way to register discontent with the local party system.
“Can you think of any caididate that would more change the politics of Nassau County?” he said.
