Republican Tedisco Cites Record in Assembly, Political Experience

News Article

Republican Tedisco cites record in Assembly, political experience

On the basketball court or the halls of government, lawmaker faces down the big guys

Jim Tedisco stands just shy of 5 feet 8 inches. But in the prime of his basketball career, he could dunk. Tedisco trained for it by wearing ankle weights everywhere he went as a student at Union College, where he was a star athlete.

At 58, Tedisco has spent 27 years of his political career as the hard-charging little guy, and has risen through the ranks to lead the Assembly's Republican minority. This month, he's attempting the biggest play of his life: a run for Congress.

"I'm pretty proud of my work as an individual who concentrated on the economy for years, and now with this downturn I can hit the ground running," Tedisco said recently during an interview at Snyder's Restaurant in town.

Snyder's is a humble little place where routes 9 and 146 meet, where old men gather on a weekday afternoon to drink a few beers and shoot the breeze. Although Tedisco has been in politics long enough not to say it out loud, the regular-guy atmosphere of Snyder's draws an implicit contrast to the portrait Republicans are trying to draw of Tedisco's Democratic opponent, Scott Murphy — a Harvard-educated venture capitalist who moved out of Manhattan just three years ago.

Tedisco grew up in Schenectady, where his father, Nicholas, worked at the General Electric iron foundry. Tedisco tells a story about the day his father noticed his son's grades "were lower than my basketball scores" and took him to work.

"He opened the door and, I'll tell you, it looked like hell on Earth out there: red-hot molten steel coming over our heads, the soot was so thick you couldn't see," Tedisco said. "There was a clanging that gave me a ringing in my ears. He made me sit in the corner and watch him work for an eight-hour shift." At the day's end, father and son were filthy. When Tedisco blew his nose, what came out was black with soot. The day he took his son to work, Nicholas Tedisco was halfway through a 40-year career at the foundry.

"He grabbed me by the shoulders and said, ‘Look, you can either go back to school and get the grades and go on to college, or you can come here and work at the foundry,' " Tedisco said.

Hard work and respect were paramount in the Tedisco household, which included two other brothers, one with Down syndrome who died of leukemia at 15.

Politics, however, was not part of family life. Tedisco decided to run for office when he was a young teacher and a coach working with struggling families. "I looked at that and said, ‘Jeez, if I become a public servant I could probably help the families more, create more jobs, help the economy more,' " Tedisco said.

He was elected to Schenectady City Council in 1977, when he was 27. In 1982, Tedisco won a four-way primary and then the general election to succeed Clark Wemple in the Assembly; his district includes parts of Schenectady and Saratoga counties. While Tedisco does not live in the 20th Congressional District, he has plans to move there after the election.

His years in the chamber have included a number of victories. In 1999, Gov. George Pataki signed Buster's Law, an animal-protection measure Tedisco championed. He also has pushed for property tax reform in the form of a tax cap. As for jobs, Tedisco points to his votes in 1998 to create the Schenectady Metroplex Development Authority and to increase its bonding authority in 2008, moves that assisted in the creation of 3,000 jobs.

Tedisco was chosen by his colleagues in 2005 to lead the Republican minority, a job that earns him a $34,500 stipend in addition to his base salary of $79,500.

Tedisco's tenure as minority leader put him in the national spotlight in 2007, when he was one of the loudest voices opposing former Gov. Eliot Spitzer's plan to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

Tedisco's opponent, newcomer Murphy, has claimed that Tedisco's career in the minority has included a lot of time fighting things he doesn't like and not enough time offering solutions. Murphy has hounded Tedisco for not saying how he would have voted on the federal stimulus bill.

Tedisco dismissed the criticism as shadowboxing from a candidate without a record of public service. "If I were him, I think I would want to talk about a vote that's already been cast and (a bill already) signed by the President," he said. "But I'm doing the job of a public servant now. … I'm working now to get that money directly to the middle class, and I think that's what voters want to hear and see."

His wife, Mary Song Tedisco, calls him the Energizer Bunny — the hardest-working person she knows. "I'm a good multitasker," Tedisco said. "Sen. Hillary Clinton ran for president and she represented the entire state. I don't know if anyone ever asked her that question."

Source