Former Representative, City Council, Middletown

Candidate, United States House of Representatives, New York, District 18, 2014, 2020

No caucus information on file.

No professional experience on file.

No organizational membership information on file.

Publications:

My name is Scott Smith and I am seeking your support as an independent, unaffiliated candidate for congress, representing New York's 18th district. The state of our current climate of politics compels me to run. I am confident that many of you throughout the district share my frustrations and dissatisfaction. I do not believe there has ever been a time in our history when both parties have so blatantly broken the public trust, abused our common sense, and insulted our intelligence.

The major political parties have for so long now dominated our politics and our governance from the edges, every year moving farther and farther apart, and then clawing at the middle doing greater and greater damage to our country. To them it is an acceptable price to pay as long as it serves their ends, which are reelection and power.

Today's politicians have become particularly skilled at one thing, dividing us. On any number of issues they have sought to split us into groups. These divisions do nothing to serve us, or the good of our country, only them. We are constantly corralled by their efforts into opposing factions on all manner of issues. Every election season the politicians push us farther apart. This will inevitably lead to a point where we will be so divided that we no longer see each other for what we are, Americans, all of us. We must correct this before the divide becomes insurmountable.

The ugly fact of the matter is that there is an "us" and a "them". The "us" is you and me, and the "them" is Washington, DC. That must change. The people that serve in government must come from and live in the world that we live in, not the fantasyland that the politicians of the day inhabit. We must begin to fill the middle and drag the edges back in. Let that effort begin today.

I am moved to act because I fear that decades from now our children will still be fighting the same arguments among each other and all the while the Republican and Democratic parties will laugh at us as they continue to happily share the spoils of power.

If you have been seeking an alternative to the status quo, a choice other than Republican or Democrat, then I humbly offer you such an alternative. Now is the time to take action.

As a candidate, as your neighbor, and as your fellow American, I make the following commitment to you:

I do not go to serve government.

I do not go to serve party.

I do not go to serve special interests.

I do not go to serve myself at the trough of government excess.

I go to serve you -- my neighbors, the people of the 18th district, and the good of our country.