Election 2016

Meeks seeks 10th term against two challengers

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Incumbent Congressman Gregory Meeks (D-St.Albans) is running for his 10th two-year term against challengers Michael O’Reilly, a Republican, and Green Party candidate Frank Francois.

Meeks, 63, said if re-elected his top initiatives are to create jobs by putting forth a transportation infrastructure bill, create more housing, add a public option to the Affordable Care Act, and pass a ban on assault weapons.

A couple of the initiatives are a response to survey answers from about 20,000 constituents that Meeks sent out earlier this year. The top three issues most important to the respondents are affordable housing, gun control and police-community relations.

“We are working with Housing Urban and Development that not all the foreclosed properties get bought by private equity firms, instead not-for-profit organizations buy the homes and we make sure there is senior housing, Section 8 and affordable rentals,” he said.

A lawyer and former airline pilot, O’Reilly, 58, who lives in Broad Channel, said he is running because he is “very tired of the corruption” and believes that there should be term limits for representatives in the House — three terms — to help curb illegal behavior.

The vice president of the Rockaway Beach Republican Club said that he supports small business and wants to create an environment that helps such businesspeople succeed by streamlining what he called the “bureaucracy of regulations that tends to stifle business.”

On the law enforcement issue, Meeks said that both the police and the community need to respect one another and that police should patrol and get to know a community and there needs to be dialogue between the two parties.

Both Meeks and O’Reilly agree there should be a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are in this country illegally. “There should be background checks, length of time you have been here —10 or 15 years — taken into consideration, being gainfully employed, pay a fee to apply for citizenship and we should not divide families,” Meeks said.

O’Reilly supports Donald Trump’s idea of building a physical wall and said the current vetting process isn’t stringent enough as people who don’t belong on the “no fly” list are on it and others overstay their visas and don’t get caught. “Like a boat that starts leaking a hole has to be plugged,” O’Reilly said. “I don’t want to deport the ones who are here; there should be a pathway to citizenship. It’s our bad they got in here and most are good hardworking people.”

A Queens Village resident, Francois, 51, calls himself a full-time activist and crusader for justice. In 2004, his son, Frank Francois Jr., then 16, was shot and killed as he got caught in the cross fire of a teenage feud. “When my son was killed, I started to look at causes of community violence and to protect my other two sons, and all children,” Francois said.

There are many issues to be solved he said, including failing schools, housing and police brutality. Francois wants to establish local law enforcement accountability boards that are elected by their respective communities to look into allegation of police abuse and a community-oriented economic empowerment group to “break the stranglehold of big business.”