By RICK MILLER
Olean Star
The race for Congress in the 23rd Congressional District has all the makings of a David vs. Goliath match.
Freshman Rep. Nick Langworthty of Niagara County, is seeking re-election on the Republican and Conservative party lines, while challenger Tom Carle, a retired leader specializing in turning around manufacturing facilities, is the Democratic candidate.
There are nine counties in the 23rd District: Cattaraugus, Allegany, Chautauqua, Steuben, Schuyler, Chemung, Tioga and parts of Erie and Niagara counties.
Langworthy, a former New York State Republican chairman and Erie County GOP chairman, outraised Carle by about 45 to 1. The incumbent has raised more than $1.8 million and had more than $1 million cash on hand as of Oct. 16.
By comparison, Carle will have raised around $40,000 when the campaign is over next Tuesday. Carle, a Broome County native now living with his family in Fredonia, was busy Tuesday putting the last of his 2,200 campaign signs in strategic locations — including parts of northern and central Cattaraugus County.
The race hasn’t sparked a lot of interest compared to the handful of hotly contested races across the state. The Cook Political Report puts the 23rd in the “solid Republican” column. The candidates met once in a debate broadcast by Elmira television station WETM that was streamed live on WIVB.com at https://www.wivb.com/news/political-news/your-local-election-headquarters-new-york-state/watch-live-langworthy-vs-carle-in-ny-23-congressional-debate/.
The 23rd Congressional is solidly Republican. According to the New York State Board of Elections, the November 2023 registration totaled 173,024 Democrats, 222,598 Republicans and 136,279 blanks or unaffiliated voters
In the 2022 election, Langworthy tallied about two-thirds of the total.
As a member of the House Agriculture Committee, Langworthy, 43, was disappointed that the bipartisan Farm Bill passed by the House hasn’t been taken up by the Senate yet.
It was bipartisan because four Democrats joined majority Republicans to pass the bill that contained cuts to social programs like food stamps. “I thought it was a very fair bipartisan bill,” Langworthy said last week in an interview with the Olean Star. “Slowing the growth of programs doesn’t equal a cut,” he added.
Langworthy is proud of one piece of legislation he co-sponsored, maintaining pilot training hours requirements in the FAA reauthorization bill earlier this year. The families of Flight 3407 that crashed outside Buffalo in a snowstorm killing 50 people in 2009 have pushed to keep pilot training at 1,500 hours. Langworthy got the votes of a bipartisan majority of the Rules Committee members over the objection of Chairman Michael Burgess, R-Texas, to advance the bill in the House.
Another accomplishment Langworthy credits the GOP House Conference for is the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which he said helped force President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer to the bargaining table.
The issue voters seem most concerned about is the cost of living, Langworthy said. “Our constituents are getting pinched. The middle class has shrunk.” He acknowledged that the rate of inflation had slowed, but prices are still higher. “People have had to alter their behavior,” particularly at the grocery store.
Langworthy said that no matter what the political registration of the district is, he takes “nothing for granted. I am campaigning in the district, logging a lot of miles on the car. No one can say we haven’t been visible.”
Probably the subject Langworthy and Carle differ most on is former President Donald Trump. Langworthy is a longtime supporter of Trump and both have endorsed the other. Langworthy backs the GOP plan to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts.
Carle, 70, a former manufacturing plant manager from Fredonia, is adamantly opposed to Trump’s re-election and does not favor extending the Trump tax cuts that he said favored the wealthy and big business.
Carle, a native of Conklin, N.Y., near Binghamton, had a career as a turnaround man for failing Midwest and other manufacturing facilities across the country for more than 20 years. Now he wants to work his magic on the 23rd Congressional Disrtrioct’s Southern Tier.
Carle owned a bar and a pizza shop in Conklin and played guitar in bands before he became a representative for Gibson Guitars and Pearl Drums in New York and Pennsylvania. After helping a friend turn around a third-party Walmart warehouse/transportation facility in rural Upstate New York, Carle found a career in turning manufacturing facilities around by cutting costs and making things more efficient. He was a fixer. He took a job in a Findley, Ohio facility, so his family could be closer to his wife’s family in Fredonia. They moved there when he retired a few years ago.
“It’s a very big district,” Carle said in an interview Tuesday, a week before the election. Early voting is already underway. Carle runs a lean political operation. He has two committee members and answers his own campaign email. Volunteers in counties across the Southern Tier have also pitched in by putting out signs and helping with knocking on doors and local phone banks to help get out the vote. “I’ve been on TV five times getting out my message.”
It’s not Carle’s first election. In 2022, he ran for congress in the 23rd as an independent candidate. He also ran for justice of the peace in his native Conklin as a younger man. “I started sticking up for people against Republicans in my town,” Carle said. “There was no one else who would stand up.”
Carle said he’s frightened at prospects of a second Trump presidency. So are Democratic voters he talks to. “Most are frightened and scared to death Donald Trump is going to win and do the things he’s said he will. I’m frightened what a second Trump Administration would top to womens’ reproductive rights. Women should have choices.”
What does Carle consider the 23rd District’s biggest challenge?
“We’ve got a lot of challenges,” he replied. “First, we’ve got to defend democracy and understand what kind of trouble we might be in here.”
Beyond that, Carle said the Southern Tier needs “more jobs and more opportunities.” The problems of homelessness, substance abuse, mental health and poverty could all be improved “if there were just a few more good employers.”
If elected, Carle would hang a NY District 23 is open for business sign on his Capital office door. I would focus on business and opportunity and entrepreneurship. He favors tax deductions for new businesses and would speak to IDAs and municipal officials across the district “to see what we might be able to do putting our heads together.”
Carle said the biggest reason for his lagging political contributions is “No one thinks I have a chance to win. It’s so reliable for the GOP.” He added that he doesn’t ask people for money.
Carle said he’s concerned over Langworthy taking contributions from the pro-Israel political action committee AIPAC. “He’s taken money from Netanyahu’s super PAC and voted to send huge bombs to Israel for use in Gaza. And he didn’t vote for aid to Ukraine. I stand with Ukraine.”
Langworthy, Carle said, “It too much of a Rump syncopate. If Donald Trumpo were not in the picture, I probably would not be running. He denied the election, created a resurrection and created fake electors. A lot of his supporters are already serving time in jail.”
You won’t see any ads for Carle on television. His campaign is using Facebook, Tic Tok, Instagram, and his website, Carle4Congress.com to promote his candidacy.
