A Jamestown resident and attorney has officially entered the race on the Democratic side for New York’s 23rd Congressional District.

Tuesday was the official launch to Eddie Sundquist’s campaign. Sundquist said he has deep roots in the community and understands what families are going through. Sundquist joins Rick Gallant, of Corning, and Ian Golden, of Ithaca, on the Democratic side.

Sundquist told The Post-Journal he’s excited to enter the race as a local individual, who was born and raised in Jamestown and came back after school, to take up the fight in Washington, D.C.

Coming back to the area to practice law, Sundquist said he realized the area “slowly became the land that time forgot.”

“We were promised a lot of different things like the Buffalo Billion trickle down and money at the federal level from our representatives,” he said. “We never received those things. We continue to see people leave and manufacturers and jobs leave. A lot of it made me upset to see that we don’t have a representative to jump into the middle of that and help make this a better place.”

A 2007 graduate of Jamestown High School, Sundquist went on to earn political science degree at St. John Fisher College in 2010. After college, he taught science to middle school students in the Philadelphia area. In 2011, he was recognized by his school as Educator of the Year for having introduced an exploratory science lab in his classroom.

While teaching, Sundquist worked to earn a masters of science in education at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education in 2012. He went on to receive his law degree from the University of Buffalo’s School of Law in 2015.

Upon receiving his law degree, Sundquist returned to Jamestown to practice law at Lewis & Lewis. He continues to serve as a founding board member and community trainer for the Erie County Restorative Justice Coalition, a community advocacy group focused on preventing crime and repairing communities. He also serves as a regional competition judge in the Finger Lakes’ FIRST robotics competition and a board member of the Jamestown Young Professionals.

On the issue of health care, Sundquist said it’s a universal right. As for economic development and jobs, Sundquist said he’d like to get more people back to work by focusing on new industry.

“A lot of that could be environmental,” he said. “We should be making solar panels down here. We’ve got the space, factories and infrastructure. We should be trying to bring in new opportunities like tech incubators and different social and community incubators. We need to start moving forward and supporting our local economy to attract people to come back and increase the jobs that we have.”

Starting this week, Sundquist will journey across the 11 counties that comprise the district on a listening tour. Sundquist said he’ll hear about the issues from the people. Sundquist said establishing and fostering relationships with constituents is critical.

“We have a lot of these town halls that Tom Reed holds and he’s mostly just talking to people instead of listening to them,” he said. “I want to make sure regardless if anyone is Democrat, Republican or anything in between, that they have an opportunity to come and talk to me one-on-one and tell me what their issues are. At the end of the day, a representative is only as good as the people who talk to them.”

For more information about Sundquist, visit www.eddiesundquist.com.