Tracy Mitrano, the Democratic candidate running for the 23rd Congressional District, held a town hall meeting in Westfield this week. Photo by Natasha Matteliano

WESTFIELD — Tracy Mitrano, the Democratic candidate running for the 23rd Congressional District, held a town hall Tuesday in Westfield to meet with supporters and express her views.

“As I watched this country descend into a negligent and failed representation that we have in a president,” she said of deciding to run two years ago. “I never thought that I would be alive for situations such as we have before us, with a president that is disrespectful of necessary foreign relations right on down to respecting our veterans and our fallen soldiers.”

After the 2016 presidential election, she decided that it was time for her to “step up” and support local communities.

“I was moved to step up and enter politics after watching our government’s inability to adequately address, stop or even comprehend the foreign interference in our 2016 elections, as well as the near daily attacks on our digital infrastructure in the form of ransomware and more,” she said.

Mitrano has campaigned on several topics, including global warming, social infrastructure, health care, social security, immigration and taxes. “I support Joe Biden’s plan to turn the existential threat of climate change into economic opportunities that will lead to better jobs and a more sustainable environment,” she said. “It’s a moral obligation to protect our natural environment.”

Besides the environment, Mitrano said health care is the “No. 1 issue” in the United States and Western New York today.

“Health care in the United States should be affordable, available and efficient,” she told those in attendance at the town hall. “Our goal is making sure that every single American has affordable health care coverage that includes vision, hearing, dental and prescription coverage. This country needs to start putting people over profit in healthcare in order to resolve decades of dissension and debate.”

She added: “To say our health care system is ineffective and inefficient is just wrong. There is no reason in a country of the affluence, of the research, of the manufacturing capability that we can not be sure that people get simple and basic drugs.”

Mitrano, a Penn Yan resident who spent last summer in Chautauqua County, also discussed her oppenent, U.S. Rep. Tom Reed, who she faced in 2018 but lost by about 8 percentage points.

In closing, she offered words to ensure that she does not disrespect the government, but she wants to make sure that respectable people are in office. “I don’t care who you are, it’s across the board,” she said. “People are tired of being ignored. They’re tired of people who support Trump, in the sense that we have a president who is unfit for that office.

“I respect the office of the president but I believe that the person who is in there is unfit to serve us.”