Harry Burger
Harry Burger (Green Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent New York's 2nd Congressional District. He lost in the general election on November 3, 2020.
Burger completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Harry Burger was born in Manhasset, New York. He received a bachelor's degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2005. Burger's professional experience includes being a design engineer and small business owner. He has been affiliated with Long Island United to Transform Policing & Community Safety, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington, the Freemasons, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers/ Long Island Consultants Network, the National Eagle Scout Association, Scouts BSA, and Smithtown Karate Academy.[1]
Elections
2020
See also: New York's 2nd Congressional District election, 2020
New York's 2nd Congressional District election, 2020 (June 23 Democratic primary)
New York's 2nd Congressional District election, 2020 (June 23 Republican primary)
General election
General election for U.S. House New York District 2
Andrew Garbarino defeated Jackie Gordon and Harry Burger in the general election for U.S. House New York District 2 on November 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Andrew Garbarino (R / Conservative Party / L / Serve America Movement Party) | 52.9 | 177,379 |
 | Jackie Gordon (D / Working Families Party / Independence Party) | 46.0 | 154,246 | |
 | Harry Burger (G)  | 1.0 | 3,448 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.0 | 90 | ||
| Total votes: 335,163 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Philip MacRuari (Independent)
- Daniel Ross (Independent)
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House New York District 2
Jackie Gordon defeated Patricia Maher in the Democratic primary for U.S. House New York District 2 on June 23, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Jackie Gordon | 72.3 | 25,317 |
 | Patricia Maher | 27.1 | 9,475 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.7 | 233 | ||
| Total votes: 35,025 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Kevin Gomez (D)
- Johanna Ellerup (D)
- Mike Sax (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House New York District 2
Andrew Garbarino defeated Michael LiPetri Jr. in the Republican primary for U.S. House New York District 2 on June 23, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Andrew Garbarino | 63.3 | 17,462 |
 | Michael LiPetri Jr. | 35.8 | 9,867 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.9 | 253 | ||
| Total votes: 27,582 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Peter King (R)
- Robert Kudler (R)
- Nancy Hemindinger (R)
- Nicholas J. LaLota (R)
- Trish Bergin Weichbrodt (R)
Conservative Party primary election
The Conservative Party primary election was canceled. Andrew Garbarino advanced from the Conservative Party primary for U.S. House New York District 2.
Green primary election
The Green primary election was canceled. Harry Burger advanced from the Green primary for U.S. House New York District 2.
Independence Party primary election
The Independence Party primary election was canceled. Jackie Gordon advanced from the Independence Party primary for U.S. House New York District 2.
Libertarian primary election
The Libertarian primary election was canceled. Andrew Garbarino advanced from the Libertarian primary for U.S. House New York District 2.
Serve America Movement Party primary election
The Serve America Movement Party primary election was canceled. Andrew Garbarino advanced from the Serve America Movement Party primary for U.S. House New York District 2.
Working Families Party primary election
The Working Families Party primary election was canceled. Jackie Gordon advanced from the Working Families Party primary for U.S. House New York District 2.
Campaign themes
2020
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Harry Burger completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Burger's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I've been thinking for a few years now that our government is past the point of unreasonable, where we let 1% of our population hold 40% of the wealth. We spend far more on health care per capita than any other country on Earth, only to have 36 of them live longer than us on average, because we're the only Highly Developed Nation without a universal health care system, instead we let ghouls become billionaires by denying big insurance claims, forcing families into bankruptcy. The rich have made it legal to effectively buy more power in government than the People, they own the Big 2 parties.
I tossed my hat in the ring because I came to realize that if I didn't, we'd only get to chose the color of the boots trampling the working class - Red or Blue. With King retiring, it's the best opportunity for change.- I take $0 from any corporation, diretly or indirectly. That's the way the Green Party works from top to bottom, to represent ONLY the People.
- Americans deserve universal healthcare, with members of Congress kept on the level with people having not even a penny to their name - that's how we make sure it's GOOD healthcare.
- Climate Change is real, we need a Green New Deal. Get our nation down to zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 before we make ourselves extinct.
We do need some military to keep us safe, but not by spending more than the next 10 nations combined every year. The F-35 is the most expensive aircraft in human history because it was a ridiculous idea from the start; every engineer sees in the first 30 seconds that building one plane to satisfy 3 very different sets of requirements is not just hard, but impossible. The ones selling it knew we'd always pay more to fix all the problems though, & the Congress that approved it were either fooled because they are too technologically incompetent , or they were so corrupt, dependent on "campaign contributions" from the military industrial complex, that they knowingly sold the American people out. Perhaps it was a mix of both, but I am neither.
Carl taught me lead from the front, officers eat last, and never ask people to do anything I wouldn't do. Things I CAN'T do are a different story - you won't see him swinging a hammer or brazing pipes, but he knows how to get the best out of people and make sure everyone gets what they need to thrive.After college he put me through the Dale Carnegie public speaking class that he sends a lot of his own sales people to take - a few of them were even in the same session. It turned out to be exactly what I needed - more formalized instruction on many social skills I had always struggled with. Years later I finally got diagnosed as autistic - that explained why the material world makes so much sense to me, but it took a lot more effort for me to learn "people skills." He always saw the best in me, even when I didn't, and I certainly wouldn't be running for office now without what I learned from him.
Act as a check on the wealthy to prevent them from exploiting the working class. Forcibly humble the bullies who abuse their power. We've created a positive feedback loop instead of negative, where those who have the most are better able to get more, faster, instead of meeting more obstacles to limit them; that's not sustainable.
Provide for the welfare of those who were "born with two strikes against them," the disabled, those without good family support.
Our leaders now are mostly out of touch with what life is like for those living without. Many see them as a liability. The real truth is that almost everyone has something to offer to the world, most want to create and be useful, but they can't do that if lower level needs are unmet, and that first level is physical health. Without clean air and water, safe shelter, healthy food, and medical treatment, they need to focus all their energy on fixing those shortcomings.
Too often our solution has been to try to punish people into improving, and that hasn't worked very well. We need more compassion. Too often, people with poorly met basic needs and no obvious way to improve that situation by working with the system seek to escape it. Either they turn to drugs to forget the stress, or to crime for a way to make more money. We need to make a system that helps them find new constructive ways of meeting their needs and gives them a real opportunity to live a better life.
I want America to be a fairer and more equitable society. There will always be some people with more wealth or power than others, but we've allowed employers to go much too far in exploiting their workers. The minimum wage was established with the intent that anybody could work 40 hours a week at that level and not just barely survive, but to live reasonably comfortably, have enough hours to get decent rest, and enough time and resources to work on improving their station in life.
None of that matters if we don't fix the problem of climate change, and quickly. More intense extreme weather, rising seas as Antarctic and Greenland ice melts, species going extinct and disrupting ecosystems - Nature always acts to restore balance - we have seriously upset the balance, so now Nature will push back on us, hard, if we don't start fixing it.
The Green New Deal aims to solve both problems at once - if every American is guaranteed a living wage job by this program, other employers will need to pay more to compete for labor - either the executives and shareholders skim less cream off the top to give a fairer cut to the laborers who create the value, or if that's not enough to balance the books, then their product has always been sold too cheaply because they were exploiting workers unfairly. That means the real cost of the product is actually higher, it was just being paid by the workers instead of the customers which is not sustainable or fair.
One of the most interesting parts for me is how the magic systems influence cultures, and often there are multiple nations that regard them very differently, and how their different priorities lead to different ways of using the same powers. In a way it's my Science & Technology Studies degree applied to magic instead of science.
Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," Sanderson has already said that at least one series is planned to eventually have sufficiently advanced magic that looks like science, creating faster than light space travel to visit worlds from other series-es.
Academic subjects, reading, repeating back answers, math, science, these all came to me easily; what I struggled with were the "soft skills" that weren't taught in an explicit, formal way, there was no book for me to read or lecture to listen to for explaining how to socialize, what the "unwritten rules" are.
A mentor of mine pushed me into taking a public speaking class after college, which was oriented more towards sales people but also useful for "selling" ideas and persuasion - there was a book and lectures, lessons and practice on The Right Way to do it, and that was a big help.
Doing those things still takes a lot more energy for me, I'm much more comfortable mostly working alone and making prepared presentations, but going into politics is something I feel I need to do for the good of the People, if I wasn't doing this, my district would have a choice between two wings of the same bird.
I'm also a survivor of domestic abuse. It's not a common thing for men to admit, and I know that most other survivors have faced many more obstacles than I did in getting out. The guns in the closet were mine, easy to quietly change the combination on the locks, I had family nearby to move away to, I had full time employment, no children were involved, and I never got seriously injured, but it became clear that things were getting worse and it was only a matter of time. Leaving was still one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do, admitting that I had chosen poorly on something very important.
I fully expect that if I do win, the Democrats who have a stranglehold on the NYS government will do everything possible to split my district up just to make my life more difficult 2 years from now, force me to choose what district to run in but make it so that no matter what I'm running against another incumbent member of Congress who will be very well funded by their party. They don't get to hold onto power by fighting fair.
I'm running because I think we need new ideas and fresh perspective, as well as values that reflect what's best for the People, to "cast the moneychangers out of the temple." I also expect that my professional and academic background will provide a new perspective on science and technology issues that come before us. As a mechanical engineer I have a strong grasp of what is actually impossible, like the original F-35 plan to use the same plane for 3 very different missions was doomed before it started. There's no way the people pitching the idea didn't realize this - they knew we'd pay more for solving more problems, so they created lots of problems.
The Ecosocialist part is because the things built with this investment will be cooperatively owned by the people who build & maintain them as well as those who bear the negative effects. They vote on the executive leadership to manage the daily operations and share in the profits, rather than a few billionaires making themselves richer because they have the right political influence.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2020 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on October 18, 2020
