After five months on the job as Nassau County comptroller, George Maragos Thursday officially announced his run against incumbent Charles Schumer of Brooklyn for the U.S. Senate.
For weeks, Maragos, a Republican, had been contemplating the challenge and managed to pick up support from several Republican and Conservative party groups around the state.
Maragos, 61, a former banker and a finance technologist in his first elected office, made his announcement in a news release. Schumer declined to comment.
“[As comptroller] I have applied my 35 years of common sense business experience in senior management to bring results by streamlining government, promoting efficiency and cutting waste and malpractice. I moved quickly to restore fiscal responsibility.
“Unfortunately, all our good efforts are continuously being undone by Washington policies by adding higher costs, higher taxes and more government control on our local governments and businesses.”
Maragos said Schumer has “not been effective in creating good-paying jobs especially in upstate New York or in addressing the depression-level economy of many of our rural areas and western and northern tier areas of New York.”
But state and Nassau County Democratic chairman Jay Jacobs calls Maragos’ announcement “outrageous.”
Jacobs said, “It’s astounding that someone who won his first election . . . and has been only five months on the job, feels he has earned the right to abandon his current position to seek a higher office. He makes clear that he has little commitment to the job he asked voters to elect him to.”
Maragos has picked up GOP support from six counties — Nassau, Queens, Orange, Washington, Tioga and Albany, “with five more counties leaning toward him,” said his son and interim campaign manager, Angelo Maragos.
One major county Maragos doesn’t have, though, is Suffolk, where an ex-CIA agent Gary Berntsen seems to have the GOP backing.
But Maragos does have the Conservative Party endorsement in Nassau and Washington counties.
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