Mar. 2—AUBURN — Retired pediatrician Phillip Gioia this week declared his candidacy for the Republican ballot line in New York’s 24th Congressional District contest.

Gioia, 73, said in a Wednesday telephone interview that he plans to be in Niagara County in a couple of weeks to talk with registered Republicans and try to get signatures on his nominating petition. He’s scheduling visits throughout the sprawling, rural district that runs roughly along Lake Ontario and includes part or all of 12 counties from Niagara to Jefferson in the North Country region. The district is currently represented by Republican Claudia Tenney.

Gioia said he wants to talk about the Republican Party that spawned Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt — the party that traditionally supported “equal rights, protection of the environment … and taxes for people who can afford it.”

Gioia objects to Tenney’s “extremism” and “bowing to dogma,” he said, adding that if he was member of Congress, “common sense” and “sound policy” would be his guideposts.

If he’s elected, Gioia said, the first thing he will do is seek out other “moderates” and work with them to craft public health policies that are economically sound. He’d promote the “social determinants” of health, which he identifies as clean air, clean water, education on healthy habits, accessible transportation, and nutrition.

As a healthcare provider, Gioia said he supports programs such as Women & Infant Care (WIC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and he’s dismayed that “Trump Republicans” are looking to cut federal funding for such programs.

He also says he’s opposed to tax cuts for the rich and anything involving Reaganomics, which he said doesn’t work. The notion that making the rich richer will “trickle down” to the rest of the people has been disproven, he said. Trump’s and Tenney’s support of such policies seems ludicrous to him.

“We must accept the truth that trickle-down economics failed for Reagan, the Bush family and Trump, but reasonable taxes/spending from New Gingrich’s Congress helped reduce the debt. Granting basic benefits to low-income groups helps people and money is recirculated. Grants to the rich often get stashed in savings or put into luxuries,” Gioia stated in a letter to the Union-Sun & Journal announcing his candidacy.

Gioia has never run for public office. He worked part-time with the Cayuga County health department for 42 years while maintaining his own pediatric practice for 40 years, and served on a New York State Department of Health Information Technology Advisory Committee.

“The people of NY 24th are working for health, jobs, clean air/water, safe transportation, education, housing and good nutrition. It would be nice if the Republican House would also help (by) keeping health affordable, cleaning up air and water, collecting taxes fairly, helping families out of poverty and passing a Farm Bill that supports nutrition for the needy and rewards good farming methods,” Gioia stated in his letter. “I will be collecting signatures to get on the primary ballot to help the House of Representatives fulfill its mission in a sensible, traditional way.”

Gioia can be contacted by email at drgioia@verizon.net.

Also pursuing the GOP line in the 24th district primary election is Geneva resident Mario Fratto, an attorney. Fratto and Tenney competed for the line in the 2022 Republican primary election, when the district map was newly drawn after Census-driven reapportionment.

Attorney David Wagenhauser of Waterloo announced his Democratic candidacy in the 24th district in early December.