Zephyr Teachout

Template:TOCnestleft Zephyr Teachout

2014 Better World Awards banquet

The Friends of the People's World hosted its yearly fundraiser Dec. 8, 2014, the Better World Awards.

Hearty salutes to striking fast food workers and the tens of thousands protesting the killing of Michael Brown and Eric Garner paid by Jarvis Tyner district chair of the New York Communist Party, and others quickly warmed the crowd as the program honoring Cormanita Mahr, Vice President of United Healthcare Workers East (SEIU 1199), Zephyr Teachout a candidate for governor of NY, Reverend Danilo Lachapel, director of Give Them to Eat Ministry and New York CP labor leader Bill Davis, got underway.

The event was MC'd by Estevan Nembhard-Bassett, the New York CPUSA organizer.

Teachout, argued that campaign finance reform can be achieved through antitrust reform. Antitrust legislation can be seen as a form of indirect campaign finance reform by limiting the power of corporations to influence elections, she said.

Commenting on taxes, Teachout said, "I would roll back the tax cuts Governor Cuomo handed the wealthy few. We should extend the millionaire's tax beyond 2017, to ensure we can fund our schools and public programs for the long-term. We should bring back a form of the bank tax, and review the corporate tax system, to ensure companies pay their fair share.".

WFP support

In January 2016, after hearing from hundreds of Working Families Party members in the district urging her to run, Zephyr Teachout officially announced she is running for Congress in New York’s 19th Congressional District.

Hundreds of WFP members in the 19th District — which spans the Hudson Valley, Catskills, Mohawk Valley and Southern Tier — signed the petition urging Zephyr to run over the past few weeks.

CLW

In 2016 Zephyr Teachout was supported by Council for a Livable World.

Teachout is running in a district President Obama carried twice. This is an open seat with the incumbent Republican congressman retiring. Teachout is well-known in the district from a previous primary challenge in 2014 against a Democratic governor.

To win the nomination, she won the Democratic primary with a strong 73% of the vote, and now faces John Faso, a former New York State Assembly minority leader. The race is considered a toss-up.

Teachout had raised $1.6 million while her opponent has raised $1.4 million. This contest is listed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as a good prospect for a pickup of a Republican seat.

Zephyr attended Yale, graduating with a B.A. degree in 1993. She went on to receive two simultaneous degrees from Duke University in 1999: a JD summa cum laude and a Master of Arts in political science.

After obtaining her law degree, Teachout clerked for a judge on the United States Court of Appeals. She is now a tenured Fordham law professor. She was the first National Director of the Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan organization working to make Congress more open and transparent. She also held the positions of CEO and Board chair for the US-based anti-corruption nonprofit Mayday PAC.

Teachout supports the Iran nuclear deal and would reduce the U.S. nuclear weapons budget because the U.S. has more than enough nuclear weapons, and other security and foreign policy programs are of higher priority.

She would withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan as quickly as possible and endorses the Kissinger-Shultz-Nunn-Perry vision of moving responsibly toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

References

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