Frank Scaturro Blog

The Young Guns program is designed to assist Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives achieve goals and benchmarks throughout the election cycle focused on the fundamentals of a winning campaign. By achieving ‘On the Radar’ status, Scaturro has already proven his ability to build a successful campaign structure and achieve important fundraising goals. 

“The NRCC is committed to working with Frank Scaturro as he continues to meet the rigorous goals of the Young Guns program,” said NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions. “Frank is a respected attorney, academic and activist with practical experience in government and civic service. He is ready to create jobs, rein in government spending, and fight for traditional American values”

Scaturro’s political experience and his own non-profit organization set him above his fellow Fourth District challengers. While still in college, he created the non-profit Grant Monument Association, and went on to serve as Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. A key aide on President Bush’s nominations of Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, Scaturro already has substantial experience in politics. He is committed to traditional conservative principles and Republican values.

Having achieved certain benchmarks to place him on the road to victory, Frank Scaturro now faces a new set of rigorous goals that will help him advance to the next level of the Young Guns program and help him build a competitive, effective and winning campaign.   

by Bradley Blakeman - FOXNews.com - May 17, 2010

An obvious target for the GOP in fashioning a comeback would be a seat that they recently held­namely, those lost in the Democratic surges of 2006 and 2008. In the last two election cycles, Democrats scored a net gain of 55 House seats consolidating their grip in the Northeast, while expanding their beachheads in the nation's heartland. Most of their gains were made in three distinct parts of the country the Republican-leaning South, the increasingly competitive Mountain West, and the battleground states of the industrial Midwest.

As a result, these newly minted Democratic seats are in large part in competitive, even difficult, terrain. Roughly three-fourths of the districts (42) voted Republican for president in at least one of the last two elections. Twenty-one districts voted for the GOP presidential candidate in both 2004 and 2008.

Polling today more than suggests that members of Congress face the most anti-incumbent electorate since 1994. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC poll, less than one-third of all voters say they are inclined to support their current representatives this November.

I believe that what has many Americans so upset, is the fact that the Democrats -- who control all branches of government with high majorities -- have not concentrated on what most Americans care about most, i.e., the economy, jobs and the rising debt. Since taking power in 2009, Democrats have focused almost entirely on health care reform and increased government spending and deficits. Americans kept asking themselves, "What good is affordable health care, if I do not have a job to pay for it?"

The American people will send a message this November. It will say to politicians, listen to the people and be responsive to our needs. The American people will send a strong and clear message that elected officials are sent to serve the people not the other way around.

Bradley A. Blakeman served as deputy assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001-04. He is currently a professor of Politics and Public Policy at Georgetown University and a frequent contributor to the Fox Forum.

NEW HYDE PARK, NY -- Today, congressional candidate Frank Scaturro (NY-4) issued the following statement regarding the retirement of Associate Justice John Paul Stevens: 

“The announced retirement of Justice Stevens from the Supreme Court sets in motion a constitutional process to replace him.  In recent years, the process of nominating judges has become terribly contentious, not only because of the polarization that has afflicted Congress, but also because of activism on the part of the Court itself."

“I hope that President Obama takes this opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice who matches the description of a judge given by Chief Justice Roberts during his nomination hearing: ‘Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them.  The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules.  But it is a limited role.’  Our government retains its democratic character when those elected by the people are permitted to make the rules within constitutional limits.  Judicial activism undermines the ability of elected officials to fight for their constituents and undermines confidence in our judicial system as well.  Judges at their best do not lose sight of their duty to apply the Constitution, and they do not allow their personal policy preferences to get in the way.  Hopefully, the next justice will reflect these values.”

Justice Samuel Alito has been unfairly criticized by several legislators, as well as by media commentators, following his reaction to a surprising rebuke to the Supreme Court delivered during the State of the Union Address.  The rebuke, directed at the majority of the Court that issued the recent Citizens United campaign finance decision, was a surprise not only because of the venue in which it was delivered, but also because it mischaracterized that decision as “revers[ing] a century of law.” 

The reaction caught by the cameras was so subdued that it strains credulity to suggest that the Justice was trying to do anything remotely distracting or disruptive.  That did not stop Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Ted Kaufman (D-DE) from pointedly accusing Justice Alito of acting inappropriately.  Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) went as far as to single out Justice Alito in a floor speech with a snide attack on the Justice for supposedly going back on his testimony during his nomination hearings about the limited role of judges.  Sen. Leahy proceeded to make the same mischaracterization of Citizens United as the State of the Union Address with an uninformed reference to “100 years of the Supreme Court’s own precedents.”

There is a century-old federal statute that prohibits direct contributions to campaigns by corporations, but the Court’s decision did not touch that.  It struck down a more controversial 1947 provision banning independent expenditures by corporations and labor unions.  That provision only became law over the veto of President Harry Truman, who warned that the ban was “a dangerous intrusion on free speech.”  In cases that arose during the 1940’s and 1950’s, Justices Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, Wiley Rutledge, and Chief Justice Earl Warren reached the same conclusion that the Court would in Citizens United. Although a majority of the Court did not decide the issue back then, no one would consider those names of the past—all considered liberals in their time—to be pawns of corporations. Regardless of whether you ultimately agree with their conclusion, the justices who joined the recent decision deserve credit for taking seriously the weighty free speech considerations involved in the case.

As a constitutional law counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee who worked on Justice Alito’s nomination, I was glad to see the nomination prevail over bitter party-line opposition, but disturbed by the tactics used against him.  Before and after his nomination, Justice Alito has consistently displayed the decorum and respect that was sadly denied him by opponents of his nomination when he faced the Senate.  He did not deserve this latest round of demagoguery, particularly from the body that handled his nomination.

Note: Frank Scaturro, currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Hofstra Law School, served as Counsel for the Constitution on the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2005 to 2009.  He is a candidate for the United States House of Representatives in New York’s 4th Congressional District.