U.S. Army vet, laid-off federal employee, campaigns for Congress in NY-24

Yahoo

7 days ago

Aug. 4—LOCKPORT — Alissa J. Ellman thinks that her current representative in Congress isn't doing the job right, isn't representing the community and isn't listening to constituents. So she's running to do the job herself.
Ellman, 41, said she decided to run for Congress in New York's 24th Congressional District after seeing how Rep. Claudia L. Tenney, R-Cleveland, has aligned herself with President Donald J. Trump and supported legislation like the "One Big Beautiful Bill" that makes cuts projected to kick thousands of New Yorkers off Medicare and Medicaid.
Ellman shared a story of heading to a Tenney congressional office for a protest organized by the Lockport-based Democracy Center. She said she went inside the office with an older woman who was asking the aides about the future of Medicaid coverage for her older, disabled son. Ellman recounted the woman expressing concern that her son would lose health care coverage, lose access to the residential treatment he'd been benefiting from for years, and would be reliant on her into her advanced age.
"Her aide pushed a pamphlet of propaganda at her about Donald Trump, and said 'Claudia Tenney wants you to know she supports every single decision Donald Trump is making right now,'" Ellman said. "And it just broke my heart in that moment."
She said that pushed her to read up more about Tenney, and she didn't like what she read.
"I just thought, 'this person is terrible,'" she said. "We really need new representation, we need a working class person to represent the working class people that live in New York 24."
Ellman thinks she is that person. Born and raised in Allegany County, she's an Army veteran who served through the early part of the War on Terror. She worked for the New York Division of Military and Naval Affairs and then became a contractor with the U.S. Department of Defense and Halliburton in Kandahar.
After seven years in the military and military-adjacent work, Ellman went to college and got a teaching degree, working as a special education teacher in Lockport, which she did for about a decade before encountering serious health problems.
"I became extremely ill, I took a leave of absence from my job and I found out I had a pheochromocytoma, which is a rare adrenal cancer and it probably was brought on by toxic exposures and burn pits in Afghanistan," she said.
After years of recovery and proceeding through the COVID-19 pandemic, Ellman took a job in the Buffalo office of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in the education division, helping veterans make use of their educational benefits like the G.I. Bill. Ellman did that work for months — until she was laid off by the Trump administration's "DOGE" efforts.
"I was working there diligently and doing a very good job until I was laid off at the end of February without so much as an email," she said. "They just logged me out of my computer."
That summary firing pushed Ellman into the spotlight for the first time. She joined Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., at this year's presidential address to Congress and stood as an example of a federal worker fired without cause.
She said she's exactly the kind of "normal" local resident, impacted by federal decisions, who can bring a perspective relevant to people in NY-24, something she said Tenney lacks.
"When I look around us, I am sad about that, because I don't think Claudia Tenney knows what it's like to be working class. When you don't know that, it's very difficult to represent or understand the interests of working class people," she said.
She noted she's a native of the district and has lived in Lockport for years, well before it was included in the current district, and contrasted that with Tenney, who has moved around central and western New York for years as she has pursued offices at the state and congressional levels.
Ellman pitches a moderate message. She said she has concerns that leftward reactions to conservative pushes could pull the country in the wrong direction. But she maintains that opposition to the Trump administration's priorities is key, and core to what she wants to do in Congress.
She said she believes that Trump's priorities, and the material impact those decisions are having on Americans now, will drive voters to Democrats like her.
"I care about what working class people have to say, they deserve real representation in government, and honestly that includes anybody who voted for Donald Trump," she said. "The reason they voted for him was because they want change, and they are hoping that what he's going to do is what he said he would. I'm not convinced that's exactly what's happening."
Ellman said she thinks farmers are opposed to the indiscriminate immigration crackdown that is taking away migrant farmhands, and to the tariffs that are wreaking havoc on bottom lines and long-term plans for all businesses. She said she thinks the thousands of rural residents who voted for Trump didn't want to see their Medicaid or Medicare coverage lapse, or their local hospitals close because of a reduction in the number of patients they're treating with insurance. And she said she thinks of the older mothers, concerned about their dependent children's futures who are coming to their local congresswoman's office to ask for help.
"If I was sitting in that position, if I was in Claudia's position, I would be bending over backwards to reassure them, to find a solution or an answer for them, and to explain as thoroughly as I could what they needed to do to provide for their families," Ellman said.
The message can't be entirely "oppose Trump," however, Ellman said. She called for a Democrat "Project 2029," a response to the controversial legislative and power-positioning plan established by key players in the Trump administration known as "Project 2025."
"There has to be some sort of plan, and that needs to be our own Project 2029," she said. "You need to gather experts to understand the nuances, and as far as I have been able to tell, we don't have one."
Ellman's own plan includes a better tax structure and enforcement for corporations and large companies.
"Amazon uses the roads a lot more than just you or me, and they should be paying the exact same tax rate, if not more, than you or me," she said.
She said she wants to see health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid restored to their previous funding levels, and widely believes that health care should be within reach for all. She wants to see the social safety nets, like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, preserved for future generations.
Ellman said she owns a gun herself, and is supportive of the Second Amendment.
She's up against at least two other Democratic candidates for NY-24: Diana Kastenbaum and Steven W. Holden Sr. If all three are successfully able to establish their campaigns and complete the petition process, they'll appear against one another in a primary in about 10 months, in June 2026. They'll go up against the Republican nominee, presumably Tenney who has no declared GOP opponents as of now, in November 2026.