OUR PRIORITIES

Strengthening guardrails to protect our constitutional and civil rights is Mike’s first priority. Government should serve everyone, not just billionaires.

Mike will directly address stagnant wages and the rising costs for housing, healthcare, and groceries. Families and individuals need to not just get by — they need to get ahead. A well-paid labor market and strong unions will allow them to do so.

As a former teacher, Mike wants to stop the dismantling of the Department of Education and believes that more investments need to be made in public education. Education is an equalizer and the more children that get the rigorous, well rounded public education they need, the more people will succeed.

Our schools are overcrowded and underfunded. Education and extracurricular programming are dependent on the zip code you live in and denies tens of thousands of students equal opportunities to explore and learn. Our schools succeed when we have good education policy and teachers working in classrooms across the district. This includes lowering classroom sizes, developing good rigorous curriculums, and ensuring student mandates are not just met, but that all students have access to the resources and programming that leads to success.

We need to get back to a point where we have a federal government that believes that climate change is real, not refutable, and believes in hard science. Too many elected officials are in the pockets of big oil and special interests. We need to enforce penalties and fines for dumping toxins in our waters and pumping greenhouse gas into our air. We have to invest in our infrastructure and upgrade sewer and drainage systems so that future natural disasters do not completely flood our districts.

Both Staten Island and Brooklyn include miles of vulnerable shoreline, prone to damage from storms and erosion. Protecting our residents includes taking a real look at protecting our shores, to prevent loss of life, and damage to property and infrastructure. A better environment includes an investment into infrastructure that will bring our district into the 21st century and will create good paying union jobs.

We all saw the devastation of Superstorm Sandy in our district and the damage and flooding each new storm brings to our neighborhoods. Climate change is a national security threat and impacts our economy, health, and safety. It’s time to act now and make sure we prevent further damage and degradation of our environment. 

Mike participated in an environmental forum in April. Read about it here.

Mike does not take money from corporate PACs and any PACs that lobby on behalf of a single foreign nation. 

As a police officer, Mike led initiatives to reduce gun violence citywide and enforced lockdown drills as a teacher. Our Congress has failed to act on gun violence — the majority of Americans support universal background checks, gun licensing, and an assault weapons ban. Not only does Mike support these measures, but we need to reimagine how we cultivate safe communities. Supportive services, public spaces, and resources for local programming are a few initiatives that enable people to think beyond pain and violence. 

Citizens United must be overturned, period. Money in politics allows for corporations and the mega rich to dilute the voices of regular people. Politicians are beholden to special interests and not the people. The system is rigged against regular working-class people. Big money must get out of politics. Instead of wasting money on expensive elections, we could be using the money to invest back into our country and into future generations.

We have to change how public safety is delivered to our residents while also respecting people’s rights — we can do all of this and still respond to the needs of the community. Mike has walked a beat as an NYPD officer and knows the strategies that strengthen relationships between the police and communities. Restoring trust in the NYPD is essential to their ability to work with communities to reduce crime. We need to evaluate how police respond to calls, how they are trained, and what services they deliver.

Mike will continue to be a strong advocate for women's rights, including supporting a woman's right to choose. Women alone should make the decisions that affect them and their bodies, not the government. It’s long overdue that we codify Roe v. Wade. 

Small businesses are the backbone to our community, yet face endless obstacles to thrive. Mike would work towards ensuring that programs under the Small Business Administration (SBA) are fully funded and can provide the capital necessary for local businesses to grow. SBA’s programs provide more seed capital for startup businesses, loans for established companies, and venture capital for fast-growing firms. SBA can also provide much needed technical assistance to businesses, in areas such as accounting, budgeting, and marketing.

Small businesses are currently shut out of many opportunities to grow. There are over $400 billion in federal contracts that often go towards large corporate entities, leaving small businesses that are capable of this work boxed out of growth and development. The lack of opportunities are even less available to women, minority, and veteran-owned businesses. Mike will work to expand these opportunities to our district’s businesses. Along with increasing streams of capital to small businesses, Mike wants to make sure that these businesses are not burdened by federal regulations. He will work to streamline federal regulations for small businesses, mitigating unnecessary paperwork and bureaucratic red tape while also maintaining common sense regulations, allowing businesses in our district to boom. The current tax system favors million dollar corporations over our district's small businesses. While multinational companies get away with paying little in taxes, local businesses are disadvantaged by the current tax system, paying more than their Goliath counterparts and gaining little relief.

Mike would work with legislators towards reforming the tax code to create targeted tax relief for small businesses, in an effort to revamp our current system of taxation into something more comprehensive and equitable.

Staten Island and South Brooklyn lack adequate transportation options that are reliable and fully accessible. Our infrastructure needs a vast overhaul. Mike will work on both sides of the water to make sure people get to where they need to go. 

Staten Island is the land of broken transportation promises. A promised subway, a promised train link to New Jersey, a promised use of the North Shore right-of-way for an express bus route — and none of it happened. 

From express buses to light rail, we have to imagine solutions that serve this district now and in the future. 

There is a shortfall of skilled trade workers in America and it's going to get much worse in the near future. As the average age of skilled trades workers increases, and as those workers retire, there are not enough younger workers filling these vital positions. There are no right or wrong paths to the job market –– only different paths based on interest and ability. Mike will promote more vocational programs such as those at McKee High School in Staten Island to fill the growing need for skilled trade workers here in our district, and all over America. We need more differentiated educational opportunities, starting right here in our district.

Our democracy is disappearing in real time. We all witnessed how the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in April 2026. The decision gave the green light to Southern states to silence the voices of people of color. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibited states from imposing discriminatory maps or practices.

Congressional action to safeguard voting rights is long overdue. If elected, Mike will support the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act as a start to repairing the harms caused by this ruling, as well as the continuous disenfranchisement of people of color in this nation.