Taxes, jobs and crime focus of 6th Assembly District race

Mohsen Elsayed, a Brentwood businessman who has consulted for the Defense Department in Iraq, is mounting a challenge against Assemb. Phil Ramos in the Assembly's 6th District where both have made taxes, jobs and crime the center of the campaign.

Elsayed, who is running on the Republican and Conservative lines, considers himself to be an outsider, and said he aims to cap property taxes, offer tax incentives to small businesses and seek funding for after-school programs to keep young people out of gangs.

Ramos, a Democrat seeking a fifth term, also is running on the Independence and Working Families lines. He said he supports a property tax "circuit breaker," downtown beautification projects to attract businesses, and the creation of a gang court to address the surge in gang violence that has swept through the district over the past year.

Working for the community

Elsayed, 53, was born in Cairo and has lived in Brentwood for 25 years. He is a U.S. citizen and holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cairo's Helwan University and a certificate in English from Hunter College.

For 15 years, he owned and operated Sunrise Fried Chicken in Bay Shore.

He is vice chairman of the Suffolk County Executive's Muslim Advisory Board and represents Central Islip, Brentwood and Bay Shore on Suffolk's Downtown Revitalization Advisory Board. He is a former vice president of the Brentwood Chamber of Commerce.

In 2003, he ran unsuccessfully for the Brentwood school board and for Islip Town Clerk, as a Democrat against longtime incumbent Republican Joan Johnson.

In 2007, Elsayed began his first of two yearlong tours as a civilian contractor in Iraq, where he advised American military commanders and served as a liaison between the Defense Department and the Iraqi government. Now, he said, he is running for office with an eye toward working "for the whole community" and helping small businesses create jobs.

"Albany is dysfunctional now," said Elsayed, who described himself as a "big believer" in term limits. "Albany is broken because you've got the same people. My opponent is there for eight years."

Elsayed said he would work to repeal the MTA payroll tax, which, he said, "hurts our small businesses. Why pay for something we are not using?"

He said his top priority after job creation would be balancing the state's budget.

"I support capping taxes, I support capping spending," he said. "You can't spend something you don't have. We leave our kids burned with all this [debt]. We have to give our kids a better future."

Taxes a priority

Ramos, 55, was born in the Bronx. A graduate of Brentwood high school and the Suffolk County Police Academy, he is a retired Suffolk County Police detective. Ramos is chairman of the Assembly's 12-member Long Island Black and Hispanic Caucus, and the Long Island Latino Elected Officials Association. Ramos said his No. 1 issue is taxes.

"I support tying property tax to one's salary, one's ability to pay," he said. "Those who can least pay for it would pay less. We would still be providing services." He said the Brentwood school district has a higher proportion of English-language learners, students with learning disabilities, and students whose parents' jobs are transient - all of whom require additional resources.

The "circuit breaker" approach is "a more progressive way of funding the schools," he said.

Ramos said he has fostered job creation in the district by securing $2 million with state Sen. Brian X. Foley to beautify downtown Brentwood and plant pine trees. He said the project will attract more businesses and create jobs.

He would like to implement a similar plan for Central Islip, perhaps on a sports theme, playing off the Long Island Ducks, Little League fields and a proposed sports complex.

Ramos called the gang violence problem "very complicated. . . . There's no one cause, and no one remedy." The solution includes increased police enforcement and after school programs, he said.

"This was always a community that was perceived as silent," he said. "Today, we have large-scale marches down the street."

Ramos recently passed legislation to create a pilot project in Suffolk County that would put all gang-related crimes into one specialized court.

The court would divert young people from gangs by steering low-level and nonviolent offenders deemed credible candidates for rehabilitation into the social services system, he said.