Politics

June 26 is Congressional primary day in New York. Congressman Richard Hanna was elected in 2010 and is running for re-election in the newly redrawn 22nd district.  Hanna spoke with WRVO's Catherine Loper.

Ken Rudin is known as NPR's Political Junkie and has provided coverage of major elections, national conventions and debates for most of the past 20 years. WRVO's News Director, Catherine Loper, spent an hour speaking with Ken Rudin, along with SUNY Oswego Political Science Professor Bruce Altschuler, during a live broadcast on Thursday.

With a little more than a month to go before the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, recent polls show the three candidates vying for a chance to face Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in the general election aren't well known, especially upstate.

One of those candidates is trying to change that.

Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos is well known on Long Island; Congressman Bob Turner has a natural base in New York City; that leaves attorney Wendy Long with the rest of the state.

Susan Thistlethwaite is a professor at the Chicago Theological Seminary, and an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ. She's the author of "Dreaming of Eden" and the forthcoming "Occupy the Bible." In this conversation with Grant Reeher, she talks about her books, as well as the way that religion and politics intertwine.

Jill Stein is the Green Party's nominee-apparent for President of the United States. In this conversations she outlines the party's main goals and message in its run for the White House.

New York’s Presidential primary is Tuesday, but the initial excitement over the vote vanished when Rick Santorum dropped out earlier this month. State GOP leaders say they are looking ahead to the general election instead.

Marcus Matthews is the Resident Bishop for the Upper New York Area of the United Methodist Church. In this conversation he discusses the relationship between religion and politics, and how that relationship plays out in the Bishop's desire to see his churches have a greater presence and impact in their communities.

There is nothing more powerful than the truth.  That’s the faith that has sustained Tom Devine’s three-decade campaign to promote and protect whistleblowers in the corporate and governmental realms.

The Campbell Public Affairs Institute at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University presents The Campbell Debates, a debate series on timely issues of public importance with a fresh, provocative format.

Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney works on the front lines of the "unfunded mandate" issue, a phrase we've been hearing with increasing frequency at all levels of political discussion.  What exactly is the problem with unfunded mandates? 

Perhaps no one is better suited to evaluate President Obama’s new investigative and prosecutorial unit on abuses in the mortgage industry than former governor and attorney general Eliot Spitzer.  As a prosecutor and attorney general, he was known for his aggressive pursuit of financial abuse; he warned us about the ultimate financial collapse; and he has written about these topics extensively since the crisis in 2008. 

Perhaps the most intriguing local race this November is the match-up in the fourth City Council district between Democrat and Working Families Party candidate Khalid Bey and Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins. Hawkins has run for many seats in the past, including governor and U.S. Senator, and not come close to winning, but the last time he ran for city council he garnered about 40 percent of the vote.

The State Comptroller finds that Wall Street is having another bad year, and that could have a negative impact on New York State's budget.

What is the state of American democracy?  What are the roots of our democratic shortcomings, and what do we need to do to improve the health of the political process?  Jean Bethke Elshtain, democratic theorist, ethicist, and noted public intellectual at the University of Chicago—and author of Democracy on Trial—wrestles with these mighty questions in this substantively rich interview.  Elshtain has also written an influential book on just war—Just War Against Terror—and she considers the American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan through that lens.  Was the war justif

By Grant Davis Reeher

By Grant Davis Reeher