New York 22nd Congressional District Candidate Kailee Buller Calls in to X101

Mike Eves: [00:00:00] It’s X 1 0 1, always classic. I am Mike Eves in the studio with me on the line is, Kailee Buller and she in the Congressional District 22, which does cover Cortland County and, and five other counties right here in Central New York. Kaylee, good afternoon. How are you? And, again, I wanna thank you for, for joining us on the line.

Kailee Buller: Hi. Thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be, on with a family operation. I love that. So I’m excited to talk to you, get to know you and, and talk to your listeners.

Mike Eves: Do have a couple of questions here for you, Kaylee? Of course. New York State, upstate Central New York in particular, you know, we’ve seen so many people, you know, kind of been moving away, you know, moving down south.

What’s some of the, thoughts, how are you gonna get people to, you know, to move back to upstate New York? We know it’s a great place to live. Obviously low crime and things too, but yeah. What are you gonna do to kind of, you know, kind of get, get some folks back to living in New York state? No,

Kailee Buller: thank you so much for that question.

Mm-hmm. If you don’t mind, I’d love to take a quick step back and introduce myself to your audience and maybe talk about a little bit on the portfolio and, and some of the plans I have. [00:01:00] But

Mike Eves: yeah,

Kailee Buller: I’m off the gate from Auburn, born and raised. Went to Auburn High School, graduated with high honors field hockey player, lacrosse player.

Grew up in a blue collar home, a similar family to many in central New York. My dad’s a prison guard. He retired after 41 years. Last year, my mom worked on an Alzheimer’s unit as a nurse, and I’m the first person in my family to get a four year degree in college. Was a high honors student in high school.

Went to Syracuse University for a year, couldn’t afford tuition, and so I went back to CUA Community College in Auburn for a year to figure it out. Transferred to University of Buffalo, graduated in 2011 during the economic crisis and there were no jobs in Central New York, unfortunately. So, after applying for a number of things up in central New York, moved to DC and, got a job there.

I just paid off the student loans from Syracuse University last year and so. My story, I believe is very relatable to, many people’s kids around here and many people my age. I’m 37. I have three kids, a 5-year-old Conrad, a 3-year-old Blair, and a 2-year-old crew. And, I think my story is [00:02:00] very relatable.

I spent a lot of time in DC over the last decade or more, working for various national groups, including the Trump administration. I served two stints in the Trump administration. Working in his first term and his second. I actually just resigned my job two weeks ago and the Trump administration is the Chief of staff to the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins.

This is an ag heavy area. Mm-hmm. And so I’m really proud of the work that I’ve done throughout my career with farmers, ranchers and working families. But yeah, I resigned my job two weeks ago to, run in this congressional race. I have been very frustrated, throughout my career. A lot of my family lives in Central New York about how Central New York and New York in general has continued to go downhill.

We have a real affordability crisis here and, and from where I sit I wanted to move back here, be with my family, have my kids raised around their grandparents, and I wanna be part of the change. I wanna make Central New York a place where. There are jobs and opportunities, and my kids don’t need to move away like I did to have a job.

And so that’s part of why I’m running. I’d love to [00:03:00] talk more about affordability and prices and things like that, but I wanted to give you a little bit of background on me.

Mike Eves: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s great. Of course, you hit the nail on the head. It’s all about affordability. As you know, there’s a. A few things going on here locally.

Number one, taxes and stuff too. And you may have been familiar with some of the utility costs have been, you know, skyrocketing. You know, we’ve seen stories of folks paying thousands of dollars when usually their bill is in a couple hundred dollars ranges and things.

Kailee Buller: Yeah. I’ve been talking all around the five counties in which I will represent when I win, in November.

But the number one thing I’m hearing is our utilities are so high. I mean there some of them 200% increase. This is not sustainable and we wonder why people are leaving New York. And this is thanks to Kathy Hochul and politicians like John Manion, who is your current representative in Congress who have been supporting all these green New Deal policies, subsidizing windmills, subsidizing solar farms, and they’re forgetting that everyday people, you know, like my parents growing up, were living paycheck to paycheck.

When you’re on a fixed income, if you have a 200% utility bill, what are your [00:04:00] options? Like? We all have to work together in a bipartisan way to make New York more affordable. And it starts with the policies in Albany. But there’s also a good amount that John Manion can do as a federal representative that he is not, he is picking by Kathy Hochul, and, you know, scratching his head why utility bills are rising, energy, price are high.

New York has the highest in the nation in terms of, of energy bills and, the second or highest tax state in the entire nation. And I’ve traveled all over the country to farms all over and. The situation in Central New York is very dire.

Mike Eves: Yeah, that’s right. And you kind of, that brings me onto my next question, some of your initiatives to tackle lower costs here for New Yorkers.

And, and you hit that nail on the head again too, with some of your, some of your answers there. Of course. And of that’s the other thing too, NYSEG again, has just proposed another rate increase with the public service commission. You know what, and then so if you had had just talking about, some of those things too and kind of just addressing some of those issues, like when did you know it has to stop, at some point, right.

Kailee Buller: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I [00:05:00] announced my race to run for Congress last Thursday. Yesterday I just launched my first real initiative, my kitchen table tour, where I’m gonna go to every county, anyone who wants to meet with me, I wanna go talk to people where they are, understand their unique issue, and actually work on solutions.

There’s a lot of empty rhetoric coming from Albany, coming from Washington. From the current elected politicians, and this is my first introduction, over here, to let people know, like, I am ready to roll up my sleeves. I wanna hear their problems and I wanna find solutions. So, I opened up, a portal where folks can register, host a round table, host a tour, and also tell me their personal stories and talk about what solutions there could be.

This is an issue that in order to fix it, we all have to like lock arms and work together. This is not a Democrat Republican issue. This is the viability of Central New York, issue. So we should all care about this and we all need to work together. Unfortunately, I think, the partisan politics is keeping real solutions from coming to the forefront.

Just yesterday my opponent, John Manion was in my hometown, hasn’t been there very much until I announced I was running. And he had a [00:06:00] closed door town hall, you had to register. That’s not a good way to hear from the residents about what’s, what’s hurting them. I’ve been all over. I was in actually Cortland, with your Republicans.

I guess two weekends ago, and the only thing we talked about the entire time were the utility bills and nyseg like that is on the front line of everyone’s mind, whether wherever you live in the county and in New York. And so we have to work together on a solution. So, my portal, I want people from New York, 22.

You need to be a resident. Please fill it out. I wanna talk to you like. Staff will say, oh, go to this farm. Go to that farm. I wanna hear directly from the people who wanna talk to me, and this portal is my way to do that. Whereas my opponent is just having a town hall scanning the room and deciding what questions he wants to answer.

I wanna go the complete opposite direction, and I wanna hear everything, from anyone who wants to talk about their story.

Mike Eves: That’s right. Of course, as you know, we’re right on the cusp of, you know. Central Newark being back with, micron and things too. That’s pretty exciting, development and some of the other, development projects that are gonna come here.

But again, as you said, affordability and things too. Of [00:07:00] course Micron has just started official construction. What are some of the obstacles you see any, do you see any red tape that we kind of gotta reduce to, you know, help industries move back? You know, you know, central New York where we’re huge industry years ago and we’re kind of.

On the cusp of bringing it back. But yeah. What are some of the, things you wanna, implement too to kind of bring back industry?

Kailee Buller: Well, first, let’s start about with Micron. This is the biggest opportunity, a potential investment and potential both lower skill and high skill jobs in New York State in literally a century.

So from my perspective, this is a huge opportunity. There’s a long road ahead. And, New York doesn’t make things easy. Micron also has investment in Idaho and the Idaho governor all through the legislator. They’re clear, they’re clearing every hurdle, making it easier for Micron to do business. And so.

In New York, for Micron to be a success, you need politicians who are there at the table working across the aisle, making sure that it is as easy as possible. New York State is one of the most over-regulated, again, states in the entire nation. It’s not the best atmosphere to do business, which is [00:08:00] why you’re seeing businesses leave and droves.

That breaks my heart. That’s part of why I’m moving back to try to change this because it was such a great place to grow up and I hate to see people, businesses. Livelihoods leaving in droves due to bad policies from Kathy Hochul and politicians like John Manion. So it’s really important that we try to clear those regulatory hurdles and, you know, talk with Micron about how we can work together, both in DC and in Albany to make this as easy as possible.

We also need to have kind of technical investment, for. Certain, certain frames of, of workers who will be part of that, renaissance. And I think when it comes to affordability, you know, of course there’s always concerns when, whenever anything like this happens, but with the amount of jobs they allow, amount of businesses and people that we have lost microns should be a welcomed opportunity, for all involved to, to bring back New York in a way that is needed and, and bring it back better than it ever has ever been before.

Mike Eves: Yeah, no, that, that’s right. Now we’re excited about Micron and stuff too, but again, we, we worry about some of that red tape as well. [00:09:00] On the line is, Kaylee, bowler are running for the 22nd national, district, which covers Cortland County. That’s running areas. Kaylee, we are almost out of time, but anything else you want to give us a final statement or a, a wrap up statement here as we, are ready to, to close out this interview?

Kailee Buller: Thank you so much for having me. It, it’s a joy and I, I already love working in, in Cortland. You have a lot of really good representatives and leaders there. And so, I’ll be seeing you all a lot around, and I’ve been working on food and agriculture and woodworking families for my entire career. There’s a lot of great dairy farmer specialty crops, and, a lot of folks who need the right representation under my leadership.

I look forward to meeting you all and making sure that, I can represent Central New York and I’m the right representative for you all. So I look forward to working with you and, I encourage folks to look at John Man’s record. He’s a hothead. Throwing fits on, on the house floor in a, in a very,

sacred place. He has voted, he’s gotten no bills across the floor, and he is running as a bipartisan candidate. He’s been incredibly [00:10:00] partisan. So thank you for your time, and I look forward to proving my record that I’m a real result, fresh leadership that Central New York needs.

Mike Eves: Awesome. Hey, Kaylee, thank you so much for joining us, and yeah, no, you’re invited anytime to, to come see us in person, and I’m glad you’ve, you’ve got to tour court a little bit too.

Kailee Buller: You tell me when, and I’m there. I can’t wait.

Mike Eves: Awesome. Perfect. That’s Kailee Buller right here on X 1 0 1. Always classic. I’m Mike Eves.