By Frank Spotorno
Why I’m Becoming an Independent
After years of watching both parties, and after years of calling myself a Republican, I am becoming an Independent. Not because I left my principles. Because the parties left them.
If I need a word for what I am, call me a Republicrat Independent.
It is not a new party. It is an old American idea that we have lost.
The idea comes from two men who shared a last name but not a party — Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democrat — and a third man who learned from both — John F. Kennedy — who called FDR his hero and said Teddy Roosevelt proved conservation was the condition of progress.
Theodore Roosevelt did not speak in slogans. He spoke in sentences that every working man could understand. In Lynn, Massachusetts in 1902, he said, “A square deal for every man, big or small, rich or poor.” In the White House, he wrote it again on February 1, 1906: “To every man a square deal, no more and no less.” And in a letter in 1903, he defined it perfectly: “Fair play for the working man and a square deal to every American, whether employer or employee.”
That was the Square Deal. Not a handout. Not a bailout. A fair deal.
Theodore Roosevelt was also America’s first great conservationist and environmentalist — a man a hundred years ahead of his time. He worried about our forests, our waters, and our creatures. He set aside 230 million acres of public land, created five National Parks, and gave us the U.S. Forest Service, because he knew you can’t have a Square Deal for the people if you sell off the country they live in.
John F. Kennedy, the working man’s Democrat, told us to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” He cut taxes to grow jobs, secured the border, and stood up for labor.
Franklin Roosevelt, the Democrat, tried to finish what Teddy started. On January 11, 1944, he proposed his Second Bill of Rights. Every other industrialized country finished the job. We didn’t. The lobbyists, led by the AMA, talked Congress out of it. We have lived with that unfinished business for 80 years.
Two Roosevelts, two parties, one principle: the American people come first. That is the party I remember. That is the party I want back.
I write this not as theory, but as lived experience. My wife spent 75 days in the ICU with ARDS, between NYU and St. John’s Riverside Hospital. Six and seven roommates passed through the beds beside her. Most of them never made it home. I am 64 years old. I am left holding tens of thousands of dollars in co-pays after insurance — Trelegy at $650, Spiriva at $500, Albuterol at $100, oxygen twenty-four hours a day — and the next hospital bill is already on its way.
To those who have told me they feel bad for my wife and my family, I thank you. It means a great deal.
But we also have to make sure our country is there for us as well.
This is where I stand as a Republicrat Independent.
First, on the border. Secure the border. Deport criminals. Keep the breadwinner. I support the tightest border in our history. There is no argument there. But when we raid the home of a family that has been here ten years, paying taxes with an ITIN, obeying the law, raising U.S. citizen children, we are not saving money. We are creating a cost. You deport the payer, and you make his family a ward of the state. SNAP, WIC, emergency Medicaid, Section 8 housing — thirty to fifty thousand dollars a year on the taxpayer. We turn a taxpayer into a tax burden. That is bad math and bad policy.
Second, on healthcare. Finish what FDR started and continue where he left off. I believe in what I have written about in my archives for years: his Second Bill of Rights — also called the Economic Bill of Rights — said every American should have the right to a useful job, to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing, to a decent home, to a good education, to protection from the economic fears of old age and sickness, and to adequate medical care. He understood that freedom from want was just as important as freedom from fear.
That is my plan. A basic universal system like other countries have, where every American has coverage, with the option to purchase additional benefits if you want more. That is how it’s done in Europe — Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland and the United Kingdom — and in South America — Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay and Argentina. Different politics, different cultures, same principle: basic security for everyone, private options if you want more. And let us buy insurance across state lines and across counties, a cross-county system that creates competition. Lower malpractice costs and end defensive medicine. More doctors, more competition, lower prices.
Third, on Medicaid. Medicaid must be for those who need it. If cutting fraud and removing able-bodied adults who will not work means that oxygen gets to someone like my wife, then that is exactly what we should do.
There is no Republicrat Party, I know that. But if the Democratic Socialists of America can organize within the Democratic Party, perhaps an Independent can too — or perhaps a Republicrat Independent can too — and help bring both parties back to being the working man’s parties — the parties that embrace labor, that give business its fair Square Deal, and most importantly, that give every American his Square Deal.
I am becoming an Independent because I want to vote for the person, not the party. I want unity, fairness, and responsibility. For the people.
That is what I will need every day while the oxygen machine runs 24/7 and the next hospital bill arrives.
A square deal for every man, big or small, rich or poor. No more and no less.
— Frank J. Spotorno-Yonkers, NY
Spotorno was the Republican Party candidate for Congress in NY-14 in 2016.