Tea Party Favorite Seeks to Add GOP Nod in 19th Congressional District

For Neil DiCarlo, August has twice come up a good month at the Board of Elections.

Though originally denied his party's nomination in the 19th Congressional District contest, the Brewster Republican submitted 1,787 signatures seeking to oppose the GOP's chosen designee, Nan Hayworth of Mount Kisco, in next month's primary. DiCarlo's petitions not only survived efforts by Hayworth supporters to void them on various grounds but also gave him the coveted top line on the primary ballot.

Hayworth also has the official Conservative Party endorsement on the ballot, as well as the Independence Party, but DiCarlo has formal Tea Party backing, and is proud of it. Campaigning unapologetically from the right, he's firmly opposed to abortion, gay marriage and ever-bigger government. Just as firmly, he supports free markets, veterans' benefits and gun ownership. 

The youngest of four children, DiCarlo grew up in Mount Vernon and graduated with a Bachelor's of Fine Arts degree from Manhattan's School of Visual Arts in 1991. He married the former Deborah Olsen in 2000 and they have five children. DiCarlo is chief compliance officer for Advanced Equities Services Corp., working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Even on such a bedrock Republican issue as taxes, DiCarlo draws distinctions between himself and the party designee.

"I am for lowering taxes on all Americans," DiCarlo said.

He assails a Hayworth proposal to scrap the alternative minimum tax in favor of an alternative maximum. Hayworth would cap combined taxes at 49 percent of a person's income. But DiCarlo said he sees that as confiscatory, insisting, "[he] would never concede to the government a 49c tax on every dollar" a person earns.

Nan Hayworth's response via her communications director Doug Cunningham was that she was "countering the concept of the alternative minimum tax," not advocating a 49-cent tax rate.

"It was a way of provoking thought," she said, and presented as a "way to respect the taxpayer."

DiCarlo maintains that local Republican organizations in the sprawling 19th district failed to vet him properly—if at all—when they were measuring candidates last spring to challenge the two-term Democratic incumbent, Rep. John Hall of Dover Plains.

The district covers northern Westchester, all of Putnam County, southern Dutchess County, and parts of Rockland and Orange Counties.

"Seventy percent of the Republican committees did not interview me," DiCarlo complained. "In my opinion, the role of a GOP committee is to interview the candidates and get out the vote. They failed to do their job."

And now they have an angry challenger.

"My motto is, 'I know no one, so I will owe no one,'" he said. "My focus will be on the voters of the district and not on any special interests. My opponent challenged my petitions and wanted to disenfranchise all the Republicans who wanted me on the ballot."

DiCarlo turned back the challenge to earn a place on the crowded September 14 primary ballot. In a drawing at the state election headquarters in Albany, he also won the first line, so voters presumably will see his name before Hayworth's when they enter the voting booth. To the extent that such chance positioning improves his primary odds, DiCarlo would likely thank God.

References to the Almighty occur frequently in his speech and prepared statements.

"I believe in God," he declared on his website. "I will stand for one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

In an e-mail, capital letters underscore his point: "I am proud to say that GOD will guide me in the decisions that I make in Congress."