He took on the Taliban as a clandestine C.I.A. officer, and was one of the first into Kabul during the American invasion in 2001.<\/p>\n
Veteran C.I.A. officer Gary Berntsen gained prominence as one of the covert operatives who hunted Osama Bin Laden and spent years going after Al Qaeda terrorists.<\/p>\n
Now he has set his sights on a different foe: New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer.<\/p>\n
“This is as much of an insurrection against Chuck Schumer in New York as it is an election,” says Berntsen, who announced his candidacy as a Republican this weekend.<\/p>\n
Berntsen accuses the two term Schumer of supporting policies that have hurt the economy, made America’s national security weaker, and believes he is in lock-step with the Obama administration.<\/p>\n
“Schumer is a major part of the problem,” he says. “He’s a force in the Democratic party, he is President Obama’s man in the Senate, he is someone who hopes to become the new majority leader.”<\/p>\n
Berntsen is especially critical of Democratic spending policies.<\/p>\n
“The U.S. government owes $14 trillion dollars. Senator Schumer was part of this. The U.S. government has been borrowing money recklessly. By the year 2015 we will owe $20 trillion. Senator Schumer and his peers are passing on a debt not only to our children, but to our grand children. It’s complete irresponsibility.”<\/p>\n
For his part, Schumer doesn’t seem worried. He refused to respond to a Fox News request about Berntsen’s candidacy, when he held a news conference on a local issue on Long Island, on Friday.<\/p>\n
“Today’s not a day for politics, no comment,” he told us.<\/p>\n
Bernsten faces long odds, say political experts.
\nSchumer has amassed a campaign war chest reported at nearly $22 million, won his last race with more than 70% of the vote, and Democrats outnumber Republicans in New York State by almost three million.<\/p>\n
“He has a chance of riding the wave and knocking Schumer out of the seat, but not a very good chance,” observes Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran of many national and New York races.<\/p>\n
“Chuck Schumer has a lot of money. He is the Democrat. He has done multiple, multiple candidacies, and races throughout the state. He’s still well regarded,” says Sheinkopf.<\/p>\n
“Voters may worry about national security but what they are mostly worried about is financial security right now,” he adds. “(Bernsten’s) got to talk finances. People really don’t believe they are going to get blown up by a terrorist, what they do believe is they are going to get blown up by Wall Street.”<\/p>\n
It is a theme Berntsen has already grabbed.<\/p>\n
“Senator Schumer has a lot of money, but if he spends his money in this campaign the way he spends our tax dollars this task might not be so difficult,” Berntsen says. “I think people are exhausted by his policies. They are exhausted from him,” he says.<\/p>\n
“It will be a shocker, but we will be at him every single day from now until the election. We will build a force against Senator Schumer in New York, and he will lose the election,” predicts Berntsen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He took on the Taliban as a clandestine C.I.A. officer, and was one of the first into Kabul during the American invasion in 2001. Veteran C.I.A. officer Gary Berntsen gained prominence as one of the covert operatives who hunted Osama Bin Laden and spent years going after Al Qaeda terrorists. Now he has set his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}