Candidate: Don Barber

Party: Democratic, Working Families

Seeking: New York State Senate seat representing 51st senatorial district, which includes eastern Tompkins County, all of Cortland County and northern Chenango County.

Opponent: Incumbent Sen. James Seward, a Republican, who has served in the Senate for more than 20 years.

BACKGROUND

Age: Turning 59 on Oct. 11.

Education: B.S., 1971, and M.S., 1973, ceramic engineering, both from Alfred University.

Past employment: Engineering manager for Corning Inc., 1973-83; self-employed at own construction firm, Sunny Brook Builders, founded in 1983.

Current positions: Caroline Town Supervisor since 1998; Caroline Town Council, 1994-97; Tompkins County Area Development Board of Directors, 2000-present; New York Municipal Insurance Reciprocal Board of Directors, 2000-present; Tompkins County Council of Governments, 2006-present; Association of Towns Resolution Committee, 2000-present; Community Foundation of Tompkins County Board of Directors, 2006-present; Tompkins County Environmental Management Council, 1983-93; Tompkins County Ag and Farm Land Protection Board, 1992-97.

QUOTES

On health insurance: "I have all these great ideas for the economy, but I can tell you there is one thing that's standing in the way, and that's health insurance. It's out of control. If New York state were to have a publicly funded, privately delivered health-care system, when our children graduate from college or high school, they would not have to find a job with benefits, because they'd already have [health insurance]. Entrepreneurs could be here, startup businesses could be here, and for you as employers, it would be a huge load off your back ... It's pure craziness that [some people] have to decide if they want to be well, or if they want to eat. You can count on me to be an advocate for changing this system."

Current credit crunch: "If you have a sick tree with a limb that's falling off, you can do a whole bunch of stuff to support that limb, or you can start feeding the tree so it becomes healthy and can resist future disease. We have a case with AIG, requiring an $85 billion bailout. By doing that, we are helping that limb, but we haven't done anything for the economy other than saddle it with another $85 billion worth of debt ... If you really want to build the economy, you build the economy by where the economic engine is, and that economic engine is the consumer -- the working people. I would be on the side of supporting the citizenry and the workers of this nation, as opposed to the people who mismanaged the money in the first place."

On supporting higher education funding: "A good policy for the state and federal government is to have an educated workforce. They need to find pathways for people to come to the workforce. And if you look at times when we have economic stress, like we do right now, government policies have been successful in the past when we have gotten people to work ... Does this require an investment on the part of the federal and state governments? Yes. This is exactly what we need to do. We need to provide a pathway for everybody that wants to go to college to go. At the same time, we should not be making college the only pinnacle of success."