Geneva attorney and businessman Mario Fratto is exploring a run for Congress.
Midterm elections are less than a year away. Despite that there are questions about how district lines will be drawn as lawmakers in Albany move through the redistricting process. Currently, the city and town of Geneva are part of the 23rd District, which is represented by outgoing Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican.
All of this, plus the coronavirus pandemic, has played a role in Fratto’s thought process about running for Congress. “I have been asked to run for office many times over the last decade and I’ve never seriously considered it until now,” he said on Tuesday.
Fratto attended Syracuse University after growing up in Geneva. He went on to graduate from law school at the University of Southern California before opening a practice in the city of Geneva.
After five years of practicing law he took over the day-to-day operations at his family business Geneva Granite. He’s been in that role for the last three years.
During the early days of the pandemic the attorney-turned-businessman launched a political YouTube channel called “Making the Case with Mario Fratto.” The Conservative content was, in his estimation, censored on the Google-owned platform.
“I figured that if big tech was going to censor me, maybe I needed to do more than just talk about solutions and actually work on changing the system,” Fratto recalled. “I barely recognize the country I grew up in, and I think people are fed up with career politicians controlling their lives and wasting their money.”
Fratto says he has spoken to party leaders and expects to make a final decision about running in the next month.
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