Get to Know Your Candidates: Stefano Forte
Stefano Forte is running to be a New York State Senator representing District 11 on November 8, 2022. We thought it would be good idea to get to know more this candidate looking to represent our Eleftheria Pancyprian Soccer Club community.
This is not an endorsement of his candidacy, merely an opportunity to learn more about the person that reached out to meet with our community and hear what we had to say. We welcome any of the other candidates looking to represent our community to reach out to us as well.
Born in Astoria and raised in Flushing, Stefano Loudaros-Forte has spent his entire life in North Queens. He spent his formative years in Astoria, attending St. Demetrios School for grammar school and then going on to St. John’s Preparatory School for high school. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Philosophy from St. Francis College in Brooklyn. His mother Evdokia Loudaros and her family immigrated to the United States from Amorgos, Greece in 1971. Stefano’s grandmother Sophia Loudaros was a stay-at-home mother that raised her four children while his grandfather George Loudaros supported the family by working on construction sites and ships. Stefano’s father Eric Forte was born in Queens to Luisa Lopez, a single mother who left her family in Puerto Rico to pursue a better life in New York City. He became a community activist at 17 years old and worked to clean up his neighborhood. Now he is the president of the Queens branch of the American Conservation Coalition, a group dedicated to cleaning up our parks and restoring our environment.
How would your friends and family describe you?
My friends and family would describe me as a person with compassion, a good sense of humor, and an inclination towards public service and helping his fellow man.
What was the first thing you did in politics?
I have done a lot of community activism in my life and I have been involved in local civic organizations for years. In terms of actual political involvement, the first thing I ever did in this field was working on a local congressional campaign. I then went on to manage State Assembly and City Council campaigns in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
What would you like the members of our community to know about what you will be doing for them?
I’d like this community to know that I will bring true Hellenic values to the State Senate and be a true voice for the Greek and Cypriot communities in Albany. I will champion the inclusion of more than just Ancient Greek history in our school curriculum; students must know and understand the atrocities that have been committed against our people and the illegal occupation of Cyprus. Additionally, though I am running for a state position, I intend on working with my peers on the congressional level to ensure that the United States will always remain allied with Greece and Cyprus.
In terms of improving our local quality of life, I will work tirelessly to make sure this district is once again safe & affordable. I am intent on providing actual solutions to the crime problem that has been wreaking havoc on Astoria and other areas of my district; it is not permissible that we are allowing criminals in and out of our police stations and jails like a revolving door. This needs to stop. One of my first acts as Senator would be to push for a full repeal of the cashless bail law that has allowed this. Additionally, while we are attacked and victimized on our own streets, we are also being attacked in our pockets as prices continue to skyrocket. This is why I’d push for a full suspension of the gas tax on the state level, in addition to pushing for initiatives that would incentivize local commerce and stimulate job creation.
After the disaster that was online learning, I consider it a personal mission to seek to improve standards in our public schools so our children aren’t being left behind. As it stands, we have an education system that awards mediocrity and failure; we need a return to merit-based curriculum that fairly assesses students for their potential. We cannot leave our children’s fate up to a deeply flawed lottery system, and with crime skyrocketing and quality of life tanking, the idea of forcing our children to go to schools that could be anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours away from home is dangerous and irresponsible. Likewise, our parochial schools shouldn’t be subject to the same failures that our public schools are facing. Our Orthodox schools in particular should have the right to a certain amount of self-determination that aligns with our culture and values.
