Many voters don't know there is a political primary on Tuesday, but three Republican candidates will be running for the chance to challenge Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
Representative Bob Turner was in Washington because the House was in session but Wendy Long and George Maragos were in Clarence for a debate.
The debate in the sweltering Town Park Clubhouse was sponsored by the Erie County Federation of Republican Women and drew a fairly large crowd.
Long will be on the ballot in November on the Conservative line whether or not she wins the GOP line.
"Overtaxing and overspending, it's just the size of our federal government. It's crushing us. It's crushing our families, crushing our businesses, crushing our institutions," Long said.
"The way I would attack this is to reform entitlements, slash federal spending, at least 10 percent across the board. And I would reform and simplify the tax code, lowering the rate, broadening the base, lowering both individual and corporate taxes."
Long is a lawyer and former partner in a major law firm as well as a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Maragos is a businessman and comptroller of Nassau County, a county with a hard control board.
"Our regulations are many and burdensome," Maragos said.
"We have bureaucrats and politicians that are naive in terms of what is happening in the global economy and we are allowing foreign countries to steal our intellectual property, to steal our jobs through outsourcing and to steal our factories."
Both candidates say the Obama administration isn't doing enough about China's currency manipulation which hurts the U.S. economy.
