ALBANY COUNTY — “One thing that we love in the United States of America is a great underdog story …,” says Republican Alicia Purdy. “This is why we go to movies like ‘Rocky’ … We want to see the little guy win.”

Purdy herself is an underdog, running in the heavily Democratic 109h State Assembly District against the longtime incumbent Democrat.

Purdy describes it as “a frying-pan-into-the-fire situation,” having run last year against Albany’s Democratic mayor.

“But I have to tell you that’s the way I live my life,” said Purdy.

The daughter of a Greenville minister, Purdy has lived most of her life in the Capital Region and now lives in Albany with her husband and five children, whom she has homeschooled.

After graduating from Geneva College, she earned a master’s degree in journalism and has worked as a journalist, she said, producing a news radio program for a long time called “The Matter at Hand.”

“I’m a musician and I’ve just completed my first fiction novel,” Purdy told The Enterprise.

Purdy said she decided to run after she made a trip to Fahy’s office and “was very disheartened and upset that she never showed up.”

“Having been a New Yorker almost my entire life — I was born and raised here — we can all see tht New York State is struggling and [while] we might not agree why it’s struggling, we can see that it is,” Purdy said. “And one of the best things you can do when we feel stagnant is switch it up.”

Purdy says she will bring to the job “a fresh set of eyes, a new perspective.”

She went on, “I vehemently disagree that Republicans are, first of all, a monolith; second of all, as dangerous as people like to make them out to be in the press. Before I’m anything, I’m a human being and I’m a woman with a family.”

Purdy said of her family, “We’re struggling with the economy like everybody else is. But what’s happening in Albany is that the political elites, the rulers that we have right now in Albany have positioned themselves in a way that they’re nearly untouchable and yet completely out of touch with what’s going on .… We have people that become kings and queens and then the rest of us, we end up … living like serfs on the land.”

Purdy concluded, “We need people that are in touch with the common person here, the average New Yorker.”

Voters, rather than being “afraid that a Republican is going to come in and flip over the table,” Purdy said, should instead appreciate a “voice of dissent” and “having civil discourse about difficult issues instead of a sort of moving think tank.”

Summing up her motivation, Purdy said, “And that is actually why I’m running. We want to preserve our democracy. Let’s get a fresh set of eyes on these problems and start the difficult conversations with people who don’t always agree — and we’re going to be forced to find common ground … That’s a beautiful part of what makes the diversity of the United States of America.”