In Hudson Valley Swing District, Democrats Say Their Primary Concern Is The General Election
The Democratic primary isn't until Tuesday, but Blaine Benson already hears general election ads in his head.
“I’m trying to figure out, 'How are you going to be attacked by Faso and the Mercers?' " said Benson, a High Falls resident who is still undecided. " 'And how are you going to resist that?' Because I don’t want a candidate that gets in there and just gets crushed by some bad advertising.”
Faso is John Faso, the first-term Republican who represents the district. And the Mercers are Robert and Rebekah, the billionaire father and daughter whose political action committee helped Faso win the seat two years ago.
Benson and three dozen other voters are gathered on the deck of a creekside home in the tiny hamlet of Accord. They’re there to meet Gareth Rhodes, a former aide to Governor Cuomo and one of seven candidates in the race.
The sprawling Hudson Valley district stretches from the Vermont border across the Catskills to Oneonta, and from Hyde Park to Hoosick Falls — an area almost the size of New Jersey. It’s one-third Democrat, one-third Republican and one-third independent. Democrats have yet to win the 19th since a court redrew the lines in 2012. And Donald Trump won the district by seven points.
Competitive New York and New Jersey districts like this are crucial to Democratic hopes to seize a House majority this fall.
With primary voting set for this coming Tuesday, the Democrats — both the candidates and voters like Benson — are focused on appealing beyond the party’s base. Benson, like a lot of undecided NY-19 voters, is happy with his choices but admits he'd love a peek at general election polling to help make up his mind.
“I feel all the candidates, they’re equally good on all the positions I care about," he said. "It’s about, 'Can you actually win?'"
One important factor: a candidate who can prove their roots in the region. Benson says Democrats lost the last two elections because their candidates, Sean Eldridge in 2014 and Zephyr Teachout in 2016, were newcomers to the district.
“I think we’ve had experience in this district in the past with people who were able to be branded as outsiders and they did not succeed," he said.
The National Republican Congressional Committee has already singled out four candidates as carpetbaggers who didn’t vote in the district in 2016. You can hear how potent the issue is in the way the candidates address voters on the trail.
Jeff Beals worked in the Middle East for the State Department, but emphasizes his new career as a high school history teacher in Woodstock. Pat Ryan’s mom taught in Kingston and he attended West Point.
Rhodes studied law at Harvard and travelled all over the state for his political jobs. But on the stump, he talks about a former job drilling water wells.
"Lynn, I was looking at your well and you don’t have a blue cap," Rhodes says to Lynn Archer, who is hosting the event. "But if you do have a blue cap, that was J.T. Eckerson. So if anyone here has a J.T. Eckerson well, I may have drilled it at one point.”
Brian Flynn had a business career that included Citigroup in New York City, while Erin Collier’s family has an Otsego County hamlet named after her ancestor. And attorney Dave Clegg has lived most of his life in Ulster County and founded a homeless shelter.
Antonio Delgado went to high school in Schenectady before joining a high-profile law firm in New York City. He and his wife have settled in Rhinebeck.
The 19th includes liberal pockets, like the college town of New Paltz and rural stretches, like Schoharie County on the district's western edge.
At the Cobleskill Diner in Schoharie County, the place mats feature ads for both the local dentist and logging company. A woman asks Delgado how he'll connect with voters here on a controversial subject.
“Can you talk about guns?" she asks. “I mean, even in this diner, I think, you have an awful lot of — disagreements?”
“I think it’s important to respect the right, but acknowledge it’s not unlimited," the candidate says. "And then figure out where there’s broad consensus.”
Over at a gathering of Young Democrats at a Troy brewery, Flynn gets questions about climate change, immigration and Puerto Rican statehood.
For all the candidates, voters ask about health care. There are policy differences among the Democrats — most notably, their degree of support for a single-payer plan. But they are united over Faso’s vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act .
“John Faso tried to take away our health care," Flynn tells the Young Democrats. "We have to show a sharp contrast.”
“I didn’t break any promise on health care,” he said on the back patio of his home in Kinderhook. He was born on Long Island. He moved to the district in 1983 and represented it in the state legislature.
He says he voted for a bill that maintained protections for people with preexisting conditions. That's true, but analysts said the bill would have allowed insurers to charge customers with preexisting conditions more than other customers — and most would charge much more.
But Faso says a single-payer health plan under government control costs too much. He says the Democratic plan would put existing programs like Medicare at risk.
“They deal in slogans and emotions. They do not deal in fact," he said. "I am delighted to have that debate.”
It’s one part of a larger debate over which party, in the age of Trump, is really on the side of people who earn a paycheck. For Democrats, that message was popularized by Bernie Sanders, and now it’s being picked up by party leaders in Washington and on the stump by candidates like Beals, Delgado, Rhodes and Flynn.
“We used to be the party of the American worker," Flynn said at the Young Democrats gathering. "It’s things we used to do to support working people. And we did sell out starting in the 90s.”
But so far, none of the candidates has closed the deal for voters like Janet Kern, a self-described “old hippie” who’s looking for a fight.
“One of the things that’s actually important, at this time in America, is that someone have personal courage,” Kern said.
And she’s still undecided about the Democrats in New York 19.
Correction: This story was updated to correct how long John Faso has lived in the district.
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