Gendebien faces an uphill battle against Constantino for NY-21

Emily RussellGendebien faces an uphill battle against Constantino for NY-21

MONICA SANDRECZKI: The race to replace Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is down to two candidates- Republican Anthony Constantino and Democrat Blake Gendebien. They beat out their primary challengers last month and will face off in the November midterms. Our Adirondack reporter Emily Russell has been covering the race and joins us now for an update. So Emily, first let’s go back to the primary. What were the main takeaways?

EMILY RUSSELL: Both of the candidates who won their primaries did so pretty handily. Democrat Blake Gendebien, who’s a dairy farmer from St. Lawrence County, beat his opponent by more than 30 points. He’s been the frontrunner on the left for a year and a half now, so that wasn’t a huge surprise. 

The Republican primary was more complicated. Assemblyman Robert Smullen had the name recognition; he’d been endorsed by most Republican county committees, but Constantino, who’s the CEO of a sticker compay out of Amsterdam, had been endorsed by President Donald Trump. And that proved to be critical. 

Constantino ended up beating Smullen by 19 points in the Republican primary. Smullen had the option to run in November on a third-party line, but last week he met with Trump in the Oval Office and dropped out of the race.

SANDRECZKI: So President Trump really put his stamp on this race. What have Republican leaders in the North Country done now that the candidate they backed lost the primary?

RUSSELL: Most county leaders have shifted their endorsements from Smullen to Constantino, including the Warren County Republican committee. Right after the primary, the committee posted on its Facebook page and said the voters had spoken and it’s time to unite behind Constantino. 

The state’s GOP chair, Ed Cox, who had previously backed Smullen, shared a similar message after the primary and shifted his endorsement to Constantino. Constantino also been endorsed by state lawmakers like Senators Dan Stec and Mark Walczyk, and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik congratulated him after the primary. One party that hasn’t endorsed Constantino is the state’s Conservative Party. There’s some drama there- Constantino is being sued by the Conservative Party chairman, Jerry Kassar over an incident that happened last year. Constantino had hoped to appear on the conservative party line in November, but Kassar recently said it’s in the party’s best interest to leave that line blank.

SANDRECZKI: Let’s turn to the general election, which is four months from now. How has Democrat Blake Gendebien pivoted since the primary?

RUSSELL: Well, Gendebien had assumed for months that he’d face Constantino in the general election, so that hasn’t really changed his approach to the race. He released his first TV ad this week, which he said was one of the biggest investments his campaign has made so far. But in that ad, he didn’t actually single Constantino out, and only vaguely referred to President Trump.

 “Politicians want to spend billions for ballrooms, and tax breaks for CEOs, while Upstate families just want groceries that won’t break the bank. I’m Blake Gendebien and I’m not a politician. I know hard work and what’s important to help my neighbors get ahead.”

So he’s really framing himself as a moderate in this race, as the farmer from Lisbon, as someone who’s focused on things like affordability. I think Gendebien’s goal with that broad message is to win over some independent and Republican voters in November.

SANDRECZKI: Gendebien had hoped to appear on multiple party lines in the upcoming midterms, but that plan fell through. Briefly, what happened there?

RUSSELL: He was trying to appear on both the Democratic line and on the Lower Costs Now line. But Constantino’s campaign challenged that effort. Last week the state board of elections ruled that hundreds of Gendebien’s signatures were invalid. So he’ll only appear once on the ballot in November. Meanwhile, Constantino will appear twice, on both the Republican line and Taxpayers Rights line. As a reminder, he had hoped to appear a third time on the state’s Conservative party line, but the party decided to keep that line blank.

SANDRECZKI: So how has Constantino turned to the general election and his Democratic opponent?

RUSSELL: He’s super active on social media; he’s lobbed attacks at Gendebien, and he was the focus of a satirical segment on The Daily Show. But he’s really tried to push two main messages- one is of unity within the Republican Party. He’s been meeting Republican committee chairs from Fulton, Montgomery and Saratoga counties. He also published a campaign ad last week.

“I’m not a typical politician, I wasn’t an establishment guy, and we’ve seen President Trump time after time back people that are different in this election and they’ve all won,” said Constantino.

The second message Constantino has been pushing is that Democrats, mainly in New York City, are the true opponents in this race. Similar to the way that Stefanik and Trump once did, Constantino has targeted Mayor Zohran Mamdani as the enemy, rather than focusing on his opponent, Blake Gendebien. So we’ll see how well that strategy plays out.

SANDRECZKI: So Stefanik has held this seat for over a decade. She’s won every election by a double-digit margin. What do we know about the odds between Constantino and Gendebien?

RUSSELL: So we know that Republicans far outnumber Democrats in this district. There are 81,000 more Republicans in the North County than there are Democrats. Cook Political Report rates this district as solidly Republican. So to be clear, this is an uphill battle for Gendebien – Democrats had hoped that Smullen would stay in the race and split the Republican ticket. But he dropped out, so now there’s an even clearer path for Constantino.

There are a lot of independent voters in this district. Voters who aren’t registered with any party outweigh the number of registered Democrats in the district. Gendebien’s campaign recently paid for a poll by a left-leaning research group. It found that he was within just one point of Constantino, 44-45% with 11% of voters undecided. But again, that’s from a left-leaning research group. 

And one last thing to note is about voter turnout from the primaries.  It was around 20% on the Republican side. And for Democrats, just 11% turned out to vote in the primaries. So that presents a huge hurdle for the Democrats who are hoping, really against all odds, to flip this district in November.