{"id":493,"date":"2026-07-31T13:13:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businessmovingservicess.com\/?p=493"},"modified":"2026-07-31T13:13:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:13:52","slug":"the-wannabe-trump-running-for-congress-in-n-y-is-everything-wrong-with-our-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessmovingservicess.com\/?p=493","title":{"rendered":"The Wannabe Trump Running for Congress in N.Y. Is Everything Wrong with Our Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tA crucial question \u2014 maybe the<\/em> crucial question \u2014 for America is just how successful Donald Trump has been in poisoning our collective brains. Are we past the point of no return, or is there a chance of meandering back to something even remotely normal? One place that will provide a clue, come November, is New York\u2019s 21st<\/sup> Congressional District.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Was My Teacher Murdered?<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s the biggest district in New York state, sprawling across the Adirondacks and the St. Lawrence Valley, and stretching down the Hudson as far as Saratoga Springs. It\u2019s not prominent on the list of possible seats Democrats might flip in November because it\u2019s heavily rural, overwhelmingly white, and has long voted Republican. Its current congressperson is Elise Stefanik, who decided against reelection in order to make an (unsuccessful) bid for governor, and who has crushed a series of Democrats in recent campaigns, winning last time by 25 percentage points. Ordinarily, it would be a shoo-in win for the GOP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tWhat makes this year less ordinary is that the Republicans, at the instruction of President Trump, bypassed a standard-issue Republican state legislator for the seat and elected Anthony Constantino in a contentious primary. Constantino may be the closest thing to a Trump mini-me that our political system has yet produced. He is a millionaire sticker magnate (you read that right), and he is a name-caller. He refers to his opponents, publicly, as \u201ccorrupt pieces of shit.\u201d He calls reporters \u201cdipshits\u201d and \u201cscumbags.\u201d His primary opponent, a Marine veteran, was a \u201cfucking coward.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut much as he despises anyone who disagrees with him, he loves one person. His 10-song rap video tribute to President Trump opens with a number called \u201cThank You Donald Trump\u201d that begins, \u201cTrump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump\u201d and continues with AI slop depicting Trump in Italy, Mexico, Africa, and other locales where they \u201clove Donald Donald Trump.\u201d This isn\u2019t true, by the way. New polling data released in June shows that around the world respect for America has fallen sharply during Trump\u2019s second term. In Italy, to use Constantino\u2019s example, 73 percent of Italians thought the U.S. was a reliable partner in 2022, and 34 percent of them think so now. \u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tIt\u2019s the kind of erosion you\u2019d think Constantino might understand, since his district shares a long border with the country \u2014 Canada \u2014 where that reversal in opinion has been the sharpest, and where the president\u2019s tariffs have done at least as much damage to small-town New York businesses as to the nation Trump would have you believe is our enemy up north. But Constantino is all in. He promises to \u201cwork with President Trump to stop drugs, crime, terrorism, and low-wage labor from crossing our northern border,\u201d which is almost as silly as the president\u2019s complaints about wildfire smoke infiltrating the lower 48. Nothing can shake his faith in President Trump, who he gifted a giant bronze statue of, of course, President Trump. He likes Rudy Giuliani too, and the affection is returned. Constantino, the disbarred attorney announced in a video on his campaign website, is \u201cexactly the kind of person we need involved in politics.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe only thing standing between Constantino and further glory is the general election in November, when he takes on a dairy farmer from the northwestern corner of the district, Blake Gendebien. I talked to Gendebien the other day, because Third Act \u2014 the coalition of older Americans working to defend democracy that I helped found five years ago \u2014 had endorsed him. He seemed to me\u2026utterly and entirely normal. <\/em>Here, for example, is the bio on his campaign website, which you should read to remind yourself of how Americans might have described themselves back in the olden times, i.e. BT:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nI grew up working on the farm, earned a degree in agriculture, and later worked for a farm equipment manufacturer. For the past 22 years, I have owned and operated Twin Mill Farms along with my family \u2013 my wife, Carmen, and my three boys, Miles, Truman, and Noah. We\u2019ve come a long way, and Twin Mill Farms currently has over 1,000 acres of land, 500 dairy cows, and 12 full-time employees who work on the farm.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nI\u2019ve always loved farming, and it is hard work. We don\u2019t get to take days off if we want, or sleep in when it snows. Years at a time, I was out the door at 3:30 a.m., 7 days a week, to milk our cows or feed our herd. That work ethic isn\u2019t uncommon in the North Country. Working hard to make ends meet is expected of us. It was the honor of my life to have that work recognized by my fellow farmers and to be elected as their representative and Vice Chair of the Cooperative Board of Agri-Mark.\u202f<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Read more Man Detained in Nancy Guthrie Investigation to Sue for $2.5 Million, Says He Was Arrested at Gunpoint<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tThird Act supports him because we think Gendebien\u2019s policy plans are better for the country and the North Country. He wants to lower costs for Americans by staying out of silly tariff wars with Canada, and to keep rural hospitals open across the district. But truth be told, we also just like the idea that he\u2019s a regular adult. He produces a product that the world needs (milk from his dairy farm), he treats other people like people, and he makes judgments on his own.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tConstantino, obviously, disagrees. To him, Gendebien is a \u201cfar left puppet,\u201d which makes about as much sense as his other charge \u2014 that he\u2019s\u201ceffeminate.\u201d That, of course, is the same tactic Trump and Stephen Miller have been trying against James Talarico in Texas, or at least they were until pictures of his beautiful girlfriend emerged. Against a dairy farmer with three sons it seems even more unlikely to stick.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut who knows. Maybe Trump has really succeeded in scrambling our brains sufficiently that this stuff will work. I sure hope not \u2014 I spent much of my life living in this district, and love its forests and mountains more than any place on Earth. I\u2019ve known its people my whole life, and at least in daily life most of them are nothing like the raving Constantino. Still, I can show you houses now with Confederate flags flying from the porch, here in the district where abolitionist John Brown is buried. There\u2019s one just down the street from my old house, not a mile from a church that was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore Stefanik, it was a district of very moderate Republicans. She was one too when she was elected, the youngest woman ever to serve in the House (until Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). But Stefanik saw Trump as a ticket to greater things, and groveled much like Constantino, and it very nearly worked out for her \u2014 until Trump cancelled her appointment as UN ambassador, and refused to endorse her in the governor\u2019s race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMaybe the district\u2019s old moderation will push up through the cracks, and voters will turn toward Gendebien. What little polling there is shows it\u2019s a real possibility. \u00a0But it\u2019s hard to compete with a millionaire\u2019s self-funded campaign, and maybe it\u2019s hard to compete with the constant brain-warping aggression and spite that\u2019s come to define too much of our politics. Constantino is a perfect representation of this ugly moment \u2014 here, for instance, is a cheerful video in which he\u2019s printing stickers giving people an \u201cR-word pass\u201d so they can call others \u201cretarded.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tIt\u2019s possible that seriousness is no longer something we want in politicians, that we\u2019ve grown so used to the idea that Congress is a circus that we willingly elect clowns. If so, Constantino is definitely the guy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Storm Owner Suspended After Clash With Sophie Cunningham Supporters<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anthony Constantino, a Donald Trump-loving sticker magnate running for Congress in New York, is everything wrong with our politics in the MAGA era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Wannabe Trump Running for Congress in N.Y. 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