Look at the recent Daily Bits on the website.Negotiating Trump, Paperless Ballots, Greenland
2020 General Election
How is he doing? What is he doing?
For some. For many. Antonio Delgado https://delgadoforcongress.com/ was a sensation in 2018. A High school basketball star, he stayed upstate for college. Colgate. More important than basketball, he earned a Rhodes. From Oxford, he went to Harvard for a law degree. But he didn’t cash in. He tried rapping. Rapping to move kids to good choices. Five years on the West Coast rapping, then went back to the law. To Akin, Gump, a prestigious firm for which he was a litigator. He moved from New Jersey to CD 19. His wife was from the District.
Antonio Delgado won a close race in 2018. The 19th narrowest Democratic Congressional victory. 15,000 votes. He was criticized for moving to the district to run for office. His rapping was criticized for offensive language and immorality. He is both black and Hispanic. A black, ex-rapper with a Harvard law degree and a Rhodes Scholarship working to win a Congressional seat in a white, upstate New York district. Intriguing. A sensation, maybe.
Seven candidates in the primary. Antonio Delgado won with 22% of the vote. He had to raise a lot of money and he did raise a lot of money. In the general, he got 51.4% of the vote.
How is he doing? What is he doing?
Call it a full court press. Most Members of Congress join an ideological caucus or two – the Progressive Democrats. The Blue Dog Coalition. Not Antonio Delgado. He did not join an ideological caucus.
Some Members join a few specialized caucuses. Caucuses of special interest to the Member or to the district. Not Antonio Delgado. He joined twenty specialized caucuses.
Some have an identify element:
Congressional Black Caucus
Congressional Caucus of Black-Jewish Relations (His wife is Jewish)
Most have a policy focus, some specifically connected to district interests:
Bipartisan heroin and opioids task force
Freshman working group on addiction
Dairy Farmers Caucus
Gun violence prevention task force
Lyme Disease caucus
House small brewers caucus
Rural broadband caucus
Rural broadband task force
Ski and snowboard caucus
Some have a policy focus of general interest
Affordable prescription drug task force
Congressional career and technical education caucus
Congressional diabetes caucus
Democracy reform task force
Expand social security caucus
LGBT equality caucus
PFAS (chemicals) task force
Task force on Alzheimer’s Disease
Whew. That is a lot.
Appreciate the range of this district. It borders three different states.
- Vermont (extending a little farther north than Bennington VT does.) The district almost surrounds Albany and his home-town of Schenectady.
- Connecticut (extending as far south as to parallel New Milford, CT)
- Pennsylvania (runs along the southeasterly sloping northeastern border of Pennsylvania.) The district extends almost as far south as New Jersey
Appreciate the range of this district. Antonio Delgado has spent time and energy visiting the entire district. Lots of town hall meetings. Newspaper headline: “ Delgado holds another town hall.” His careful responses.
- Asked about the Green New Deal, he says he has his own “Green jobs bill.”
- Asked about Medicare for All, he is for people being able to choose: buy into Medicare or stay with private insurance.
- Asked about immigration, he listened sympathetically to farmers who said they don’t want their workers to live in fear, then spoke about the administration’s “reckless, inhumane policies.”
- Asked about climate change, he said we should “stop propping up the fossil fuel industry.” Challenged for demonizing the industry, he explained the subsidies were a fact.
- Asked about impeachment, he said he is looking for the “least divisive way to proceed.”
In Chatham, Antonio Delgado, extended his comments about impeachment. He explained he is an elected official, not an activist. He urged his constituents to get past the President’s nasty rhetoric and base their conversation on love and compassion.
Look at his interesting past. Which image from that past works best to describe him now?
- Basketball player? “Full Court Press” describes something about his intensity.
- Rapper? Antonio Delgado is definitely not rapping. He knows his constituency better than that.
- Ltigator? One newspaper reporter described him at a Town Hall Meeting building to a conclusion like a litigator. That may work to describe a presentation, but not to characterize his approach as an elected official.
Antonio Delgado seems most like a grown up version of the young man who went to college to play basketball and to become a doctor, but changed. He seems like the young man whose goals were transformed by a course titled “What is real and what is true.” As a result of this course, he changed his his major and his purpose. His new dual major — philosophy and political science. That’s what he is doing as a Member of Congress. Philosophy and political science.
Antonio Delgado’s https://delgadoforcongress.com/ reelection is not certain. Trump carried the district by 7 points in 2016. Obama carried the district by 6 points in 2012. We don’t know where the district will be in 2020. We don’t know who Antonio Delgado’s opponent will be in 2020. He’ll have one and he will need resources to win. Put him on your list of Members of Congress you want to help defend their seats. Check out his website, push the donate button, and help him out.
Don’t forget the special Congressional elections on September 10 in North Carolina. Give them some last minute help.
Allen Thomas NC 03 Local who became wealthy in the tech industry, returned to become mayor of Greenville.
Dan McCready NC 09 A combat vet in Iraq, a successful entrepreneur in solar energy, returned home to Charlotte.
For 2020: Vulnerable Congressional Democrats in the order of their margin of victory – narrowest first. With the money they have raised date to date and their cash on hand at the end of the 2nd quarter of 2019. Figures below: $100 = $100,000; $1,000 = $1,000,000
- Ben McAdams UT 04 Elected by 694 votes $783/$484
- J. Cox CA 21 Elected by 862 votes $894/$644
- Kendra Horn OK 05 Elected by 3,338 votes $1,075/$795
- Jared Golden ME 02 Elected by 3,509 votes $623/$495
- Lucy McBath GA 06 Elected by 3,634 votes $1,294/$929
- Xochitil Torres Small NM 03 Elected by 3,722 votes $1,099/$1,012
- Andy Kim NJ 03 Elected by 3,973 votes $1,165/$970
- Joe Cunningham SC 01 Elected by 4,082 votes $1,353/$970
- Debbie Mucarsel-Powell FL 26 Elected by 4,119 votes $1,134/$934
- Anthony Brindisi NY 22 Elected by 4,373 votes $908/$771
- Gil Cisneros CA 39 Elected by 6,711 votes $593/$390
- Abigail Spanberger VA 07 Elected by 6,784 votes $1,153/$1,025
- Cynthia Axne IA 03 Elected by 7,709 votes $1,037/$841
- Josh Harder CA 10 Elected by 9,980 votes $1,702/$1,406
- Lizzie Fletcher TX 07 Elected by 12,317 votes $1,112/$945
- Max Rose NY 11 Elected by 12,382 votes $1,453/$1,216
- Elissa Slotkin MI 08 Elected by 13,098 votes $1,322/$1,085
- Lauren Underwood IL 14 Elected by 14,871 votes $1,105/$766
- Antonio Delgado NY 19 Elected by 15,000 votes $1,462/$1,088
Five from the Northeast.
Four from the Southeast.
Three from the Midwest.
Seven from the West.
