Delgado says he is ready to go
Rhinebeck Democrat set to represent constituents of N.Y.’S 19th District
Antonio Delgado could be living the small-town dream in Rhinebeck. He walks his twin boys to kindergarten in the morning, and his Hudson Valley home to his parents in Schenectady and his motherin-law in Kingston.
But Jan. 3, when the 41-year-old steps forward in the U.S. Capitol to take the oath of office as the new representative of New York’s 19th Congressional District.
“I’m ready to go,” he said last week.
After his victory over one-term
Republican incumbent John Faso, “the emotional high kind of lingered for a while,” said Delgado, whose 6-foot-4 frame reflects the sport that put him in the Upstate New York Basketball Hall of Fame. “For me, now it’s ‘OK, you’ve got to get to work — you’ve got to figure out the next steps.’ My mindset at this point is trying to lock in again.”
The Delgado family — twins Maxwell and Coltrane and his wife, Lacey Schwartz Delgado, a Woodstock native — will be in Washington when Delgado places his hand on the Bible and swears to support and defend the Constitution, so help him God.
The family has been through a number of auditions and road tests before his first term commences. Delgado — a basketball star at Notre Dame-bishop Gibbons High School in Schenectady and at Colgate University, a Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School graduate — bested six Democratic opponents in the New York primary in June.
His bruising campaign against Faso was one of the most-watched in the nation. Delgado’s victory was one of more than 30 Democratic pickups (some races remain undecided) that returned House control to the party after eight years under a GOP majority.
The reality check begins now.
Living in an apartment in Washington when the House is in session and leaving the family behind in Rhinebeck is “part of the sacrifice,” Delgado said.
He was staying at a hotel near the Washington Nationals ballpark where new-member orientation was taking place. Coming home on weekends and during long breaks will have to suffice.
“It’s not ideal . ... But the flip side is I can be an example for (the twins),” Delgado said. “I look at it as another way to educate and inform, make them into individuals I think can contribute in a positive way to society at large.”
His wife made the documentary “Little
White Lie” about discovering her African-american heritage amid a Jewish upbringing. Delgado said his bid for Congress was a “partnership decision.”
“Both of us, as a couple, have always been wired in that way,” he said.
Faso tried to frame Delgado as a candidate who moved upstate solely to run for office. More dramatically, ads financed by the Congressional Leadership Fund — a conservative Republican super PAC — tried to peg Delgado as a “New York City liberal” whose brief career as a rap artist more than a decade ago included “profane” and “offensive and sexist” lyrics.
Delgado shrugged off the attacks. “It’s part of my biography,” he said last week. “I’m a husband, a father, a lawyer, hip hop artist, Rhodes Scholar.
It’s a chapter, and no one chapter defines any one individual.”
The tactic didn’t work. Delgado won 50.2 percent of the vote against Faso’s 47.3 percent.
Delgado, for his part, painted Faso as a tool of Republicans bent on destroying the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — through his vote to “repeal and replace” the landmark 2010 health insurance law.
Before Rhinebeck, Delgado and his family lived in Montclair, N.J., from which he commuted to a law firm in Manhattan. But he insisted the narrative line that he moved from Montclair to Rhinebeck solely to run for Congress is “inaccurate.”
He explains it rather as “a lot of things coming together at one time.”
“What happened was in 2016, it created more of a sense of urgency to want to come home,” he said. “Not just to come home for personal reasons but to come home to do more and engage more in our communities and in the public arena. I’d been in the private sector for a while, and I knew at some point I wanted to get beyond that.”
They arrived in Rhinebeck in January 2017 — the same month President Donald J. Trump took the oath of office.
The 19th District is widely viewed as conservative-leaning, but purple enough for a Democrat to win.
However his political career turns out, Delgado promises to be no ordinary representative.
His family’s roots are African-american — notably from the Cape Verde Islands, off the west coast of Africa — and Puerto Rican. His parents worked for General Electric in Schenectady.
Even though issues of race and racism are at the core of public discussion in the Trump era, Delgado’s victory could be seen as evidence of a post-racial America — where voters judge candidates on their campaign, not skin color. He will, after all, represent a district that is 87 percent white.
“One of the most encouraging things coming out of this election is the number of minority candidates elected in majority white districts,” said Michael Malbin, a political scientist at the University at Albany. “You could not imagine that happening 30 years ago.”
The “blue wave” that swept so many Democrats into the House was widely attributed to voter resentment of Trump. But while it might have put Delgado in Congress, it might not keep him on Capitol Hill for long without a record of accomplishment.
“I fully realize that many Delgado supporters don’t like Trump, and many Trump voters didn’t support Delgado,” said Chris Gibson, who represented the 19th District for two terms, ending in early 2017, and slept in his office on an Army cot. “But I hope for the good of the district and the nation that these two leaders find a way to put aside differences and work together on the many pressing
issues of our time.”
Election-season attack lines targeting Delgado will fade away if he is able to travel the district and present himself as a compassionate listener devoted to helping his constituency on issues that matter, said Malbin.
“You have to get to know people in the district who might have considered voting for you but didn’t, the ones who stayed home or the ones persuaded by Faso to vote for him,” said Malbin.
“You need to talk to them in a low-intensity atmosphere, so they can see you don’t wear horns.”
Delgado knows it: As one of 435 representatives and a freshman at that, “I have to look at things I can control,” he said. “And what I can control is my level of engagement with constituents, so they can feel like they can reach out and touch me.”
Health care will be a particular focus, he said. Delgado supports resuscitating the Affordable Care Act through addition of a “public option” — making a Medicare-type government health insurance available to those who find all other options unaffordable. Faso and Republicans had accused Delgado of supporting “government-run health care,” but Delgado insists the public option is hardly that.
Health insurance is “a house of cards, not built on a foundation. But the public option is a floor that will hold down premiums.”
In the 19th District, 71 percent have private health insurance, 39 percent have public insurance (such as Medicaid), and 5 percent have no insurance.
While some may have viewed Delgado as a candidate with an impressive resume who seemed to have come out of nowhere, others who’ve known him for decades say they aren’t surprised at his electoral success.
“Antonio was a very special person,” said Herbert Crossman, who coached Delgado at Bishop Gibbons. “I knew he could do anything he set out to do. The only question was what did he want to do?”
The basketball phrase about “leaving it all out on the court” is applicable, Crossman said.
“He played his hardest,” Crossman said. “When he came off the court, there was nothing left to do. That’s how he is in life.”