A look at Antonio Delgado’s remarkable life
In 2018, Antonio Delgado did something remarkable. In a congressional district Donald Trump had won by seven points, the Democrat beat an incumbent Republican with relative ease.
But anyone who underestimated Delgado going into that election hadn’t been paying attention to his biography. He had a long history of doing remarkable things.
Delgado, raised in both a relatively poor area in Schenectady and a relatively affluent part of Guilderland, was a star scholar and athlete who went on to become the first Rhodes Scholar from Bishop Gibbons High School. He went to Harvard Law School, too.
“I’ve always felt like I’m supposed to be someplace big. I’m supposed to affect a lot of lives and do it in a powerful way,” he told this newspaper in 1998, when he was 22. “I feel like I’m
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supposed to be in the light so I can be enlightening. To me, setting a high goal isn’t unrealistic.’’
Twenty-four years later, as Delgado prepares to be sworn in as the state’s next lieutenant governor, those words look prescient. His path to the office, though, did include some unusual detours, including time spent as a rap musician known as “AD the Voice.”
You can still find a few of his songs on Spotify, if you’d like to enjoy the unusual experience of listening to a future lieutenant governor rap about, among other topics, the evils of destructive capitalism.
But Delgado quickly (and wisely) moved on, soon taking a job as a lawyer at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, a high-powered legal and lobbying firm. And there, as my colleague Chris Bragg reported, his list of clients included Apollo Global Management, a leveraged buyout specialist with a history of practicing ... wait for it ... destructive capitalism.
The path from rap musician to Akin Gump is not a well-worn one, I would imagine. But again, as I keep saying, Delgado’s journey has been nothing if not remarkable.
Has he been a remarkable congressman, though? Given his caution, low profile and aversion to saying anything controversial or even particularly memorable, it would be easy to conclude that he hasn’t.
Delgado, 45, is nowhere near as vocal or nationally prominent as, say, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the downstate Democrat also first elected in 2018, or Elise Stefanik, the Republican who shares his Capital Region roots. Unlike those two, Delgado has not rocked the boat in Washington.
But it is a mistake to judge members of Congress by how frequently they appear on cable news or by how much outrage they stoke on Twitter. The loudest politicians are often the least constructive.
The Center for Elective Lawmaking, a Vanderbilt University group that grades lawmakers on how well they advance legislation, ranked Delgado the 68th most effective member of the 240 Democrats in the 116th Congress, which isn’t at all bad for a relative newcomer. (Ocasio-Cortez was ranked as one of the least-effective members.)
A Georgetown University index ranked Delgado the fourth-most bipartisan member of Congress, which may help to explain why he won his 2020 re-election in that relatively conservative district by 12 points — easily
Joe Biden, who narrowly won the district with less than 50 percent of the vote.
Delgado has been a moderate (temperamentally and ideologically) in an immoderate age, which makes is one of the factors that made him a surprising option for Gov. Kathy Hochul. After all, her first choice for lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, who resigned after being indicted, was a pick designed to appease the party’s progressive wing.
With Delgado, the governor is doubling down on her own moderation, relative to an increasingly
liberal party, and is also going with an all-upstate ticket, which, of course, is a no-no in a New York political world dominated by downstate voters and interests.
That isn’t the only reason there’s risk in picking Delgado, who lives in Rhinebeck with his wife and two children. His departure from the 19th Congressional District race seemingly makes it that much more winnable for Dutchess County Exoutperforming ecutive Marc Molinaro, as Stefanik sarcastically noted.
“As he jumps ship from Nancy’s doomed Titanic to Kathy’s criminal cesspool in Albany, we thank Antonio Delgado for his incredible help ensuring Republicans are one huge step closer to winning back the House and firing Nancy Pelosi once and for all,” she said in a statement.
Yeesh. Remember the days when politicians at least pretended to be civil and gracious?
There’s also risk in all this for Delgado, who will have to win both a primary and a general election to remain lieutenant governor. Lose and he’ll be without a job come January.
But the potential reward is obvious, given that Delgado’s new role so often leads to the governor’s office. Would it surprise anyone if that turns out to be Delgado’s path?
Given his remarkable life, so far, would anybody bet against him?