KINGSTON, N.Y. ? When Gareth Rhodes explains his support for “Medicare for all,” he makes many of the same points about for-profit health insurance as other advocates of the hallmark progressive policy: the cripplingly high costs for worse outcomes, the job lock for workers who rely on employer coverage, and the depressing effect it has on small businesses.
But before Rhodes, a former press aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and a Democratic candidate in New York’s 19th Congressional District, gets to all that, he points to an orange rubber bracelet on his wrist with the words “Alyssa Strong.”
He bought it on a campaign stop in St. Johnsville in February. Residents of the small mill town on the district’s northernmost edge were selling the bracelets for $5 to pay for the health care bills of Alyssa, a local high-school student with leukemia. At the bar where he bought the bracelet, he put the young woman’s predicament at the heart of his health care pitch to locals.
“I said, ‘This is why I believe in Medicare for all, a not-for-profit system. Take away the profit from the system and the moment something goes wrong, you’re not worried about getting a letter from an attorney denying you coverage because of some fine print,’” he recalled. “People agreed with me ? and none of them are Democrats.”
Rhodes, who at 29 is the youngest candidate in the field, approaches Medicare for all in the same way he treats every issue in the race: in terms of the very specific ways it affects a vast “swing” district spread over 11 counties in upstate New York.
Rhodes is not wrong to frame health care in explicitly local terms. New York’s 19th has a lot of Alyssas: Between 2015 and July 2017, district residents raised almost $2 million on GoFundMe to pay for individuals’ health care costs, according to analysis by the local group Kingston Creative.
In a year dominated by intense national debates, a common thread in the state’s Democratic primaries on Tuesday is the precedence of local concerns and hunger for representation in Washington that better reflects their communities’ needs.
A Swing District Packed With Democratic Contenders
New York’s 19th, which stretches from the New York City weekend-home havens of the Hudson Valley to the Catskill Mountains in the west and the Leatherstocking District in the north, is a top target for Democrats this November.
The district went twice for Barack Obama by a comfortable margin ? 8 percentage points in 2008, and 6 points in 2012 ? then handed Donald Trump a 6-point win in 2016. Republicans have nonetheless held the seat since 2011.
That could all change this year. Rep. John Faso (R), a former Albany lobbyist and freshman lawmaker representing the district, is widely considered one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents in Congress.
The biggest reason is health care. In an on-camera exchange in January 2017, Faso promised a constituent who had previously been denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition that he would not vote to undo the Affordable Care Act provisions barring insurance companies from discriminating based on medical history. But then, in May, he voted for legislation to repeal the ACA that would have allowed states to opt out of key pre-existing condition regulations.
Trump’s election and the accompanying dissatisfaction with Faso have prompted an explosion of liberal activism in a district where Democrats hold a slight registration edge over Republicans.
And on Tuesday, these Democrats have no fewer than seven candidates to choose from.
Although there has been no independent public polling in the fiercely competitive primary, conventional wisdom has it that the top two fundraisers, Antonio Delgado, a corporate attorney, and Pat Ryan, an Iraq War veteran and tech entrepreneur, are also best positioned to clinch the nomination. Fundraising capacity is especially important in a district so vast that it includes four major media markets ? New York City, Albany, Binghamton and Utica.
In addition to Ryan, Delgado and Rhodes, the contenders are health care entrepreneur Brian Flynn; Jeff Beals, a diplomat turned high-school history teacher; attorney Dave Clegg; and former Obama administration agricultural economist Erin Collier.
In such a crowded field, the winning candidate will likely need just a few thousand votes. As a result, the contenders have struggled to find ways to both distinguish themselves on policy grounds and demonstrate that they are best equipped to defeat Faso in November.
At an organic bakery in upscale Rhinebeck, a caffeinated Ryan, 36, spoke to a retired state employee about his love and commitment to organized labor ? an institution as woven into the region’s fabric as dairy farming and Hudson River views. For Ryan, the cause is personal; his mother is a retired union teacher.
The retiree, Will Noonan, was concerned about a forthcoming Supreme Court decision that is likely to severely limit public-sector…
