AMSTERDAM, N.Y. — When it comes to expressing admiration for President Donald Trump, few are bolder than Anthony Constantino.
The Upstate New York businessman erected a 100-foot sign on a building he owns exhorting voters to support Trump. He commissioned a $250,000 statue of the president as a gift and called for Trump’s face to be carved on Mount Rushmore. He released a 20-track hip-hop album entitled “Thank You President Trump.” (He also donated more than $1 million to Trump’s presidential bid.)
Now Constantino is trying to parlay his devotion to the president into a seat in Congress representing a sprawling, heavily Republican district that stretches to the Canadian border. Since 2015, the seat has been held by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York), who is not seeking reelection. Constantino’s Democratic opponent is Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer and former school board president.
Trump won the district by a 21-percentage-point margin in 2024. But the race between Constantino and Gendebien is proving more competitive than expected, putting it on a short list of districts that could flip if a blue wave emerges in the midterms. Gendebien has worked to present himself as a moderate, while Constantino has failed to fully unite Republicans, a recent poll showed.
Another sign the race has tightened: Vice President JD Vance is making a last-minute visit Monday to Rome, New York, the largest city in the district, where he’s expected to hold a rally with Constantino.
Vance is “coming to this district to prevent it from slipping out of Republican hands,” said Harvey Schantz, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. The outcome of the contest is “legitimately uncertain.”
Trump released a video message Thursday urging voters in New York’s 21st Congressional District to support Constantino, calling him “a very good friend” who’s “been so loyal to me for so long.”
While some Republicans have distanced themselves from an unpopular president, Constantino’s embrace of Trump has not faltered. A website for his campaign features a list of more than a dozen similarities between him and the president, as well as several differences: “Trump is taller than me and plays golf while I box.”
Constantino, 43, is the CEO of a sticker company, an amateur rapper and onetime boxer. His campaign is testing Republican voter appetite for unconventional, pugilistic candidates. Two local Republicans sued him for defamation.
Constantino has hurled anti-Muslim and sexist insults at Democrats. He called New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) a “wannabe terrorist” and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) a fake b—- in Spanish.
The tenor of Constantino’s campaign was on display at a campaign event Saturday at his company’s headquarters in Amsterdam, a postindustrial city on the Mohawk River. Constantino had promised to debate an unnamed Democrat. When the moment came to reveal his interlocutor, a person in an inflatable chicken suit appeared as the “Chicken Dance” song played over the loudspeakers.
In his remarks, Constantino slammed both his opponent and the news media. “I think it’s a 90-10 election, but the media won’t tell you the truth,” Constantino said. “So we have to fight very hard in the next few days to get out the vote.”
Constantino traces his run for public office to an encounter with Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser convicted of lying to Congress and obstructing an investigation. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence and pardoned him.
In 2024, Stone invited Constantino to dinner in Florida, Constantino said in an interview. Afterward, he said, the two went to Stone’s home and talked for hours. Stone has advised Constantino’s campaign (he also raps on one of the tracks on “Thank You President Trump”).
Trump endorsed Constantino in the district’s Republican primary over the objections of local party officials. In early June, the editorial board of the Albany Times Union wrote that it couldn’t “recall ever meeting a more unsuitable candidate for public office.” But Constantino went on to win a decisive victory in that month’s primary, defeating Robert Smullen, a member of the state assembly and retired Marine colonel.
Constantino is self-funding his campaign and estimates he will spend $17 million. “It doesn’t make sense for a successful person to go fundraise,” he said. “Do you think Jeff Bezos would go fundraise if he was going to run for Congress?” (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Constantino founded Sticker Mule in 2010. It has operations in the U.S. and Italy and employs more than 1,000 people. During the campaign, Constantino has cited his record of creating jobs and supporting community projects. If elected, he has promised to bring reliable high-speed internet to rural parts of the district and “permanently” secure the northern border.
Constantino has emulated Trump’s campaign style, including by bestowing belittling nicknames on adversaries and repeating falsehoods. At Saturday’s event in Amsterdam, he accused his Democratic opponent of believing “it’s okay to kill babies two or three days before they are born” and said he had debated whether it was better to label Gendebien a “polluter” or a “litterbug,” a reference to one of his main attacks on his opponent.
Constantino hired private investigators who obtained drone footage of Gendebien’s farm, and the Republican has repeatedly accused his opponent of illegal dumping. New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation investigated the claim in September and found no violations.
In an interview, Gendebien said drones have flown behind his farm in the middle of the night. “Farming’s hard enough with seven-dollar diesel,” he said. “I do not need a weirdo drone stalking me.” Constantino, he added, would be “better served trying to find out how to lower costs, save our rural health care and fix our relationship with Ontario and Quebec.”
Gendebien, 49, is a second-generation farmer who was vice chair of Agri-Mark, a major regional dairy cooperative. He has been campaigning across the district since early last year, trying to persuade Republicans and independents to vote for a moderate, gun-owning Democrat.
“I have felt for years that we disproportionately pay the price for bad decisions out of Washington, D.C., in rural America,” Gendebien said. He called Constantino a “rubber stamp” for Trump.
Gendebien recalled a recent conversation with another farmer who uses the same grain elevator that Gendebien does. The farmer has Trump signs on his equipment but told Gendebien he couldn’t believe that the president wanted to rename Lake Ontario when the nation faced so many other problems. “He said that was it for him,” Gendebien said.
At Constantino’s recent event in Amsterdam, his supporters mixed with locals drawn by the offer of free food and pumpkins (the city is just outside the district where Constantino is running, and some of those in attendance mistakenly believed they would be able to vote for him).
Toni Hadynski, a three-time Trump voter from Gloversville, New York, lives in the district and watched Constantino’s mock debate with relish. She knew that Constantino was a die-hard supporter of the president and had heard he was good to his employees. That was enough for her. She leaned over with a smile. “Yeah, I like him,” Hadynski said. “I really like him.”
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