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{"id":24818,"date":"2026-06-25T20:47:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T20:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/a-district-that-went-20-for-trump-now-in-play-for-democrats\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T20:47:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T20:47:26","slug":"a-district-that-went-20-for-trump-now-in-play-for-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/a-district-that-went-20-for-trump-now-in-play-for-democrats\/","title":{"rendered":"A district that went +20 for Trump now in play for Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>NEW YORK \u2014 A new internal poll shows a Democratic House candidate is in a dead heat with his Republican challenger in an upstate New York district President Donald Trump won by 20 points in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>The poll, commissioned by Democratic candidate Blake Gendebien\u2019s campaign and conducted by the left-leaning group Impact Research, found Gendebien trailing Republican Anthony Constantino by just one percentage point, 45-44, with 11 percent of voters undecided.<\/p>\n<p>The district is currently represented by outgoing Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/EliseStefanik\/status\/2069598923438592470?s=20\" target=\"_blank\">congratulated Constantino<\/a> on winning the GOP nomination Tuesday after he defeated Republican state Assemblymember Robert Smullen in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2026\/06\/21\/elise-stefanik-competition-maga-candidates-constantino-smullen-00967961?_sp_pass_consent=true\" target=\"_blank\">a nasty primary<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Constantino, the CEO of a sticker company who\u2019s self-funding his campaign with $10 million, earned Trump\u2019s endorsement in April, a blow that proved fatal for Smullen\u2019s primary campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Constantino is an eccentric and passionate supporter of the president and recently recorded an adulatory rap album titled \u201cThank You President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>During the primary, he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/omSdmeZ20T0\" target=\"_blank\">left a threatening voicemail<\/a> to a constituent in the district, threatened to sue his opponent, whom he referred to as \u201cSlimebob,\u201d and frequently touted the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/10\/10\/nyregion\/sticker-mule-trump-sign.html\" target=\"_blank\">100-foot-wide Trump sign<\/a> on top of his Sticker Mule factory, which he erected during Trump\u2019s 2024 campaign. Constantino is also a former boxer.<\/p>\n<p>Luke Martin, a pollster from Impact Research who works for the Gendebien campaign, said the campaign watched the primary in hopes they would face the polarizing Constantino.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our research has always shown that a wannabe DC insider like Constantino is very beatable in NY-21, but his rapidly increasing negatives had us concerned that we might lose our shot to run against him if he couldn&#8217;t keep it together through the primary,\u201d Martin said in a statement. \u201cThe more money he spent, the more we saw his unfavorability tick up in our polls. The data was always clear that Robert Smullen would have been a more competitive Republican candidate for this district.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/election-2-26-house-new-york-7176.jpg\" alt=\"Anthony Constantino, a Republican candidate for Congress, stands in front of a \" data-portal-copyright=\"AP\" data-has-syndication-rights=\"0\" data-license-id=\"26161689207176\" data-licensor-name=\"AP Photo\/Michael Hill\" data-title=\"Anthony Constantino, a Republican candidate for Congress, stands in front of a \"><\/p>\n<p>After respondents received messaging on the two candidates, Gendebien, a dairy farmer, climbed ahead of Constantino, 49-40, with 11 percent still undecided. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/f\/?id=0000019f-004f-d58c-af9f-90ff12cb0000\" target=\"_blank\">The poll<\/a> quizzed 500 likely general election voters from May 26-31 and had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.4 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Forty percent of those surveyed said they voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, and 58 percent said they voted for Trump. Twenty-three percent of respondents identified as Democrat, 27 percent said they were independents and 46 percent identified as Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>There has been no independent polling of the district, which is one of the largest in the northeast and stretches from the northern Catskills region to the Canadian border. Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/elecmapco.maps.arcgis.com\/apps\/instant\/sidebar\/index.html?appid=2a2a288f49ad4dc6af2840f3926b1ead\" target=\"_blank\">won the district<\/a> with 60 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n<p>A potential curveball in the general election is whether Smullen, a retired Marine colonel, will continue to run for the seat despite losing the Republican primary. Smullen, who has the backing of the state\u2019s Conservative Party, is on its ballot line in November. That would set up a three-way contest between him, Gendebien and Constantino.<\/p>\n<p>Smullen has not ruled out running as a Conservative Party candidate. He has until Friday, July 3 to decline the ballot line.<\/p>\n<p>Another potential factor to Smullen\u2019s decision making is that the Conservative Party\u2019s chair, Jerry Kassar, is in a bitter, personal feud with Constantino. Kassar is suing Constantino for defamation after Constantino said Kassar threatened to kill him. Kassar told Blue Light News it\u2019s up to Smullen whether or not he wants to run on the Conservative line.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe party itself has no role whatsoever, until an action is taken by the candidate,\u201d Kassar said. \u201cBob has not indicated to me anything other than what has been public, which is that he\u2019s interested in staying on but is thinking it through and will make a final decision soon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gendebien\u2019s campaign declined to release survey data on a three-way race.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ap23122659886788.jpg\" alt=\"Blake Gendebien testifies before a Senate subcommittee in May 2023.\" data-portal-copyright=\"AP Photo\/Jose Luis Magana\" data-has-syndication-rights=\"0\" data-license-id=\"\" data-licensor-name=\"\" data-title=\"Blake Gendebien testifies before a Senate subcommittee in May 2023.\"><\/p>\n<p>Battleground New York, which works to flip competitive House seats by engaging disaffected voters, said the bruising Smullen-Constantino primary has put Democrats in a winning position.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith Democrats surging and the race already tied, Republicans in NY-21 couldn&#8217;t afford a messy primary and they got one anyway,\u201d said Andrew Grossman, a spokesperson for the group. \u201cThey spent the entire primary proving they can&#8217;t stand each other, and now they&#8217;ve handed voters a November ballot where they can choose between the guy the party hates and the guy the nominee hates.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK \u2014 A new internal poll shows a Democratic House candidate is in a dead heat with his Republican challenger in an upstate New York district President Donald Trump won by 20 points in 2024. The poll, commissioned by Democratic candidate Blake Gendebien\u2019s campaign and conducted by the left-leaning group Impact Research, found Gendebien [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}