The Republican and Democratic committees are still considering their candidates for the planned special election in New York’s 21st Congressional District, but both parties have a set of apparent frontrunners.
According to sources with knowledge of the internal party discussions who weren’t authorized to speak on the record, the Republican party is dealing with a bit of a fracture in their process. After meetings and interviews with candidates on Jan. 8 and 9, the GOP county chairs generated a list of preferred candidates, selected by a ranked-choice ballot.
WEIGHTED VOTE
At the top of that list is Assemblyman Chris Tague, R-Schoharie, and Elizabeth “Liz” Joy, a Republican who most recently ran against Democrat Congressman Paul Tonko, D-Albany, in the Capital Region-centered NY-20 district. However, five county chairs of the 15 involved sat out of that selection process — sources could only confirm that St. Lawrence County, Oneida, and Clinton County’s chairs had sat out of the process, and could not name the other two.
According to sources within the party, the Republican chairs will have a weighted vote based on the party registration totals within their county; St. Lawrence County has a 12.2% weighted vote, one of the largest allocations, while Oneida County has the largest at 13.1%, and Clinton has a relatively large 8.7% weighted vote.
With those influential votes not weighed in the most recent round of selection, it’s not clear that Tague or Joy will have a successful majority when the actual vote occurs, which is still unscheduled. The sources confirmed that Congresswoman Elise M. Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, is staying involved in the process through her team of district staffers – but has not yet weighed in on which candidate she believes should get the party nod.
Party leaders are weighing the list of candidates against a set of criteria: the ideal candidate is able to self-fund or fundraise, has run for office before, and ideally has held office before. Those are not binding requirements, however.
Sources would not confirm the entire list of candidates still being considered — but said that names like former NY-21 Congressional candidate Matthew A. Doheny, Rensselaer County executive Steven A. McLaughlin, and north country state senator Daniel G. Stec, R-Queensbury, are still in the running as well.
Anthony Constantino, the Amsterdam-area businessman, is still under consideration as well — Constantino notably attended the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump on Monday and continues to make his case with a $2.6 million self-funded campaign and advertisements already running across the district.
The sources within the GOP party operations said Constantino’s advertisements and early claims to have a connection to Stefanik irked the Congresswoman and her team, but don’t appear to have soured his candidacy in her eyes.
Former U.S. Senate candidate Joseph Pinion III, who ran against Sen. Charles E. Schumer in 2022, was considered by the chairs but is no longer — driven largely by his total lack of connections with the north country or upstate New York.
St. Lawrence County Chairman David W. Forsythe, who only recently declared his candidacy publicly and did have meetings with the county chairs, is not on the list anymore — a result of the St. Lawrence County party not participating in the most recent ranking vote.
DEMOCRATS
For the Democratic party’s process, sources who have knowledge of the process but no permission to speak publicly, confirmed there is a list of four candidates still up for consideration — but would only confirm candidates Paula Collins, who ran against Stefanik last year, and Blake Gendebien, a St. Lawrence County dairy farmer who’s raised over $200,000 since announcing last month.
On Tuesday, candidate Steven W. Holden Sr., who formerly ran as the Democratic candidate in the 24th Congressional District, announced he was out of the running for the party’s nod.
According to sources, the party is meeting again this week to discuss their nominee but likely will not make a decision that day – and are still awaiting information from the state Democratic party on how the final vote will be run, how the vote weights are to be calculated, and when the nomination can be formally made.
As the party officials continue to weigh who they should select for the NY-21 special election, they’re anticipating that Stefanik will soon vacate her seat and give the Governor the notice needed to call the special election. The Congresswoman faced questions before the Senate Foreign Relations committee on Tuesday – a floor vote on her nomination has not been scheduled yet but is anticipated soon.