Meet the cop-loving North Country dairy farmer Democrat trying to flip Stefanik’s seat

In New York’s largest congressional district, you see the campaign yard signs before you see just about anything else.

Staked at the end of driveways and on corners of naked intersections of roads that stretch for tens of miles through one-stoplight towns, sprawling farm fields and the Adirondacks.

Rep. Elise Stefanik’s name used to appear everywhere, since replaced with the name of President Donald Trump’s choice to succeed her, the eccentric – and often controversial – Anthony Constantino, who owns  the T-shirt printing company Sticker Mule, and is a cage-fight promoter, musician and congressional candidate on the side.

But this cycle, it’s hard not to notice an uptick in signs for the Democratic nominee, Blake Gendebien, whose logo features the outline of a traditional red barn.

Gendebien is running as a moderate who wants to secure the border, “worship” law enforcement and keep dairy, beer and other traded goods cheap. And Gendebien thinks that profile, facing off against a wild-card candidate like Constantino in what’s shaping up to be an anti-Trump, blue wave year, could be the perfect recipe to flip the 21st Congressional District, one of New York’s reddest seats.

Gendebien is a dairy farmer by trade, and visiting his farm in Lisbon, just 20 minutes south of the Canadian border, it’s easy to see where the inspiration for the barn on his signs came from.

He arrived to meet me driving a green John Deere Gator, right at noon. Maeve Kelly, his spokesperson, said he doesn’t do any campaign work before then, using the mornings to keep his farm running.

“You see those wooden silos off in the distance over there, the red ones?” Gendebien asked, pointing northwest. “That’s where I grew up.”

Gendebien, who describes himself as “a pragmatic reflection of the district,” was born and raised in the district, on the farm his parents bought after stints as Peace Corps volunteers in Bolivia. The same can’t be said about Democratic candidates in recent cycles. Manhattan cannabis attorney Paula Collins was brand new to the district when she ran in 2024. Two years earlier, former CIA officer Matt Castelli couldn’t shake his connection to the Hudson Valley – Stefanik slammed him as a “Far Left Downstate Democrat from Poughkeepsie.”

Apart from farming, Gendebien previously served as vice chair of Agri-Mark – a $1 billion dairy cooperative – served on his local school board in Lisbon, coached basketball and founded a nonprofit alongside his wife, Carmen, for victims of pediatric cancer.

After graduating from Penn State, Gendebien returned home and grew the family farm from 50 dairy cows to 500 – which, with help from his 15 employees, netted him north of 38,000 pounds of milk daily. That goes toward the more than 16 billion pounds of milk produced annually in upstate New York, making it the region’s largest agricultural sector.

Grant Reeher, a Syracuse University political scientist, said that kind of connection is “essential” in a district like this one.

“The North Country’s different from the rest of the state – it’s really important that the person that represents it, at least for the voters, has a real connection,” Reeher said.

The 21st District is the largest congressional district by area in New York – and one of the largest on the East Coast – stretching from the towns west of Albany through the Adirondacks up to the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Canadian border.

“If there was going to be a recipe for a Democrat to win that district, it would be a guy like this in a year like this,” Reeher added.

The North Country has long been represented by Republicans – and Trump won the district by double-digit margins all three times he’s run, including a 21-point win in 2024. While Democrats remember that Barack Obama won the district twice, albeit with slightly different lines, the last Democrat – and the only one in the 21st century – to represent the North Country’s sprawling district was Bill Owens, who won a special election in 2009 when a Republican and Conservative Party candidate split the vote against him. He narrowly was reelected to two full terms before retiring in 2014.

Since then, Stefanik has held the safe red seat, consistently winning by double digits and bringing the district national recognition as chair of the House Republican Conference and staunch Trump ally.

When asked about Stefanik’s time in Washington, D.C., Gendebien said that “she worked incredibly hard.” Specifically, he noted her advocacy for first responder resources that he said saved his mother when she had a stroke. “I appreciate that,” he added.

Mid-interview, one of Gendebien’s three sons, Miles, came out of the house to ask his dad if he could borrow his truck to get a haircut. Gendebien told me that Miles, who graduated from college last spring, had just returned from helping a farmer in a nearby town.

“We’re crossing the aisle,” Gendebien joked, revealing that the farmer happens to be a Republican. “That’s important in this district.”

In mid-August, I trailed Gendebien at the Bannertown Fair parade in Mayfield, about 50 miles north of Albany, as he lagged behind the other Democrats he was marching with.

“You guys need some candy,” he told one man, who pulled a lit cigar from his pursed lips to let a smile crack through. “Can I have one of the cigars?” Gendebien jokingly asked. He and his wife tossed candy to almost every kid they saw, and talked to their voting-age parents too before jogging to catch up with his partisans.

At one point, Gendebien stopped to talk with a woman in her mid-20s. On her truck flew a “blue lives matter” flag. Below it, on the lawn itself, was one of Gendebien’s campaign signs.

“It didn’t surprise me at all – nobody supports law enforcement more than I do,” Gendebien told me later when I asked him about the interaction. “Our law enforcement needs to be worshipped and they need to be put on a pedestal and supported.”

Gendebien also finds common ground with conservatives on immigration enforcement, which he said the Trump administration “has done a good job of, and I support.”

“But we also need to streamline the legal process,” he said, adding that his wife, Carmen, “escaped communism” when she legally immigrated to the United States from Cuba.

However, he doesn’t want his immigration opinions confused with the other main “border issue” in the 21st Congressional District: tariffs.

The U.S. currently exports more than $1 billion of dairy products annually into Canada, which could be hindered after the Canadian government introduced 50% retaliatory tariffs on U.S. milk and cheese products last month.

“Our relationship with Ontario and Quebec is so very important to the economy here,” Gendebien said, noting that even the local favorite beer, Labatt Blue, is imported – though he prefers Coors Banquet himself. “Now we have this yo-yo effect and we can’t plan for our businesses.”

Being a Democrat in New York state means a lot of different things in 2026 – especially given the rise of democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. And the Democratic Socialists of America had their own slate of victories this summer, including in cities upstate.

However, Gendebien said he isn’t worried about being tied to that brand of Democratic politics. “I don’t even know what the full acronym of DSA stands for,” he said, adding that he hadn’t heard of it until six months ago.

“New York City’s problems are 6 1/2 hours away, completely different issues to what we’re facing here in the North Country,” he said

But Gendebien isn’t just distancing himself from the socialists. He declined to comment on whether he’d support Hakeem Jeffries to be speaker of the House if Democrats win it back this fall.

Jeffries, the current House minority leader, may need his vote for his speakership bid to be successful – especially as a handful of progressive candidates prefer a new face. But even if Gendebien isn’t willing to stand with him while running, Jeffries is backing Gendebien. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee labeled the 21st District as a “district in play” last month, a sign that more PAC money could be headed up north.

But Gendebien has also had his own success fundraising at the local level, raising nearly $5.5 million from thousands of individual donors as of the most recent filings in July, while his opponent, Constantino, has self-funded with $12 million.

Constantino has been recently caught up in controversy – including an online video with comedian Ricky Berwick where he jokes about being given a “pass” to use a slur for people with disabilities – and his close ties to the unpopular president could fuel the opposition. In the primary, the state Republican Party supported Constantino’s more mainstream opponent, Assembly Member Robert Smullen.

The parade in Mayfield came just days after the first public poll of the cycle had Gendebien with a slight lead over Constantino, but a second poll by a different outfit found Constantino with a comfortable lead. Still, Gendebien is adamant his campaign is the right strategy. 

“These are not Democrat issues, they’re not Republican issues,” he said, “they’re North Country issues and upstate New York issues, and that’s what I want to fight for.”