Blake Gendebien campaigns to flip Stefanik’s North Country seat
New York’s 21st Congressional District stretches from communities west of Albany through the Adirondacks to the St Lawrence Seaway and the Canadian border. Campaign signs for Gendebien, bearing the outline of a red barn, have appeared alongside signs for Anthony Constantino, the Republican candidate backed by President Donald Trump. Constantino owns the T-shirt company Sticker Mule and is also a cage-fight promoter, musician and congressional candidate.
Gendebien was born and raised in the district and farms in Lisbon, about 20 minutes south of the Canadian border. He does campaign work after tending to the farm in the morning. After graduating from Penn State, he returned home and expanded his family’s dairy herd from 50 cows to 500. With 15 employees, the farm produces more than 38,000 pounds of milk a day. Gendebien previously served as vice-chair of Agri-Mark, a dairy co-operative valued at $1bn, sat on the Lisbon school board, coached basketball and co-founded a charity for children with cancer with his wife, Carmen.
The district produces more than 16bn pounds of milk a year, making dairy the largest agricultural sector in upstate New York. Syracuse University political scientist Grant Reeher said that a candidate’s local ties were “essential” in the North Country. The district is the largest in New York by area and among the largest on the East Coast. Republicans have represented it for most of the period covered in the article: Mr Trump carried it by double-digit margins in each of his three presidential campaigns, including by 21 points in 2024.
Bill Owens was the only Democrat to represent the district in the 21st century. He won a 2009 special election after a Republican and a Conservative Party candidate divided the opposition vote, then narrowly won two full terms before retiring in 2014. Stefanik subsequently held the seat by double-digit margins and became a prominent House Republican leader and ally of Mr Trump. Gendebien said Stefanik had worked hard in Washington and credited her support for first-responder resources with helping his mother after a stroke.
Gendebien describes himself as a pragmatic representative of the district. He says law-enforcement officers should be strongly supported and backs the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement, while also calling for a faster legal-immigration process. His wife legally immigrated to the United States from Cuba. He has sought to separate those views from the dispute over tariffs: the United States exports more than $1bn of dairy products to Canada each year, while Canada has introduced 50% retaliatory tariffs on American milk and cheese. Gendebien said the economic relationship with Ontario and Quebec was important to the area and that changing trade conditions made business planning difficult.
He has also distanced himself from New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America and said that the city’s concerns differed from those of the North Country. He declined to say whether he would support Hakeem Jeffries as speaker if Democrats regained control of the House, although Jeffries has endorsed him. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee designated the district as one “in play”. By July, Gendebien had raised nearly $5.5m from thousands of individual donors, while Constantino had put $12m of his own money into the race. Constantino has faced criticism over an online video involving comedian Ricky Berwick. Public polling has produced differing results: one survey gave Gendebien a small lead, while another showed Constantino ahead comfortably.
