18 races to follow for the 2018 midterms

10. New York’s 19th District

Candidates: Republican incumbent John Faso vs. Democratic challenger Antonio Delgado

It’s not just that the race for New York’s 19th District is going to be close, though, at this point, it will almost certainly turn out that way for all involved. As this saga develops, it’s also becoming something of an evolving statement on race and elections, too.

Though New York as a state tends to vote reliably blue in large national elections, races on relatively smaller scales can mix with those expectations. For instance, Rep. John Faso, returning from his first term representing New York’s Hudson Valley, is a Republican. He is a Republican who leans pretty hard on terms like “bipartisanship,” to be sure, but Faso is nonetheless a GOP politician.

This November, Faso will face Antonio Delgado, the Democratic challenger. Delgado has said quite a bit about his path from working class roots in New York state to a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford and his degree from Harvard Law School.

After graduating from Harvard, Delgado worked as an executive for Statik Entertainment, a music label. He also worked briefly as a rap artist before moving on to work as a litigation associate for a lobbying firm in New York City.

It’s that brief stint as a rapper that has brought recent attention to the 19th district election. Faso’s team has highlighted some of Delgado’s more controversial lyrics, which they argue to be “anti-American” and “paint an ugly and false image of America.” However, many are wondering if this critical move isn’t just a thinly veiled allusion to Delgado’s race and associated value judgments.

Campaign website for John Faso: https://johnfaso.com/
Campaign website for Antonio Delgado: https://delgadoforcongress.com/