2 weeks Ago
A massive "VOTE FOR TRUMP" sign now lights up the sky in Amsterdam, N.Y. The sign atop on the former Fownes factory is the largest non-billboard Trump sign in the country and possibly world, according to Sticker Mule, the company behind the sign.
Photo courtesy of Sticker Mule Photo courtesy of Sticker Mule Tribune News Service Alex Gault, Watertown Daily Times, N.Y. (TNS) A special election still hasn’t been formally called for New York’s 21st Congressional District, but that isn’t stopping Upstate New York businessman Anthony T.
Constantino from starting his campaign for the House seat. Constantino, 42, is a businessman and somewhat recent political activist — he runs Sticker Mule, a well-known printing, labeling and manufacturing company based in Amsterdam, Montgomery County. Constantino is also a recent feature in national headlines — he’s a big fan of President-elect Donald Trump, and recently got attention for putting a large Vote for Trump sign on his company’s factory in downtown Amsterdam.
The 100-foot sign, lit day and night, can be seen from the New York State Thruway, and led to a court fight between Constantino and Amsterdam elected officials who believed the sign violated city ordinances. The state courts sided with Constantino, who has vowed to keep the sign up in perpetuity going forward. Constantino bills himself as a local tech CEO, and said he wasn’t heavily involved in politics before Trump entered the political world, although he’s supported Trump and donated to him in 2016.
“I was one of the first people to get canceled,” he said in an interview at his factory. “I supported him when was candidate Trump, made a $500 donation, and I got canceled for it.” Constantino said someone on social media discovered he had made the donation, which is a matter of public record, and took to the internet to denounce Constantino.
At the time, Sticker Mule had become an established name in the branding and merchandising world. The company was a leader in labelmaking, T-shirt screenprinting and sticker making. Plenty of politically involved groups, including a number of campaigns for federal office, use Sticker Mule products, and some people spoke out against Constantino for supporting a candidate who, at the time, seemed to be unlikely to win.
He did, and although Constantino continued supporting Trump through his first term and second run for the office, he stayed relatively quiet. He even registered as a Democrat to assist a friend in a primary campaign for Albany city mayor, although he has since registered as a Republican. Constantino reengaged with national politics after the first assassination attempt on the president-elect, while he spoke at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July.
That’s when he put up the sign on his factory in Amsterdam, and when he sent out a letter in support of Trump to the Sticker Mule customer list — a move that garnered more backlash from some customers who said they felt it was an inappropriate use of their information. Constantino said he felt it was important to speak up then, because the stakes of the political disagreements in the U.S.
had hit a fever pitch. “It gone to the point where bullets are flying, I want to do something as a citizen to try to fix this situation,” he said. “I decided the best way was simply to admit I support him.
” And now, Constantino is eyeing a shot at boosting his influence even more, representing Northern New York in Congress. He’s got a similar early background to longtime Rep. Elise M.
Stefanik , R-Schuylerville, who is slated to become the Trump White House’s U.N. ambassador next year.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.
, speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) AP Constantino is two years older than Stefanik, and attended the Albany Academy for Boys, the brother school of the congresswoman’s alma mater, the Albany Academy for Girls.
He said he’s stayed in touch with the congresswoman and recently discussed his campaign with her. A spokesperson for Stefanik didn’t respond to a request for comment on that discussion. When news that Stefanik was to vacate her seat came through, Constantino said he started getting calls from a number of people in his orbit, urging him to run for the seat.
It’s not a traditional campaign by any means — in a special election, there is no primary race. Instead, for both Republicans and Democrats, the party chairs in each of the counties vote on a candidate, with their votes weighted by their proportion of the party’s total registered voters in the district. Constantino said he’s starting his campaign by speaking to each of the 15 Republican committee chairs, starting with his home county and moving north and west over the coming weeks.
He has some competition in that process. People with knowledge of discussions have said that state Sens. Daniel G.
Stec, R-Queensbury and Jacob Ashby, R-Rensselaer, Assemblymen Chris L. Tague, R-Catskill, and Robert J. Smullen, R-Herkimer, Rensselaer County Executive Steven F.
McLaughlin, outgoing Rep. Marcus J. Molinaro, R-Tivoli, and a handful of local business leaders are considering running as well.
If he gets the party’s support and their nomination in the special election, he said he’ll be campaigning on his tech and marketing background, trying to bring a new energy to the race for Congress in a region that has handily reelected its incumbent congressperson for a decade by wider and wider margins each time. “I’m going to do things that people have never seen before,” he said. He’s pledged to sink $2.
6 million of his own money into his campaign — money he made by buying stock in Tesla after Elon Musk bought X, formerly Twitter, and investors showed concerns over the company’s strength. Constantino sees himself as similar to big name tech CEOs like Musk, OpenAI’s Samuel H. Altman or Mark Cuban of “Shark Tank” fame.
Like those men have gotten involved in politics, on one side or the other, Constantino said he has done the same. He said he believes he is one of the reasons New York swung so far to the right in this year’s election — Trump did more than 11 percentage points better among New York voters than he did in 2020, the biggest shift of any one state. “I think you could say, objectively, I’m the strongest voice for President Trump in New York state, I think probably across the entire state.
” He said he believes the sign on his factory is one of the most effective in American history, because it was discussed in the news and generated controversy and attention in a Democratic-leaning region. Constantino also took on other political projects — he’s held debate sessions discussing Trump’s policies with anyone who wants to, and held one such session in Manhattan, where he said he changed many minds on Trump. He’s also founded a group called Trump for Peace, taking the position that Trump is the candidate who will end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and protect global peace going forward, and he founded a group called StickerPAC, which focused on creating and distributing pro-Trump memorabilia during the campaign.
Trump is a big part of Constantino’s platform. He said he’ll go with the president-elect on anything he puts forward as president. Broadly, he said the key to improving things for NY-21 is to end the long-running outmigration in New York, and get the state back on track to gaining population in proportion to the rest of the country.
“I’m the strongest voice for championing the fact that people need to come back to New York state,” he said. On Trump’s plan to enforce tariffs on goods shipped into the United States from abroad, Constantino said he would be supportive. As a business owner, he said he isn’t worried about tariffs.
He didn’t know how many of his company’s products would be impacted by a tariff, but said as a business owner he is happy to work within the lines set by government, as long as those lines are equally enforced on everyone. “I’m fine with whatever regulatory structure the president thinks makes the most sense,” he said. On agricultural policy, Constantino didn’t have an answer.
Congress is set to pass another yearlong extension of the Farm Bill, which sets agricultural policy for the country as well as food benefits programs. It’s already a year overdue, and with Republican control in Washington next year now assured, that party’s priorities are likely to guide the next five-year Farm Bill. Constantino said that if he was elected he would hire advisers to help him navigate agricultural policy.
“I’m gonna learn from very talented advisors and also from talking to farmers what makes the most sense,” he said. “I’ll advocate for what makes the most sense, but I don’t have a specific answer on that.” Congress is also set to decide on the next steps for tax policy.
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expires in 2025 and with Republican control, it’s likely to be reauthorized with some changes. One expected change is the removal of the State and Local Tax deduction cap, which allows taxpayers to deduct what they pay in sales, property and other local and state taxes from their federal taxable income. A cap of $10,000 was put on SALT deductions in 2017, but Trump has said he would like to remove it next year.
“Taxes being too high, we gotta get costs under control to fix that,” Constantino said. “But in terms of specific mechanisms we (use to) get taxes down, I’m gonna need to spin up my team and really study the issues to make a correct judgment.” On the border, Constantino supports a broad lockdown on border crossings, an end to the catch-and-release policy that allows people awaiting asylum to remain in the U.
S. For immigration, he believes the U.S.
needs to be incredibly selective on who it allows to become a resident or citizen as well. “I think the United States of America is sort of a giant corporation,” he said. “It should operate in the same way.
If you run a company, I want the best people coming in for my business. We want the best possible people coming into our country.” Constantino said he would support the construction of a missile defense site on Fort Drum, a project that Stefanik has been pushing for years with limited success.
The plan calls for a multi-million dollar installation for a missile system that could shoot down incoming ICBMs from hostile nations in the east. For years, the annual defense funding bill has required the Department of Defense move forward with an installation on Fort Drum, but DoD has repeatedly said they don’t see a need to build a site on the east coast, and defense technology and policy experts have said that missile defense systems are spotty at best, and an east coast installation would be ultimately unnecessary. “Elise was championing the missile defense site at Fort Drum,” Constantino said.
“I’m going to be following through on that, making sure it gets done.” When asked about the technological and operational concerns over the installation, Constantino said he would push for the project to be as effective as possible. “I’m a perfectionist,” he said.
“I think the idea of a missile defense system makes a lot of sense, but we want everything done the best possible way.” While Constantino sets up his campaign, he’ll be talking with the rest of the NY-21 Republican committee chairs. The chairs can’t make a formal announcement of who they’re nominating until Stefanik formally vacates her seat, likely to happen sometime in January, which will start a roughly 3-month timeline from then to the election for the Republican and Democratic, plus any independent or third-party nominees who qualify, to make their case to voters.
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