Teachout running for Congress

The district that Teachout is running for, New York’s 19th, is now represented by Chris Gibson (R-NY) but has traditionally voted Democrat in most presidential elections, even though the majority of the district’s House Representatives in the past 20 years have been Republican.

“Throughout my career, I’ve never been afraid to stand up for ordinary citizens whose voices were drowned out by special interests, big corporations and powerful insiders”, Teachout said in a statement emailed to the media.

Teachout, who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary in 2014, was urged to run in the Catskills by local Democrats, members of the Working Families Party and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “I’m running for Congress to give people their voices back so together we can address the real concerns facing our communities”. Teachout beat Cuomo in each of these counties, where many voters likely shared her opposition to the Common Core and fracking, and her disgust with political corruption and politics as usual.

On the Republican side, a multi-hopeful race seems to have narrowed to an upcoming primary fight between former state assemblyman John Faso and Millbrook businessman Andrew Heaney.

The three other candidates interviewed by the party leadership were Margo Miller, Julian Schreibman and Will Yandik.

Two Democrats thought to be possible candidates – Ulster County Executive Michael Hein and state Assemblywoman Didi Barrett – announced in recent weeks that they will not run.

Teachout grew up in rural Vermont and now lives in Dover Plains, in Dutchess County. “If you want to understand why politicians are so unbelievably silent repeatedly, year after year, on serious and obvious issues of race – one of the reasons is that their donors are white, and pretty rich”, she said, predicated her view by saying she wouldn’t claim “racism and structural racism and money in politics are not the same issue”.

Teachout said she shouldn’t be painted with a liberal brush.

In the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s official endorsement of Teachout, issued on Tuesday, Jan. 26, PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor said, “Zephyr Teachout is a law professor who literally wrote the book on corruption in American politics”. Teachout had recently received the support of a “consensus” of Democratic Party chairs in the 11-county 19th Congressional District.