Boxing, Rap Disses And A Giant Trump Statue: Inside The Race To Replace Elise Stefanik

AMSTERDAM, New York —  At first blush, the vibes at the warehouse where Republican House hopeful Anthony Constantino was holding his campaign rally were decidedly wholesome. American flags bedecked the walls of the cavernous space, which smelled of free pizza. Constantino — a 43-year-old who bears a passing resemblance to tough-guy actor Tom Hardy — led the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to his campaign manager. A local minor league team official praised him for his help refurbishing the baseball stadium in this rust belt city.

Constantino’s backers, decked out in black and white t-shirts touting his recent endorsement from President Trump, cheered as their candidate name-dropped the MAGA leader and his assorted disciples, from Rudy Giuliani to Elon Musk to Roger Stone.

But the energy shifted as Constantino — a local businessman whose previous political experience includes a rap video dissing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — got more and more worked up as he aired grievances about his political enemies, namely Democrats (“They’re evil”) and his primary opponent State Assemblymember Robert Smullen (“A very dishonest person”).

And then, when the boxer-turned-politician opened up the floor to questions, things turned combative.

At the mic was a man who’d sparred with Constantino on Facebook over immigration nearly a year before — and who seemed intent on reliving that online confrontation. Constantino’s views on immigration align closely with Trump's deportation agenda. The attendee argues closing borders will only exacerbate human trafficking.

“When I brought that up,” the man said, “you challenged me to a fight and said that I was a fake gangster.”

Constantino, standing in front of dozens of balloons fashioned into the American flag, hit back.

“It’s clearly illegal, human trafficking,” Constantino said, leaning forward. “And anyone who supports that, maybe you do need to get beat up a little bit.”

Security swarmed the man and he was soon ejected from the rally. And as the man was being led away, the candidate got the final word.

“There’s something about getting into the ring that changes the way people think,” Constantino said, waxing philosophical about his past boxing career. “He might benefit from that experience. I don’t know if words otherwise are going to get to him.”

The boxing metaphor is apt: Constantino is waist-deep in a bristling Republican primary to replace GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik in a sprawling upstate House district that borders Canada. And the primary, which will take place on Tuesday and lacks any independent polling, is pitting the first-time candidate against someone who also loves a good fight.

His foe, Smullen, a retired Marine colonel who served three tours of duty in Afghanistan, has launched broadsides dinging him for his past Democratic Party enrollment, disparaging his at-times profane hip hop lyrics and generally painting him as deeply unfit to represent the region in Congress.

In turn, Constantino, who owns the Sticker Mule factory that makes custom stickers, threatened to sue Smullen over the attacks and sent him a text message calling him “an evil person” who must be stopped.

So it should come as no surprise that the raucous, bitter battle to succeed Stefanik has become a circus, tearing Empire State Republicans asunder — and offering a crystal ball look, albeit cloudy, into a GOP future centered exclusively around Trump-accented spectacle. The spiraling brawl even has its own collateral damage, including a defamation suit from New York Conservative Party Chair Jerry Kassar against Constantino, heated confrontations with local officials and social media feuds.

The race is testing whether Smullen, a stalwart Republican with sterling GOP credentials, can compete against someone born wholly out of the MAGA movement. Shell-shocked New York Republican leaders aren’t quite sure what to make of Constantino and his sharp-elbowed battle against the alternative, who has endorsements from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Rifle Association. Privately they wonder if Constantino, who has never run for public office until now, is up to the task of representing the district in Washington.

Yet what some Republicans won’t publicly acknowledge is Constantino represents a climax of the MAGA era, the logical conclusion of Trump’s sweeping impact on American politics manifesting all the way down to the House level. His candidacy might also be inevitable in a district where Stefanik herself has evolved from a moderate Paul Ryan aide to a MAGA stalwart. (Stefanik, for her part, has declined to endorse in this high-stakes race to succeed her, and did not comment for this story.)

The race is a potential window into the Republican Party’s future, a coming era in which first-time candidates like Constantino in New York or reality TV star Spencer Pratt in Los Angeles can capture attention by distilling Trumpism’s essence down to performance, pageantry — and an eagerness to fight.

Pratt lost his bid for mayor in deep blue LA. And Trump’s support doesn’t always translate to electoral success. It underscores that whoever wins the fight for MAGA now will control the future of the Republican Party as it braces for a post-Trump world.

Either way, Constantino’s candidacy offers a test case for just how far a MAGA candidate can go as Trump winds down his time in the Oval Office.

“All my attacks are honest and things that people need to know,” Constantino told me inside his factory. “President Trump changed a lot of norms. Why don’t you want politicians talking to citizens?”

Republicans, including those who have quietly coveted the Stefanik seat, are happy to not be Smullen.

The state lawmaker is a traditional Republican whose compelling background — combat experience and legislative record — would normally make him a shoe-in for this ruby red seat, but he is now withstanding daily pummelings from his opponent. In turn, Smullen has attacked Constantino in often personal terms, calling him “mentally unfit” to be in Congress. What has chafed Smullen the most, though, is an attack on his bravery and the implication from a Constantino supporter that he politically leveraged his 14-year-old son’s death after he was struck by a car.

“My opponent calls me a ‘fucking coward’,” Smullen told me in an interview. “Utterly ridiculous. Certainly I’m no coward by any stretch of the imagination.”

Armed with a selfie stick, he’d just shot a short video outside the state Capitol in Albany and was slightly out of breath when he settled into a leather upholstered chair to unspool his complaints with Constantino in the lounge outside of the ornate Assembly chamber.

“Beyond the pale.” “Unfit.”

These are fighting words in any Republican-on-Republican feud and Smullen uses them freely to blast back at Constantino. Perhaps the most devastating punch Smullen wants to land on Constantino is this charge:

“He’s no Donald Trump.”

This is a district that went hard for Trump in 2024 — 60 percent of voters here cast their lot with the then-former president. And in many ways, voters here fit the profile of the traditional MAGA voter: Overwhelmingly white, predominantly blue collar and weary of status quo politics.

In some parts, the rural expanses of New York’s North Country resemble Alaska or western Maine. Forbidding in the winter and capable of becoming blisteringly hot in the summer, the Adirondack Park has been shedding population for generations and struggles with housing affordability. Battles over land use in the protected area are legion. Towns that line the border have reported declining business with Canada after Trump’s expansive tariff program. And the Mohawk Valley is where the nation’s rustbelt begins — home to decaying factories and farms that are increasingly likely to be turned over to solar panel companies.

Fighting is in the historical DNA. Abolitionist John Brown would work his farm outside Lake Placid when he wasn’t fomenting a violent overthrow of the South’s slaveholding elite. There is an overriding libertarian streak that runs through this region — a don’t-tread-on-me ethos that’s entwined with a strong distrust of strangers and government officials.

“That suspicion of outsiderism is larger than the forces of political allegiance or ideology,” said Aaron Wolf, a 2014 Democratic House candidate who unsuccessfully ran against Stefanik.

These rough-and-tumble crosscurrents make the district an amalgam of the nation’s political duels, with self-sufficiency a common throughline. While Trump has been successful in the district, Barack Obama also won a prior version of this seat.

“I think that being an outsider is worse than being a Democrat sometimes, and that's not because we're not open-minded,” Wolf said. “This is a place whose decision making has often been in the hands of outsiders. Going back to the British and the French warring over the Champlain Valley and the North Country, and determining the fate of the indigenous population as well, and then you have, in another era, the environmentalists versus the timber interests.”

Stefanik has represented versions of the district for more than a decade. She framed herself as a pragmatist, touting bipartisan efforts on anodyne concerns like dairy prices. Initially the youngest woman elected to the House — a distinction she held until Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory — Stefanik set out to help elect more GOP women.

Then the Trump era hit, scrambling the nation’s politics and the trajectory of Stefanik’s district.

She morphed into an ardent Trump supporter — “ultra MAGA” in her words — a shift that was in keeping with any ambitious Republican who could spot where the party’s voters were headed. Trump-skeptical Republicans lost their seats; Stefanik was elevated to House GOP leadership.

Now as she prepares to leave after the twin disappointments of losing her bid to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a scuttled run for governor, Stefanik’s presence looms largest — perhaps more so than Trump’s — over the district.

“At the end of the day Elise Stefanik has the biggest voice in the entire room,” Saratoga County GOP Chair Joe Shurada told me. “She has a megaphone no one else has. I don’t know if she’s going to make an endorsement. But if she did, her opinion counts the most.”

The stakes are high for Republicans — even in a blood red district.

National Democrats have not shown a public interest in a race for a district Trump has won handily in three elections. That may change if Constantino wins the primary and Smullen remains in the general election on the Conservative Party’s ballot line. That’s a scenario that haunts Republican Party leaders.

Appearing on the Conservative Party ballot line can be a boon for Republicans — especially in New York’s red pockets.

New York’s Conservative Party was formed in 1962 — a William F. Buckley-infused answer to Republican Nelson Rockefeller’s liberalism. Over the decades as the state became a deeper shade of Democratic blue, the Conservative Party has tried to pull New York Republicans to the right. It’s now in an unofficial partnership with the New York GOP, often cross-endorsing the Republicans’ preferred candidates and reinforcing establishment support.

Sometimes, though, that relationship breaks down.

Smullen has the backing of the Conservative Party and is currently slated to remain on the November ballot. He hasn’t committed to dropping out if he loses the June 23 primary. If both men continue to duke it out through the summer and fall, Democrats would have a significantly better chance of flipping the seat — a state of affairs the party would have considered unimaginable if Stefanik was seeking another term.

Complicating matters is Conservative Party Chair Jerry Kassar’s defamation suit against Constantino. The case is working its way through the state Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

A year ago, Constantino told supporters Kassar threatened to kill him and implied the party leader ordered the campaign’s press aide to be murdered. Constantino recorded a phone call with Kassar, in which the chair is heard warning the candidate against challenging a Republican incumbent in 2026 and that doing so “is just a bigger reason why we intend to kill you,” he said. In an interview, Constantino said Kassar was among those he considers a “swamp creature” — part of a broader problem for candidates like him trying to break into politics.

"Mr. Constantino made false claims against Mr. Kassar that he widely publicized, accusing Mr. Kassar of orchestrating a plot to murder Mr. Constantino,” said Kassar attorney Christian Browne. “Mr. Kassar is suing Mr. Constantino to hold him accountable for his false and reckless conduct and to protect Mr. Kassar’s unblemished reputation after nearly five decades in political and public life. The fact that Mr. Constantino is presently running for office is irrelevant to Mr. Kassar’s case.”

I asked Constantino if it was possible Kassar may have not meant this threat "to kill you" literally.

“It's a strange word choice, and sometimes people let things slip,” Constantino said. Kassar, he added, did clarify that “I’ll do everything in my power to destroy you.”

It remains to be seen if all this intra-party combat will provide an opening for Democrats in the fall. The last time a Democrat represented a version of the district came in 2009 as the Tea Party movement gained steam. Republicans picked then-Assemblymember Dede Scozzafava to succeed Rep. John McHugh, who had joined the Obama administration. The Conservative Party, believing Scozzafava wasn’t sufficiently to the right, picked a local accountant, Doug Hoffman. The ensuing race became a disaster for Republicans and a gift for Democrats, who took advantage of the split. Democratic Rep. Bill Owens won a special election and held the seat until January 2015.

Republicans, fighting to retain control of the narrowly divided House in what’s shaping up to be a tough election year, desperately need to avoid a replay of 2009 this November.

In many ways, Smullen’s pedigree fits the Old School, GOP mold. He’s got degrees from elite institutions like The Citadel and Georgetown University. He’s a high-ranking military officer who’s seen action. (He prefers to speak in person, rather than the phone, after “too many bangs and booms” during training and combat damaged his hearing.) He served as a White House fellow during the George W. Bush era. He’s clocked in a seven-year tenure in the New York State Assembly. And he fits the mold of an upstate New York Republican: Attuned to rural issues with a fiscal conservative streak.

But he’s sometimes been out of step with his own party, even as the New York GOP took the rare step of endorsing him in the contentious House primary.

He’s feuded with Stefanik’s political allies in upstate New York — a potentially fateful series of interactions that stand to make an endorsement from the powerful outgoing lawmaker highly unlikely. Smullen sued the chair of the Fulton County Republican Committee Sue McNeil, who is close with Stefanik, in a bid to remove her from the leadership post and install his own ally. The legal challenge was ultimately unsuccessful and Stefanik endorsed McNeil’s push to remain the head of the local party.

Then there was a 2021 incident in Stefanik’s Washington, DC office in which he threatened to launch a primary bid against her, according to two people with direct knowledge of the exchange and granted anonymity to discuss the private conversation. (The alleged threat came as the current district lines were in doubt ahead of the 2022 district redrawing.) Smullen’s campaign has denied he ever planned to challenge Stefanik; he insists he has a positive relationship with the outgoing House lawmaker, who attended his son’s funeral and wake. (Stefanik’s team declined to comment.)

He’s also had a much-publicized run-in with the law: He was arrested in 2018 after claiming a property tax exemption for veterans on a non-primary residence. Smullen paid a reimbursement to the local government; the charge was reduced to a violation. He’s dismissed the incident as a paperwork error.

Despite these instances, Smullen’s political tenure has overall been predictable, even staid. He’s willing to work across the aisle on non-idealogical issues, like rural safety or getting a bipartisan organ donation bill passed after his son was killed.

Indeed, Smullen is running on a traditional Republican platform of growing the economy, securing the border and supporting the Trump administration's agenda. Yet much of his campaign has been spent responding to Constantino's barrage of attacks.

He’s had enough. In May, after the conclusion of their only televised debate, Smullen refused to shake Constantino’s outstretched hand.

Four days later, Smullen called reporters down to a windowless, air conditioned Albany hotel conference room to explain why. After the press assembled, he quietly placed posters on easels arrayed around him.

The “evil” text message on one poster. The Facebook post by a Vermont-based Constantino supporter accusing Smullen of politicizing his son’s death blown up on another. A Sticker Mule sticker that said, “Kill the police.”

“Let it sink in,” Smullen said. “This is the temperament of the lifelong Democrat asking you to send him to Congress as a Republican.” (Constantino says he previously registered as a Democrat to support a friend running for Albany mayor.) 

His voice cracked.

“Would you shake hands with someone who believes that you’re an evil person?”

Later, I asked Smullen if he will endorse Constantino if he’s the Republican nominee.

“You know, he's threatened me and tried to intimidate me and called me evil,” said Smullen, adding that he is confident he will prevail in the primary. “You know, his team have said the things that they've said about my son and so I'll leave it at that.”

When I pointed out to Smullen that his answer was neither a “yes” nor a “no,” his voice went quieter.

“I’ll leave it at that,” he said.

In 2024, after an assasination attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pa., Constantino erected an illuminated 12-foot-tall “Vote for Trump” sign on his warehouse roof.

That act of adulation served to jump-start an improbable candidacy.

His Trump sign caught Roger Stone’s attention, who reached out to the youngish CEO. Over dinner, the infamous political operative, whose 40-month prison term for seven felony charges was commuted by Trump, convinced Constantino to run for Congress. Since then, the candidate has been embraced by MAGA, receiving warm endorsements from Giuliani and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and he was invited to stand in line with Musk at Trump’s inauguration.

Constantino was born in Albany and attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the prestigious university in nearby Troy and studied economics. He never finished. When he was 7, his Navy veteran dad died and his father’s business struggled after his death. So, at 19, Constantino dropped out of college to take over his father’s former photo envelope company. In 2010, he launched his own firm, Sticker Mule, with the motto, “Custom printing that kicks ass.” It’s now a 90,000-square-foot factory with 1,000-employees.

In his late 30s, he became a boxer — a risky venture for anyone approaching middle age. One video posted online shows Constantino unleashing a quick, violent barrage of punches on his opponent. He wins in the second round after his foe dropped to one knee and the referee ended the fight. And he’s dabbled in music, some of it rap, some gospel or country-inspired, much of it fitting in the growing genre of MAGA praise music.

“Can’t fuck with America, bitch,” Constantino raps in a diss track aimed at Mamdani. “This is New York City, home of Donald Trump, Tupac and Biggie.” Another song, which Trump shared on Truth Social, ends with Constantino winkingly suggesting he would run for president one day. He insisted to me that line was meant to be broadly aspirational: Anyone, including a guy like Trump, can become president one day.

A political generation ago his candidacy would have been dismissed as a gadfly effort by a local crank.

Yet Constantino has excelled at wielding the current coin of the realm: an uncanny ability to capture voters’ attention and stoke their support. He’s pledged to give his congressional salary away to a local veteran’s family. He stages block party-style events at his sticker factory. He gifted Trump with a giant bronze statue depicting him raising his fist in defiance after he survived an assasination attempt. The shooting in Butler, he has said, is what propelled him to get involved in politics and endorse Trump.

Self-funding his campaign with $10 million, Constantino has spent more than $3.8 million on TV and digital ads, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. He’s spending at a fast clip, with some of that cash plowed back into Sticker Mule. The campaign has reported spending money on “donor mementos” as well as merchandise, design and marketing, according to federal campaign finance records. By contrast, Smullen’s campaign recorded just over $500,000 in ads, which often air back-to-back with Constantino. Smullen has also loaned his campaign money — $1 million, a tenth of what Constantino has poured into the race.

His campaign hires have come under scrutiny. That includes Alec Flores, a Nevada man who was brought on as a “support agent” last year and is set to face a murder charge in November. He faces a Nevada-specific “open murder” charge, leaving it up to a jury to determine if Flores is guilty of first or second-degree murder or voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. (Flores, who Constantino has said briefly worked for the campaign and soon left, did not respond to a request for comment.) Constantino, who has not met the man, told me he would “put a better structure in place” if his campaign hires again.

In keeping with his confrontational zeal, Constantino earlier this year was removed from a local Republican meeting, escorted out of the room by the county sheriff. The ejection came after Constantino repeatedly claimed Smullen was “lying” about his business. The New York Republican establishment took stock of Constantino’s antics and endorsed Smullen, who also has the backing of the state’s GOP House delegation, save for Stefanik.

Constantino believes the rejection by the state party is a blessing for how he’s framed the campaign.

“If we win, it’s a victory for the forces of good,” he told me. “If it goes the other way, it would be a victory for the corrupt swamp people protecting their power, entrenching themselves more and scaring out outsiders.”

In this insiders vs. outsiders race, anything seems possible.