GOP candidate promotes MAGA religion

ATF schedules "The Last American Newspaper" as part of summer lineup

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It is an interesting political strategy.

Rent out a big arena, invite a bunch of grown men to fight each other in a cage, give away free tickets and use intermission for your political speech.

Anthony Constantino, you might better know him as the Amsterdam sign guy, did that in Glens Falls Friday night.

Constantino put up an enormous "Vote for Trump" sign in downtown Amsterdam last fall and parlayed it into so much attention he decided to run for Elise Stefanik's congressional seat.

That brought him to Glens Falls.

It was unclear Friday night whether this was a sporting event or a political rally.

While the North Country Light Brigade was huddled on the Quaker Road overpass with their message to "Stop Musk" flickering on the overpass, Constantino, the CEO of the Sticker Mule printing business, was wandering the floor of the Cool Insuring Arena with 2,500 or so fight fans looking on.

The cover on the event program featured Constantino as sort of the main event and looking a bit threatening, well he used to be a Cage Wars fighter himself, flanked by Trump pardonee Roger Stone and Jorge Masvidal, a professional fighter who I had to Google just to know who he was.

A couple weeks ago, I got a call from a Constantino PR guy who wanted to know if I wanted to come to the event. I was curious.

So there I was on the floor of the Civic Center watching men kick and scratch each other while fans drank beer and occasionally cheered. I sensed most didn't have any better idea about what they were watching than I did.

There was also a weird vibe in the room; a little dangerous; a bit threatening.

After the National Anthem, there was an inordinate amount of cheering for the anthem itself as several in the audience led a "USA, USA..." chant.

While I waited for the politicians to speak, I read the program.

Constantino claimed a high-ranking Democratic official forced the "Cage Wars" entertainment out of the Schenectady casino because of a speech he made imploring spectators to vote for Trump last year.

The casino has denied that and said it was just a business decision.

In the meantime, Constantino has proposed another sign, "America Loves Trump" and an adjacent park "American Loves Trump" that has run into some difficulty with the Amsterdam Planning Board.

Before attending Friday night, I scratched out a few questions to ask Constantino.

Two I like to ask congressional candidates are pretty basic: Why do you want to serve in Congress? What is your motivation?

You'd be surprised how often that trips them up.

In the program, Constantino outlined what he hopes to do for the North Country which is more than Elise Stefanik has done lately, but it was standard talking points like securing the northern border, providing high speed internet access and one of Elise's favorites, finishing the Fort Drum missile defense system.

But what caught my attention was Constantino's promise to "excite people to come live here again." Of course that was before the six inches of snow Saturday night.

It's an issue that needs to be addressed. The North Country is losing people unrelentingly which makes for a questionable future. But Constantino did not explain what he is going to do for excitement.

Constantino also wrote he wanted to inspire new blood to enter politics to "make America Great Again."

Personally, I think it is time to promise to "Make the Adirondacks Great Again," but I'm not a politician.

So here is what really concerned me about Constantino.

On the inside of the back page of the "Cage Wars" program is his "plan to build a MAGA Base in the north."

In the last congressional election, roughly 6 in 10 people voted for Republican Elise Stefanik. That stands as a rout in congressional voting, but it also means that roughly 4 in 10 voted for Democrat Paul Collins.

Constantino says he has put $2.6 million of his own money into a campaign account to "build an early foundation for this MAGA organization." He wants to move New York State in a positive direction by building physical resources including recording studios, meeting centers and entertainment venues.

"I will build necessary technology including fundraising, recruiting and marketing tools that MAGA can use for free."

The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.

As a member of Congress you should represent all. It sounded like Constantino wanted to segregate our communities into MAGA-Pro and MAGA-Con and that didn't sound very American.

He promised to hold frequent, well produced and highly entertaining rallies to keep people engaged and happy; not town hall meetings, but rallies.

What did that mean?

Part of the job description is that congressional members should face the unhappy members of their community. I'm not sure if anyone should be in charge of making people happy.

As I looked out at the fighters rolling around inside the cage, the entire evening was feeling almost dystopian.

There were more questions I wanted to ask; that needed to be asked about this "MAGA first" philosophy and I wondered where moderates would stand in this equation.

Ultimately, I couldn't do it.

I never did hear Roger Stone speak.

Or Constantino.

And I didn't ask my questions.

It was all too depressing to think about.

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Cybersecurity attack

The Post-Star production problems over the past week had nothing to do with a printing press. It was the result of a cybersecurity attack to its parent company, Lee Enterprises, as reported by multiple newspapers in the Lee chain.

The newspaper company is still trying to find out who attacked the company's computers while it tries to recover to full operations.

Lee operates in 72 markets across the company, including here in Glens Falls, and reported a financial loss this week for the fourth quarter in a row.

While Lee played up a 5 percent increase in digital revenue, it was not enough to offset its other revenue declines. Total operating revenues declined 7 percent over past year.

Lee also announced it planned to cut $40 million in operating expenses by the end of the year. That is bad news for The Post-Star and every other local newspaper it runs.

Lee said it hoped to save money through the use of artificial intelligence.

Angela Fu reported on the Poynter Institute website that, "The past two years have been tough for Lee. The company has reduced print days at most of its papers and executed multiple rounds of layoffs."

With that climate in mind, the New York State Publishers Association reprinted an advertisement on Friday that the newspaper was looking for an executive editor.

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Play moves forward

The Adirondack Theater Festival, one of the jewels of the Glens Falls art community, announced its lineup of original theater productions this summer.

I've been attending plays at ATF since before there was a Wood Theater. I've been a subscriber for most of the years since the Wood came to being, so it was especially gratifying Saturday night to be part of the lineup of productions for this summer with ATF putting on a dramatic reading of "The Last American Newspaper."

I'm honored to be part of the journey ahead and hope you all turn out for this love letter to newspapers.

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Story on border towns

In another piece of enterprising reporting from North Country Public Radio, ace reporter Amy Feiereisel spent a day talking to people in Massena, N.Y. and Cornwall, Ontario about concerns over tariffs.

The two towns sit kitty corner on opposite sides of the St. Lawrence Seaway and residents and businesses interact on a daily basis. If the tariffs go forward, both towns could be impacted.

It's an excellent read about worried citizens on both sides of the border.

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Elections

My column about the impact of tariffs on the North Country was reprinted on the Adirondack Almanack website with nearly 100 comments on the issue.

When one person argued the next election could decide whether the tariffs were worth it or not, I responding by saying, "if there is another election."

I was told I was "delusional" to think there would not be another election.

After some thought, I had to agree. There will definitely be another election. After all, there are still elections in Russia with Putin winning 90 percent of the vote.

That's what I fear here.

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CFPB worries

Elon Musk has turned his ire on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Musk tweeted on X "CFP RIP" this weekend.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was established by Congress to rein in Wall Street in the wake of the financial collapse in 2008.

Since then the CFPB has recovered more than $17 billion for consumers from fraudulent and predatory practices and Wall Street would like it to go away.

Now under control of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, all enforcement actions and lawsuits were "paused" last week.

Elon Musk has now taken control of the agency's computers.

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Phone calls

Many of you have been calling Sen. Charles Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand about your concerns in Washington and have been unable to get through.

But your message may be getting through.

The New York Times reported that the congressional phone system has been jammed with tens of millions of calls from outraged constituents.

The Senate phone system normally gets 40 calls per minute, but it has been getting up to 1,600 a minute this past week.

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Mankind

In defense of the gutting of foreign aid world-wide, new Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that agency employees “take taxpayer money and they spend it as a global charity irrespective of whether it is in the national interest.”

I could see a lot of patriotic Americans nodding their heads, but I wonder when we should be putting mankind's interests ahead of American interests and shouldn't they be the same?

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Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.