Anthony Brindisi: From “Nowhere Man” to Congressman
Luke Radel (Class of ’22) writes for Spartan Expressions
On the other side of our Zoom meeting, the Congressman representing all or part of eight Upstate New York counties (including Oneida County) in the House of Representatives reflected on his senior yearbook quote.
“It was something from the ‘Nowhere Man’ song by The Beatles because I really didn’t have a point of view at that point in my life. I was kind of struggling to find myself and figure out what I wanted to do with my life.”
The opening bars of that legendary song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney do not describe Brindisi’s two years as a Congressman.
“He’s a real nowhere man / sitting in his nowhere land / making all his nowhere plans / for nobody. / Doesn’t have a point of view / knows not where he’s going to / isn’t he a bit like you and me?”
When I sat down with him, six of the freshman Democrat’s bills had been signed into law by Republican President Donald Trump. Before the end of Brindisi’s term, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2021, which was vetoed by the President, passed both houses of Congress with a two-thirds majority, enough to override the President’s veto. Brindisi was one of the members who voted to pass the military spending package, which contained five more of his bills, bringing his total of bills passed up to eleven. Brindisi also served on three House committees and was a proud member of the bipartisan “Problem Solvers Caucus,” a group of 25 Democrat and 25 Republican lawmakers who worked to … well, solve problems.
So, how did Anthony Brindisi find what he wanted to do with his life?
“In high school, I didn’t have any grand ideas of what my future would hold,” he told me during our December interview.
“It wasn’t really until college,” Brindisi said, “and even, more towards my senior year in college after the Bush v. Gore election [in 2000] that I really came down that public service and politics were an area of interest for me.”
Nearly two decades later, after climbing up the ladder of local politics — from his family law office to the Utica School Board to the State Assembly — Brindisi sought federal office. He was no longer a “Nowhere Man” and his point of view would become well-known throughout his 2018 campaign.
On November 1st, 2018, he stood side-by-side with his opponent for their final debate before the midterm election on November 8th. The face-off, being simulcast on the local PBS affiliates and nationally on C-SPAN, would be one last opportunity for Brindisi to strike a clear contrast with the then-incumbent Congresswoman Claudia Tenney.
“Washington is not solving problems,” Brindisi said in his opening remarks.
Apparently, NY-22 agreed with him. Or at least enough of it did. He would win the seat by a narrow margin, being sworn in on January 3, 2019.
A central tenet of Brindisi’s platform is getting so-called “special interests,” particularly large corporations, out of politics and out of the wallets of politicians.
“Washington is more concerned about their big special interest donors that are bankrolling their campaigns,” Brindisi also said in the opener to his debate with Tenney.
Brindisi’s position on money in politics was used as a weapon against his opponent during their race, as he repeatedly criticized Tenney for taking political contributions from corporate PACs, political action committees funded by individuals who all work for the same company and choose to make donations to political campaigns in the name of their company.
“I don’t take any corporate PAC money in my campaign. I take money from individuals, mostly small-dollar donations from people in this district,” Brindisi stated. “So, when I get to Washington, the only people I have to worry about are the voters of this Congressional district.”
Brindisi argues that the money flowing from corporate PACs and the lobbyists contracted by these companies influences how politicians vote, claiming that Ms. Tenney’s votes during her time in Washington were related to the money her campaign received. Tenney has disputed those claims and has said that Brindisi’s argument comes from “reading off of memorized talking points from Nancy Pelosi,” calling his run for Congress a “cookie-cutter campaign” during the 2018 debate.
“You can tune in to any debate across the nation and hear exactly the same things said,” Tenney says.
Is that true? Are Brindisi’s clean politics claims “B.S.”, as the Tenney campaign would go on to phrase it in many ads during the 2020 election cycle? I wanted to dive deeper into this core principle of Congressman Brindisi’s appeal to voters in NY-22. After all, in that one debate alone, Brindisi brought up the issue of money in politics 33 times. (Yes, I went through the entire hour-long recording and counted how often he mentioned it.)
In our conversation, Brindisi told me he thinks there is a consensus on both sides that something has to be done about all of the money in politics. He also pointed to his vote in favor of H.R. 1, a campaign finance bill that passed the House on a party-line vote in 2019.
But I wanted to get to the heart of the attacks the Congressman has made against his opponents repeatedly on the campaign finance front.
“Is there a direct correlation between taking donations and voting against the constituents’ interests and in the interests of the people who donated to them,” I asked Brindisi, “or is it just a difference of opinion that you are attributing to this issue of money in politics?”
It appeared as though Brindisi was about to answer my question.
“I think there are certain members — ”
But then, he stopped himself and deflected.
“Look, I’m not gonna be bought off by any company whatsoever or anyone in Washington for a donation, I’ll tell you that. I think the larger picture is how do we help put some more transparency, how do we help lower contribution limits, how do we require outside groups to have more disclosure over the money that they are spending in politics; that’s the huge problem that I see right now.”
The Congressman says that the negative influence of outside groups on legislators has stalled parts of his agenda.
“I’ll use an issue that’s very near and dear to my heart and that’s Spectrum Cable,” Brindisi said. “That’s an issue where you see a lot of lobbying and I saw it first hand against legislation that I’ve been pushing to try and put more transparency into our cable consumer laws here in the country. So, there’s a whole team … of lobbyists that work for Spectrum down in Washington … that ‘works’ members on both sides of the aisle to not sign on to legislation that I’m sponsoring.”
Brindisi is referring to the Transparency for Cable Consumers Act, which was the first bill he introduced in Congress based on a 2018 campaign ad in which Brindisi criticized Spectrum for a steep rise in cable bills.
The bill was stuck in committee throughout Brindisi’s term, though he notes that “parts of it” were passed by the House in an infrastructure bill last summer.
Brindisi told radio station WUTQ at the time that the bill wasn’t moving forward in the Senate because the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is “beholden to special interests.”
McConnell, a Republican, rejected the infrastructure package in July, calling it “pure fantasy” and vowing that it would die in the Senate, with POLITICO reporting that House Democrats “did not try to garner Republican involvement in crafting the bill.”
Brindisi has admitted that he has not accomplished all that he wants to on the Spectrum issue, but insists he made progress.
In our interview, the Congressman expressed his conviction that if the influence of these outside groups was diminished, his bill and others would be much easier to pass.
“I think that if we can try and drive the conversation back towards the merits of the bill rather than all this outside influence, I think we could actually get something done,” Brindisi said.
Congressman Brindisi proudly touted the passage of the SPOONSS Act, legislation initially introduced by Ms. Tenney during her time in Congress The bill was stuck in committee throughout his predecessor’s term, but after speaking with local business owners about how the legislation could help the area, Brindisi decided to push for it again, saying his ability to work across the aisle was what made it happen.
“When I took office, I found a Republican colleague of mine from West Virginia who happens to have a company in his district that manufactures dinnerware. So, plates because you’ve got to have plates to go with your forks, spoons, and knives! So I said ‘hey, I have this bill, the SPOONSS Act, I’d love to make it bipartisan, it could help a company in your district, too.’ And he and I introduced this bill and then pushed it into the Defense Authorization bill,” Brindisi said.
According to a Roll Call article from July of 2019, Brindisi and his Republican colleague, Rep. David McKinley, introduced the bill as an amendment to the NDAA.
SPOONSS, signed by President Trump last year, requires that the military buy American steel flatware. The flatware requirement benefits Sherrill Manufacturing, a local company and the last flatware maker in the country.
“We tried for years to get the military to stop buying their flatware from China. We hadn’t been able to get this done until Anthony Brindisi got it passed and signed by President Trump,” said Greg Owens, CEO of Sherrill Manufacturing in a campaign commercial for Brindisi. “Anthony got it done.”
“I try to focus on local issues because that’s what I hear most from people in the district,” Brindisi said. “A bill like the SPOONSS Act is important to me because if Sherrill Manufacturing can hire another 10, 20, 30 people, that’s another person that has a job in the district.”
“Growing up in this area, I love it here. And I want my kids and all the people here to benefit from a good economy and I want people to have good-paying jobs because that will help our area,” said the Utica native.
“I’m glad that he’s been able to retrace my steps and do some of the good work, but now we need a leader to get back in Congress,” Tenney told WIBX’s Bill Keeler after Brindisi got the bill passed. (Brindisi says that what Tenney calls “retracing her steps” is not unusual. “It’s very common for members of Congress from the same district to pick up legislation that was carried by previous members of Congress.”)
Tenney announced that she would run against Brindisi in October of 2019, seeking to reclaim her seat. Brindisi rolled out his re-election campaign in February of 2020 by touting his accomplishments, like the SPOONSS Act.
At the end of a heated campaign, Brindisi watched the results roll in on Election Night.
Ms. Tenney led the incumbent Congressman by over 28,000 votes as early Election Night returns came in, but nearly 70,000 absentee and affidavit ballots had yet to be counted, so the winner was undetermined.
Three months later, the race is still up in the air.
Brindisi received a strong percentage of the mail-in votes, pulling nearly even with Ms. Tenney and bringing her lead down to just over 100 votes. Court proceedings are ongoing to determine whether Tenney’s lead will be certified despite concerns by the Brindisi team of alleged irregularities in the count, particularly from Oneida County.
As her lead has slipped, Ms. Tenney has made unsupported and provably false claims about the vote-counting process.
“Dead people voted in this election,” Tenney said of her race on Fox News, citing a report in the New York Post about three voters in Madison County who died before Election Day after casting an absentee ballot which resulted in their votes being removed from the final count. The Syracuse Post-Standard reports that a Madison County elections official told them the issue referred to by Ms. Tenney is “not a matter of voter fraud” and the statement from Ms. Tenney about “dead people” voting earned her a “Pants-on-Fire” rating from Politifact.
She has also claimed without evidence in a fundraising email to supporters that there was “widespread fraud related to mail-in ballots in [the] presidential election.”
“I think it’s dangerous to have that kind of rhetoric out there and to traffic in these kinds of conspiracy theories,” Rep. Brindisi told me on December 14, “because you’re misleading the public.”
On January 6, supporters of President Trump who believed that the election had been stolen from him stormed the U.S. Capitol Building as President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory was being certified by Congress. Five people have died in connection with the attack, including members of the Capitol police force.
“It’s hard to convey in words how profoundly sad and angry I am today,” Brindisi wrote in a statement on Twitter.
Because the outcome of the race is still unknown, he was not at the Capitol on the day of the riot, having left office when his term expired on January 3. The Congressional seat for the district is presently vacant.
Weeks after our interview for this article, I felt it was appropriate to reach out to Mr. Brindisi about the events at the Capitol and whether the rhetoric of President Trump and his allies, including Former Congresswoman Tenney, bear any responsibility for what occurred.
“The events of January 6th were a violent insurrection and attack on our democracy by domestic terrorists who were hell-bent on preventing the peaceful transition of power in our nation,” Brindisi said in an email response to my question. “The President and his enablers bear some responsibility for fueling the flames of division and, in the President’s case, lighting the match by urging the crowd of rioters to march on the Capitol and show strength. Words matter and there is no doubt that anyone, my opponent included, who screamed ‘stop the steal’ or spent time undermining the integrity of our election should take a long look at themselves in the mirror. We need to heal as a nation and heal our politics. I cannot speak for my opponent’s thoughts on that violent day or the rhetoric and conspiracy theories leading up to it, but I hope we can all agree that on January 20th, Joe Biden will be rightfully and duly sworn in as President of the United States.”
Ms. Tenney released a statement on Twitter on January 6th condemning the violence and calling the behavior “reprehensible,” though she did not address in the tweet whether President Trump’s words played a role in the incident.
The Tenney campaign has not responded to multiple requests I have made to interview Ms. Tenney.
Sitting back and listening to my interview from December with then-Congressman Anthony Brindisi nearly a month later and in the context of this volatile moment in our nation’s history, one of his comments stuck out to me above all the others.
I asked him if the divisive nature of the political landscape and the harsh tone of his two races would compel him to discourage young people from getting involved in politics.
He smiled.
And then, without hesitation, he said this:
“It’s precisely why I would encourage a young person of good character to get into politics and public service because we need good people to get into politics.”
Anthony Brindisi served as the U.S. House Representative for New York’s 22nd Congressional District from 2019–2021 and is presently the Democratic candidate for the seat. The race is still too close to call three months after the Nov. 3 election. Brindisi announced last month that he will be running again in 2022 regardless of this race’s outcome.
