AOC & Rep. Ryan pack the Wood

By Zander Frost, Chronicle Chief Operating Officer

Democrat Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx and Pat Ryan of Kingston conducted a quietly promoted “town hall” Sunday evening at the Wood Theater in downtown Glens Falls.

Posted online as “RSVP only,” the location was revealed after guests signed up. The Chronicle learned of the event Saturday by chance. We signed up but did not receive an email. We gleaned the location from a subsequent media release.

The 299-seat theater was packed, with more people in an overflow room.

Guests entered around 6 p.m., and at around 6:30 local musician James Mullen played acoustic guitar. Representatives Ocasio-Cortez and Ryan emerged at around 7 and stayed to 9 p.m.

Matt Castelli, who lost to Congresswoman Elise Stefanik four years ago, introduced Representatives Ocasio-Cortez and Ryan as “my friends.”

The Democrats spoke extensively about “flipping” the 21st district seat — Rep. Stefanik is not seeking reelection — but they never mentioned the two most prominent Democratic hopefuls Blake Gendebien or Dylan Hewitt, who were not present.

The Representatives began with statements, then took questions from an enthusiastic audience.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said they’d started the day in the Bronx and then did “deep canvassing” in Kingston “just knocking on people’s doors, regardless of their voter registration.”

She said she hoped to “create a space of vulnerability” and told a story about not having health insurance when first running for Congress.

“I cried because I could not afford a blood test,” she said. “I had to launch a canvas, and people were walking around with clipboards with palm cards with my face on it…and I had to go to a student clinic at eight o’clock in the morning and just wait four hours in the hope that someone would see me.”

West Point graduate Rep. Ryan said the “last week, for me, has been very emotional, on a personal level and a political level too.”

He said he served two deployments to in the Army in Iraq, and had to write a letter to his parents in case he was killed.

Referring to casualties in the fighting that began on Feb. 26, he said, “I know that these, now seven Americans…that made that ultimate sacrifice in an illegal, ill-conceived war in Iran…that they probably wrote something similar.”

“The one promise I made myself is I will not allow another generation of young, idealistic and proud Americans get sent to a regime change war anywhere, and certainly in the Middle East again.”

The first question came from Melissa Seale, who introduced herself as a Democratic State Senate candidate (vs. Dan Stec) and said she owns a children’s psychiatric clinic in Glens Falls. She asked about changes to the health care industry that she said made it harder to get children treatment.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez praised Ms. Seale for running, calling it selfless.

“I think sometimes there’s a negative stigma about running for office,” she said. “As though it is like a self-driven thing, but especially in a place like this, to raise your hand in an environment like now, at a time like now is incredibly selfless.”

AOC went on to blame “Republicans and their big, ugly bill, they passed a trillion dollars in health care cuts across the country, and there is no form of health care that is not touched or affected by these cuts… They wanted to issue this statement as though ‘we’re just going after these 30 year-old men on Medicaid playing video games in their basement.’”

“First of all, I think everyone should have health care,” she said.

She said she’s for extending ACA [Affordable Care Act] subsidies and she’s a “very vocal advocate for Medicare-for-all.”

Rep. Ryan said that in his district, United Healthcare is “coming in and literally buying everything up” like “small independent physician practices, our community pharmacies.”

He said he’s working to “break that up.”

The next question came from a woman who said she was from Lewis County.

“I have family who are Trump supporters,” she said. ”If you live around here, we are all met with the same challenges every day. How do we reconcile all of these differences within our families.”

She said, “It always comes down to this for me, they tell me they hear it on Fox News, and I find it unbelievable that there is not a mechanism in place in our government that can hold the media to a standard of facts and truth.”

Rep. Ryan called for “reassertion” of the Fairness Doctrine, “which carried us through decades of — you actually had to have time restrictions on balanced presentation of facts.”

“This is not competition,” he said. “This is not free at all. We’re not free when Murdoch and all them are making billions and billions and we’re being, our communities are being fed lies while they’re dividing us.”

Another questioner said he was a veteran who worked for the Watervliet Arsenal and “left due to DOGE cuts.”

He said, “It was tough just having essentially more and more responsibilities thrown on our shoulders every day as people took the initial wave of the DOGE offers. Every day, we’re having to justify our existence through those emails. I’m sure everybody heard ‘about what we did last week.’”

He said he resigned. “I work with the state government now in New York, and things have been a lot better there.”

Rep. Ryan called the impact of DOGE a “betrayal.”

“There’s nothing that makes me more pissed off than to hear the disregard for that. For you, for everybody you were serving and supporting, for your family and what that put you through.”

Rep. AOC concluded the night saying, “So often we’ve heard all of this rhetoric that tries to turn upstate against downstate, rural versus City, and it’s all nonsense.”

More re ‘Town Hall’

Chronicle Managing Editor Cathy DeDe adds: The audience was seemingly all on the same page, warm to the Democrats’ messages. It was standing room only, all seats filled and more people along the side and in the inner lobby of the theater, with another 100+ seated the cabaret overflow space, watching on screen.

Attendee John Peck asked: “Did you get asked, or did you just decide to come here?”
AOC: “Oh, we just decided.”

Mr. Peck: “That’s what I thought. You like going to red districts. I’m going to let Elise (Stefanik) know what a real town hall looks like.”

Mr. Castelli said, “For the better part of the last decade or so, your voice has been silenced in Washington, D.C. Your representative hasn’t shown up. She hasn’t done town halls. She’s been more invested with her own career, but her story’s end is coming.” The audience applauded.

“But she’s still absent, and you still deserve better.”

Mr. Castelli said, rather than concerns of North Country families, “What do you think the President and this administration are focused on tonight? Bombs. Billionaires. Ballrooms. I don’t know anyone that voted for that.”

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said, “It’s easy to get our haunches up. There’s a lot to be angry about in this moment. Our health care is being taken away from us. Our wages are not growing. Our rents and mortgages are spiking. We can’t afford a damn thing that we could have afforded 10, 20, 30 years ago.

“For the first time in our country’s history, young people have a worse projected quality of life than the generation above them….In a time of so much division, we’re actually here to create a space of vulnerability….

“Connecting with one another in that way, that’s also how we’re going to flip this seat in November.

“They’re going to call us every name in the book for coming out here because they want to keep us from coming here. But we’re not going to allow that hostility to keep us from moving forward. We’re going to show that a politics of kindness and care and compassion and ferocity in fighting for what’s right can win.”

Rep. Ryan said, rather than core issues that “rile” their base, they aim to focus on “unifying” issues that “99% of people are concerned about…something we’re both trying to push more within our own party. Please hold us accountable for that.”

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