Ditto to the calls for you to vet an area by talking to actual people on the streets & of the community. Academics, and I'm one myself, like to look on from afar. These folk do alot of wishful hoping upstaters are abandoning traditional conservative principles. My sense is, thankfully, they are not. And please, if you must use quotes from those remote upstate fortresses of liberalism, at least spell them correctly. It is Plattsburgh and Skidmore.

Hoffman is like upstate NY, thankfully. People respond to someone who gets what they want, despite the pathetic state Republican organization trying to make the 23rd into some kind of Rockefeller-Republican lite place. I'm surprised the Republican candidate even lives in the district (maybe a vacation home?) NJ is different. I grew up there and am glad to be gone--even if it is into the mess that is NYS Republican politics.