By Laura Sanicola
In the midst of an impassioned election night, Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout fell to her Republican opponent John Faso in her bid for Congress in New York’s 19th district. Teachout received 46 percent of the votes while her candidate received 54 percent.
Teachout ran a promising Congressional campaign, receiving an October endorsement from former president Barack Obama.
“I’m proud to endorse Zephyr Teachout for the United States House of Representatives,” Obama said in a statement. “In Congress, Zephyr will be the kind of reform-minded leader we need to build on all of the progress we’ve made over the last eight years to create a stronger, fairer country for our children. Zephyr is an independent fighter for working families and will help create an economy that works for everyone in this district…”
This comes as blow for the Democratic candidate, who ran for governor in 2014 against the incumbent Andrew Cuomo. Though Teachout lost, she stole one-third of the vote, forcing Cuomo to accept a mere 54 percent of the popular vote.
In the latest poll before election night, Faso held a six-point lead over Teachout in 19th Congressional District race, which was the largest margin either candidate led by in the New York Race. Faso led 48-42, according to a Time Warner Cable News/Siena College poll of likely district voters on Sunday morning.
New York’s 19th Congressional District spans across 11 counties including the Hudson Valley and Catskills. It is known as a battleground district and unsuccessfully flipped from Republican to Democrat in this race.
Teachout ran her campaign with a wealth of assistance from Bernie Sanders supporters. She ran her platform in part on ending corporate influence over government and is pro-small business and opposed Citizens United — Supreme Court Justice Stevens cited her legal essay when dissenting the court case in 2012. She has routinely called out Faso on having wealthy Wall Street backers.
Republican John Faso was formerly in the State Assembly and ran on a platform of lowering taxes.
She moved to Dutchess County from Brooklyn in early 2015, and announced she was running the 19th District’s empty congressional seat earlier next year.
“I seriously did not expect this to happen,” she told the Washington Post at the time.
Teachout won her primary easily, raking in thousands more votes than her opponent, Will Yandik. Her race against Faso, however, was closer.
Teachout is a Fordham Law professor, as well as a visiting assistant law professor at Duke University, a lecturer at University of Vermont, and a non-resident fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.
