Republican Alex Portelli on His Insurgent Run for Congress

By ERIC SANTOMAURO-STENZEL
CHERRY VALLEY

Alexander Portelli may have the odds against him, but he’s still giving it a shot.

The 36-year-old Cherry Valley resident has for the past several months been running an outsider campaign for the Republican nomination in the NY-19 Congressional District. Portelli’s so far largely uncovered-by-the-media campaign is in an uphill race against state Senator Peter Oberacker, who has already secured the support of President Donald Trump and many other Republican elected and party officials both locally and nationally. The winner will face incumbent Democratic Representative Josh Riley.

A self-styled “traditional Republican” with inspirations of Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge, Portelli has run a campaign on social media with AI graphics and at front doors with ideas far outside the political mainstream. The former Albany restaurant owner and brief mayoral candidate there said he has spent recent years real estate flipping and logging. He also said he spent several years backpacking across more than 50 countries, showing him “what works in certain places,” and “what policies definitely do not work.”

Portelli hopes to drastically decrease the size of the federal government, in part by abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and federal income tax for those earning below a million dollars a year. Core campaign promises have also included ending all foreign aid provided by the United States to other countries, and to “kick out NYSEG and National Grid,” as the campaign’s black lawn signs state.

“None of these people running are talking about anything meaningful,” Portelli, who said he was running for a better future for his son, told AllOtsego. “They’re afraid to take a position on a single issue,” he said, adding that despite the government spending trillions of dollars, people are struggling. “I believe that we need to cut federal spending back to just rewind and then use that to give tax repeals to working and middle-class Americans.”

To balance the federal budget, for which a majority of revenue currently comes from income taxes, Portelli said he wants to make cuts “across the board.” He said that would include abolishing recently created departments and favoring a “1990s size of federal government.”

He also aims to shut down many of the U.S.’s overseas military bases.

Asked about the Trump administration’s military operations in Venezuela and the war with Iran, Portelli said, “You can’t fix somebody else’s roof when your own roof is leaking.”

On immigration, Portelli said he wants a “secure border” and that “there has to be a way to remove” individuals in the country illegally. “I think that we could deescalate things a bit,” he added, citing recent events in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “But at the same time, I also think we can make visas even easier in certain aspects,” he said, specifying farm labor.

To address electricity costs, Portelli wants production and ownership to be “more localized,” including barring foreign ownership of utility companies. (NYSEG is owned by Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spanish company Iberdrola.) He expressed openness to both private and public energy production and distribution, but “the ideal goal would be local municipalities handling utilities.” He also said he would support making serving on the New York Power Authority’s board an elected position. Portelli said there may be limits to what he can do federally.

In 2013, when he was 23, Portelli attempted a run for mayor of Albany on the Libertarian Party line. As reported by the “Albany Times Union” at the time, he ended his “quixotic” campaign shortly before the local Republican Party was expected to challenge his ballot petition signatures. He endorsed his mother, Theresa Portelli, as a write-in Green Party candidate.

“I’m careful to make sure that we make the ballot this time before I’m kind of, you know, pounding my chest about it,” Portelli told AllOtsego prior to the filing deadline. “But I believe we have tons of grassroots support,” he said, “so I think that we can make the ballot.”

The Portelli campaign filed 264 pages of ballot petition signatures with the New York State Board of Elections on April 6, the board’s records show. Full documents were not available by press time. Portelli told AllOtsego he filed around 1,620 signatures, approximately 1,100 of which he collected himself in his travels across the district. If he maintains more than 1,250 valid signatures after any potential challenges, he will appear on the ballot.

That would perturb Republicans who see Portelli’s candidacy as throwing a wrench into what they believe could be a high value chance for Oberacker to flip a Democratic seat in a tightly contested House of Representatives. A primary could direct attention and money away from November, leading to battling between Republicans rather than against Democrats.

Portelli, who has called for a debate between all three candidates, rejects that position.

“That’s what the primary is. This is what democracy is supposed to be about.”

While Portelli has been overlooked or at times derided by some party leaders, he boasts a few thousand more Facebook followers than Oberacker’s campaign. He said he is undeterred by President Trump’s support for Oberacker.

“That’s the president’s choice. But I would like to put the actual choice to the Republican Party. Let them decide, with all respect,” Portelli said.

The Oberacker campaign did not return requests for comment on Portelli’s candidacy.