Wading through scores of potential voters in 90-degree heat at the Fourth of July festival in Oneonta, it took Antonio Delgado over an hour just to make it 50 yards past the gate. As a rookie campaigner running for Congress, perhaps it would have made more sense for the 41-year-old Schenectady native to have made a quick stump speech before heading off to the next event. It was just one of several campaign stops that day. But Delgado was in no rush.

Antonio Delgado had always felt that “education was the great equalizer”, a reality he experienced while growing up in Schenectady, New York. He was born into a working class family, though he managed to move up through Oxford University and Harvard Law School.  After this, he moved to Los Angeles to begin a music company, focusing on hip hop culture and how it can bring people together.

Congressional hopeful Antonio Delgado leaned against a buffet table as he responded to questions, inquiries and half-thoughts of a gaggle of senior-skewed potential supporters huddled around him in a wing of the Apollo Saugerties Diner. It was the third stop on Delgado’s “diner tour” that had already brought the Democratic candidate for New York’s 19th congressional district to Taghkanic in Columbia County and Monticello in Sullivan County the day before.