Why Upstate New Yorkers Have Turned on Hillary Clinton

"In more fringe circles in the area, voters have called for New York to divide into two autonomous regions, with the Southern Tier breaking off into a new state called New Amsterdam. But while the idea isn't exactly popular—Bob Carangelo's father, also named Bob, told me "those people are chasing a dream"—it's a visceral example of a more widespread feeling that people in New York live in two different states. Candidates who resonate with this upstate audience have been able to tap into that white, working-class angst that is so prevalent here, assailing trade deals and job-outsourcing, and promising that Washington, or Albany, will no longer ignore their economic and social fears.

In 2016, several candidates have managed to tap into these feelings. "We have Cruz people, we have Bernie people, we have Trump people," said John Bergener, chair of the Divide NYS caucus, one of the upstate secessionist groups. But "come to think of it," he added, "there's no Clinton people."

Clinton's failure to connect here is notable—and a relatively recent development in her years as in New York politics. During her 2000 race for the state's open US Senate seat, Clinton beat her opponent by 10 percentage points in part by flipping the state's white, working-class vote from red to blue. She managed a similar feat against Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, when she dominated upstate voters in New York's primary.

But In 2016, although Clinton leads New York Democratic polls by a wide margin, she has reportedly struggled to maintain the support she once had upstate, in part because she faces an opponent, Sanders, who has made trade policy a major talking point of his campaign.

Some of the animosity toward Clinton seems to stem from a dislike of Cuomo, a staunch backer of the former New York Senator's White House campaign. In the minds of many of the voters I spoke to him in Binghamton this weekend, Cuomo and Clinton are interchangeable, representing the same type of backroom politics and compromises that have continued to hurt Binghamton."


http://www.vice.com/read/why-upstate-new-yorkers-hate-hillary-clinton