New York: Twenty First District

Rep. Michael McNulty (D)

Michael McNulty (D) Elected 1988, 10th term up
Born:	09-16-1947, Troy
Home:	Green Island
Education:	Holy Cross Col., B.A. 1969
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Nancy Ann)
Elected  Office:	Green Island Town Supervisor, 1969–77; Green Island Mayor, 1977–82; NY Assembly, 1982–88.
DC Office	2210 RHOB, 20515 202-225-5076 Fax: 202-225-5077 Website: www.house.gov/mcnulty
State Offices	Albany:518-465-0700; Amsterdam:518-843-3400; Johnstown:518-762-3568; Schenectady:518-374-4547; Troy:518-271-0822;
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Albany, as readers of its novelist laureate William Kennedy know, is within living memory an antique city. Its solid rowhouses show its 19th century prosperity; its once teeming lumberyards and railroad car shops, old restaurants and hotels, have the patina of age and the accumulated grime of decades of coal smoke burned during six-month-long winters. Its history goes back to 1624, when the Dutch built Fort Orange on the banks of the Hudson so seagoing ships could dock at the edge of the great gloomy forests near the confluence of the Hudson and the Mohawk—the natural crossroads of Upstate New York even before the building of the Erie Canal and the New York Central Railroad. This was one of America’s early industrial centers. Troy, a few miles upriver, was a steel town rivaling Pittsburgh in the 1840s, and later the leading producer of detachable collars; Cohoes, at the junction of the Hudson and the Mohawk, became a leading textile producer; Schenectady, a few miles up the Mohawk, was the site of Charles Steinmetz’s fabled General Electric laboratories (with help from Thomas Edison) and long remained a GE town. Albany was one of America’s biggest lumber towns as well as the state capital.

Albany, with a state capitol completed in 1899 after 32 years, for the then-staggering sum of $25 million, has one of the nation’s most famed Democratic political machines, dating back to 1921, when Daniel O’Connell and his brothers and local aristocrat Edwin Corning took control of City Hall. They never really relinquished it: O’Connell died in 1977 at age 91, still boss after 56 years, and his early partner’s son, Erastus Corning II, was mayor from 1942 until his death in 1983. The machine was sustained by legions of city and county employees, by a certain creativity when it came to counting votes, and by the raffish atmosphere that was found in the speakeasies of so many cities during Prohibition and lingered in Albany for decades after: read Kennedy and you are there. Curiously, the machine made possible the transformation of antique Albany into the shinier metropolis it is today. Mayor Corning and Nelson Rockefeller collaborated on a smorgasbord of civic-improvement projects: the Empire State Plaza with 11,000 employees in 10 government buildings on 98 acres; the distinctive, ovoid performing arts center known as the Egg; expressways; and a renovated Union Station.

The 21st Congressional District of New York includes most of the Albany metro area: all of Albany County, Schenectady County (including Schenectady, where the industrial base has faded and the population has dropped by one-third from its 1950 level of 92,000), Montgomery County (including Amsterdam, a carpet-making town until the mills moved south in 1955), and rural Schoharie County; parts of Rensselaer (including the gentrified Troy, with its bustling antique shops), Fulton and Saratoga Counties. Times have been tough here: Albany lost 5% of its population during the 1990s, Schenectady 6% and Troy 9%. While the outer counties lean modestly Republican, the Democratic machine vote in Albany makes this a comfortably Democratic district. Even Democrat Carl McCall, who lost every other county in the state outside New York City, beat incumbent Governor George Pataki in Albany County in 2002. Eliot Spitzer and Hillary Rodham Clinton each took more than 70% of the vote there in 2006.

The congressman from the 21st District is Michael McNulty, a Democrat first elected in 1988. McNulty is giving up the seat after 10 terms, however. He announced in October 2007 that he would seek reelection.

McNulty’s roots in Albany politics go back to his grandfather, who served as Albany County sheriff; his father was mayor of the industrial suburb of Green Island for 30 years (not consecutively) until he retired in 2002, when he was succeeded by Michael’s sister, Ellen McNulty-Ryan. Michael McNulty was first elected to office in 1969, at 22, and served 13 years as town supervisor and mayor in Green Island; while also serving as an insurance broker, he was elected to the Assembly in 1982, at 35. The opening in Congress came without much warning. In 1988, four days after the July filing deadline and on the last day for withdrawal, 30-year incumbent Democrat Samuel Stratton announced he was retiring for health reasons, giving the Democratic machine a chance to name a replacement, who turned out to be McNulty. He won the general by 62%-38% against a venture capital specialist who attacked him for having been chosen by party bosses. Since then, he has had no trouble in general elections.

McNulty’s voting record is usually like that of an old-style ethnic Democrat: liberal on economics, less so on foreign and cultural issues. He is one of the few New York Democrats endorsed by the Conservative Party. He opposes abortion and voted for the amendment allowing penalties for flag desecration. But he supported campaign finance regulation, even though some abortion foes opposed it. He strongly opposed welfare reform and wants to increase payments to unemployed adults, legal immigrants and families with high shelter costs. On Ways and Means, where he usually has operated independently of both parties, he became chairman in 2007 of the Social Security subcommittee; he has strongly opposed President Bush’s plan for private accounts, and early expectations were that this would not be a busy assignment.

McNulty keeps a close eye on the interests of Watervliet Arsenal, known as “America’s Cannon Factory” for its manufacture of tank and artillery cannons and home to the Army’s Benet Laboratories, a research, development and engineering facility. On Iraq, after initially voting to authorize the use of force, he voiced regret that his decision was based on false information; in January 2007, he joined local activists protesting the increase in American troops.

In 1996 he had primary opposition on the left from Lee Wasserman, head of Environmental Advocates, a statewide lobbying firm, and won by only 57%-43%. Since then, McNulty seems to have solidified his base. In 2006, he actively backed Kirsten Gillibrand’s campaign in the neighboring 20th District. He has suffered from post-polio syndrome, and his declining energy level and his perennially low profile spurred retirement rumors.

Committees

• Ways & Means (7th of 24 D)
  Social Security (Chmn.); Income Security & Family Support.

Presidential Vote

District Demographics (More Info)

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: D + 9
• Area size: 1,962 square miles
• Urban Population: 84.3%
• Rural Population: 15.7%
• Population 2000: 654,361
• Population 2005 (est): 663,797
• Median Income: $40,254
• Poverty Status: 11.2%
• Military Veterans: 13.1%
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 85.5% White; 7.5% Black; 2.1% Asian; 0.2% Native Am.; 0.0% Hawaiian; 1.3% Two+ races; 0.2% Other; 3.2% Hispanic Origin;
• Ancestry: 15.0% Irish%; 12.4% Italian%; 11.8% German%;
• Occupation: Blue collar 18.9%; White collar 66.0%; Gray collar 15.0%;