Anthony Constantino is not the candidate local Republican Party officials would have picked in New York’s far-upstate 21st District. The owner of the merch-production company Sticker Mule loves Donald Trump — a prerequisite for the House GOP today — but is untested on the campaign trail. Four years ago, Constantino made his pro debut as a welterweight boxer in Mexico City, winning his first fight after entering the sport at the age of 40. “There’s a criticism of people successful in the business world that they get lucky, and there’s more admiration for boxers,” he tells me. “So I was like, Well, if I can be good at this too, maybe it’s not luck.” He’s not as polished as most elder millennials running for Congress, speaking hurriedly and favoring tight ripped jeans in many of his campaign videos. He says that when Roger Stone, an early and unofficial adviser, first saw them, he asked, “Are you trying to fucking lose?”
“It’s the biggest ongoing fight that we have,” Stone tells me. “I just want him to dress like a congressman.”
Another indicator of Constantino’s outsider status is the unusual company he keeps. Two weeks before the primary, I spoke with Constantino at a golf-course country club he rented out about ten miles south of Lake George. We peeled away from the small crowd to talk in an empty ballroom — followed by a campaign volunteer wearing black Asics with striped black socks, camo shorts, a black sleeveless compression shirt, and a brown-and-beige fedora who caught the interview on-camera. That day, I also ran into Sticker Mule’s marketing guru, a man who goes by Greatness. He is easy to find. Greatness usually wears a Sticker Mule gold chain and has two tattoos on his face that say “Greatness.”
Over the past few months, Greatness has been promoting Sticker Mule with a viral campaign in which he goes to cities across the country, rubs baby oil all over a watermelon, and then throws it in the air for a contestant to catch. If they don’t drop it, they get a few hundred dollars. “I’m in the hood near you throwing watermelons!” he raps in a song about the challenge. Greatness, who is from Tampa, has been promoting the Constantino campaign in videos online. But he says he is in upstate New York in an unofficial capacity to give him “positive encouragement as a friend.”
Constantino and Greatness met on Instagram and first linked last year to record a rap album in Florida called Thank You President Trump. It was recorded when Zohran Mamdani was running for New York City mayor, and they saw an opportunity for a topical diss track. “Mamdani is running in an urban community where people listen to rap,” Constantino says, hoping that he could educate “people about those topics.” Throughout the song, which made it onto WorldstarHipHop, he accuses the city’s first Muslim mayor of being a terrorist: “Terrorists aren’t flying planes into buildings anymore, they’re coming at us different.”
The local GOP might not love these extracurriculars from a candidate running in the district to replace Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican from 2021 until 2025, who announced she would not seek reelection in the +24 red seat. But they aren’t making the election-defining endorsements in the party today. President Donald Trump is. So far this year, every one of his 155 House endorsements have won their primary. And thanks to Constantino’s loud support of the president, he won Trump’s co-sign in April.
Constantino wasn’t all that focused on politics until the president was shot in the ear on July 13, 2024. Two days later, he sent out an email to Sticker Mule customers: “People are terrified to admit they support Trump. I’ve been scared myself. Americans shouldn’t live in fear. I support Trump … BTW, this week, get 1 shirt for $4 (normally $19).” Outing himself as a Republican infuriated many Sticker Mule customers, some of whom boycotted Constantino’s company for backing Trump. That fall, he paid $90,000 for the 100-foot “Vote for Trump” sign on top of his factory in the upstate town of Amsterdam. The local mayor tried and failed to block Constantino from putting up the sign, which is visible from the nearby highway, a battle that attracted national attention.
During the flurry of press, Constantino DM’d Stone on X for advice. “He’s got an enormous amount of energy, he’s got an incredible sense of honor,” says the longtime and controversial GOP operative. Stone then invited Constantino to his home in Fort Lauderdale, where they discussed the possibility of a congressional run. Stone says he advocated “directly” with President Trump for an endorsement. “It was based largely on the fact that the president liked that Anthony put the sign on top of his factory,” he says. Constantino and Trump met in Florida on April 12; ten days later, he earned the Trump endorsement. “HE IS A GREAT GUY WHO WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN,” the president wrote on Truth Social. In June, Trump even posted one of Constantino’s rap videos made with Greatness, an AI fantasia of the president animated as Naruto and traveling the world, where everybody loves Donald Trump.
If Constantino represents the Trump Republican model — with a business background and a wild digital footprint — his opponent in the race, Robert Smullen, is from a more traditional mold. Smullen has served in the State Assembly since 2019 and did three combat tours in Afghanistan after 9/11. Smullen has the endorsement of the New York State Troopers, the Teamsters, the NRA, and the Chamber of Commerce. He is the candidate that the GOP Establishment is pulling for, with endorsements from the Republican committees of all 15 counties spanning the 21st District. He has the high-and-tight haircut of a marine, and for our interview, the traditional candidate chose a traditional setting: a red-boothed silver diner not far from his office in the New York State Capitol. He speaks often of being a “steward leader” and tells me that this race is “about the voice, the values that we take to Washington, D.C.”
Smullen, 57, had just recorded a solo interview with an Albany TV channel that was originally scheduled to be a debate with Constantino. Constantino declined the offer after the first and only debate in late May, in which the two did not shake hands. Primary battles can get contentious when candidates share similar opinions: Both Constantino and Smullen support the president, his $1.8 billion weaponization fund, and a hard-line immigration agenda backed by ICE crackdowns. The acrimonious nature of this race in the beautiful 21st — home to the Adirondack Park, thousands of pristine lakes, and nearly a third of the state’s total land mass — has stemmed not from policy disputes but deeply personal ones.
“He’s a pathological liar; his whole race is based on lies,” says Constantino. He claims Smullen has been deceiving voters on his support of Trump (unwavering), his taxes (fully paid), and selling anti-Trump and pro-choice stickers made by his company (he doesn’t choose what merch people sell).
“I had very kind feelings toward him for a very long time,” Constantino says. But that changed when Smullen challenged him for the House seat. In January, Constantino said in a video that “Robert Smullen is a fucking coward” for not endorsing the president in 2024. (Smullen says he has endorsed Trump in all his presidential races and was present at both inaugurations.) In late May, as the two were preparing to debate on the CBS affiliate in Albany, Constantino texted him: “You are a truly evil person that I must protect America from.” The debate itself was fairly cordial: The two agreed on most policies, and Constantino thanked Smullen for his service. But afterward, Smullen refused to shake his opponent’s hand.
“He called me a fucking coward — is that somebody’s hand you’re gonna shake?” Smullen asks me.
The other reason Smullen did not shake his opponent’s hand is related to posts on Facebook from Constantino’s allies concerning Smullen’s son, AJ. In 2024, the 14-year-old was killed in a suburb of Schenectady. “He was hit by a car, playing with his friends,” Smullen says. “He said that I was using my, quote, dead son as a political prop. That’s completely beyond the pale. So I’m standing up to him. I’m standing up to a bully in ripped skinny jeans.”
“He didn’t shake my hand because I spoke ill of his son, which, I never even spoke of his son,” says Constantino. “But I mean, how bad, how low can you get as a human being to just make up so many bizarre lies?”
Smullen insists that his opponent is “mentally unfit” for public service, citing past allegations about Constantino. Politico reported in March that a staffer hired to collect signatures was arrested in 2014 for forging signatures for a judge race in the Glen Falls area. In May, the Albany Times-Union reported that the Constantino campaign hired an accused murderer out on bail for a low-level position. (The campaign says the staffers were dismissed when they found out.) The current comms person for both Sticker Mule and the campaign was charged in 2020 for grand larceny for allegedly stealing $3,000 from the Amsterdam Cal Ripken Baseball League, of which he served as president; he later pleaded to petit larceny, a misdemeanor. (When Smullen brought up the allegations surrounding his son and the baseball theft, Constantino threatened to sue him for defamation.) There is also a 2015 lawsuit from a former Sticker Mule employee who claims she reported her supervisor’s constant sexual harassment. When Constantino was informed of the alleged behavior, he said the offender was just a “horny bastard,” per the suit. After reporting the behavior, the employee claims she was laid off. The case was eventually settled out of court.
With years worth of promo videos recorded for Sticker Mule, there may be some content that turns off conservative voters. Last summer, Constantino recorded one with Ricky Berwick, an influencer with a rare connective tissue disorder who uses a wheelchair. Berwick is in the factory, inspecting a printing of orange stickers they called “R-word passes” that say “I have the permission to say ‘Retard.’” Constantino tells Berwick that his idea is “retarted.”
“You can’t say that!” Berwick says.
“Yes, I can, you gave me the pass,” Constantino replies, pulling the orange sticker from his pocket like an ace up his sleeve.
One of the strangest aspects of this race is that, one week out, it’s very difficult to know who is going to win — the warrior-lawmaker recovering from a family tragedy or the rapping boxer with the Trump endorsement printing “R-word pass” stickers. Both candidates say that their internal polling shows them winning, and no independent polls have been issued in the 21st. For what it’s worth, Kalshi and Polymarket have roughly four-to-one odds in favor of Constantino. But there is a clear spending advantage. FEC filings show that Smullen has loaned himself $1 million for the race, plus another $300,000 brought in from fundraising. Constantino, meanwhile, has loaned himself $10 million — a testament to how much money his upstate sticker empire brings in. Another testament: Constantino’s watch, a Cartier, costs about the same as Smullen’s car, a Ford Focus he told me he purchased on a lease buyout.
There is a problem for the GOP in this primary no matter who wins on Tuesday. New York is one of the few states that allow a politician to accept the nomination of more than one party, and Constantino and Smullen could both appear on the ballot in November under the Taxpayer Rights Party and the Conservative Party line. Smullen says he is confident he will win; Constantino says he is confident Smullen will drop out of the general when he loses. If both candidates stay in, there is the possibility of a MAGA vote-split in the deep-red district, creating a potential path to victory for a Democrat. It’s not just a hypothetical: A Democrat won the district in a similar scenario in 2009.
In the national press, Constantino is gaining a reputation as an unorthodox politician who would immediately become a main character in Congress. But in his home district, he has a reputation as something of a local Rockefeller. Sticker Mule employs around 1,000 people in Amsterdam, a rust-belt city on the Mohawk River that saw its best days back when the Erie Canal was an economic powerhouse. Down the road from his factory, he operates a $29-per-month gym, Mule Fitness, at what he says is a loss. He has bought a local MMA league called Cage Wars — offering free admission — and donated $100,000 to his city to fix up the park behind his gym. At a nearby Catholic grade school, there is a scholarship in his name; the Albany Times-Union reports that he has already pledged $80,000 per year for 16 students in elementary school and will pay their way through eighth grade. The school says it is accepting applications for a total of 100 Constantino-funded scholarships with half of those going to Sticker Mule employees. He has also been quite generous to the president, placing the enormous “Vote for Trump” sign on his factory and donating a bronze statue of the president to the Trump International Golf Course in Florida. He once proposed plans to the city of Amsterdam to build a Trump theme park on his property, a $1 million proposal that ran into some zoning issues.
During our meeting at the golf course, his generosity was on full display for his few dozen supporters in attendance. There was a carving station of prime rib, chafing dishes of penne alla vodka, tortellini Alfredo, garlic-butter steamed clams, eggplant Parm, chicken picatta, salmon in Champagne cream sauce, rice pilaf, roasted potatoes, roasted vegetables, a table full of Champagne, and, for good measure, a couple hours of an open bar. Standing over a cocktail table draped in white cloth, Constantino told me he likes to “give back.” The event that day was to announce that he would give his $174,000 congressional salary to a veteran in his district wounded in Iraq — even if he did not win.
“Time is finite,” he says. “It’s like one of my principles in life, okay? You want to use it in the best way possible, and it’s the best use of my time to make the world a better place.” Or at least a better place for anyone not named Smullen.
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