The paper my father wrote for was in Watertown, NY, on the St. Lawrence Seaway. So, he had to know the whole NY delegation in the House as well as the two Senators and the Governor. I got to meet some of these people. Upstate New York is DEFINITELY not New York City.
The sheer lack of intellectual capacity and ignorance of some of the Republican Representatives from New York State was astounding. I once found myself explaining to one of them, as a former resident of Spain, why it was that in 1977 Spain, the Spanish Communist Party, though now again legal, represented no danger whatsoever, and would never get anywhere in national elections. Furthermore, the Spanish "Socialists" were no such thing, but really Social Democrats, more like the German Social Democrats. Felipe González (PSOE head) was our friend. They were far more pragmatic than the first wave of fanatics that Mitterand brought in when he won in France in 1981. The Republican rep. actually said he would change a few of his planned votes because of what I told him (Carter and Tip O'Neill never did thank me, and I never followed up anyway).
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