UTICA, NEW YORK — Running for Congress as a Republican incumbent in 2018 is not an easy task. Running for Congress as a Republican in upstate New York in 2018 is, if anything, even more complicated.
New York as a whole is staunchly Democratic, but traveling north, and west, of New York City, the state looks and sounds much more like the Midwest. There are bluer college towns and smaller cities scattered across a half-dozen large congressional districts, as well as large swaths...