New Paltz

There's a Democrat with Vermont ties who started a political firestorm in New York.

That candidate talks about breaking up big banks, stamping out corruption in Washington and the need to empower citizens.

The Democrat's name is Zephyr Teachout.

Before Bernie Sanders stole the hearts of so many New York progressives in 2016, there was Teachout, 44, a Vermonter by birth who challenged incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014. While she did not win in the Democratic primary, she did help move Cuomo to the left for the start of his second term in office.

But as Sanders begins to recede from the presidential stage, Teachout is re-emerging as a Democratic political contender — though on a smaller scale this time around. Teachout, who moved upstate to Dutchess County from Brooklyn, is challenging Will Yandik in a primary for the Democratic nomination in the 19th Congressional District race, which opened up in 2015 when Rep. Chris Gibson, a Republican, announced that he would not seek re-election.

As in 2014, Teachout's bright demeanor contrasts with Sanders' Brooklyn stubbornness. Corruption-busting remains a top goal, and she has a knack for steering a conversation back to the handful of powerful corporations she says have a grip on federal policy-making.

"People feel totally shut out of the political process; they feel like Congress is corrupt," she said in between an impromptu march with New Paltz teachers to support their fight for a new contract and a recent informational session on tick-borne diseases. "They're unhappy — or numb, depending on who you talk to."

A conversation with the Times Union last month about expanding broadband access — a key plank in Teachout's platform — wound its way to telecommunications giants lobbying to control the market. Loosening the grip those few companies have on the industry requires a grassroots movement that forces government not to kowtow, Teachout said.

At the session on tick-borne illness — a major district concern that has earned Gibson votes from the left and right — she led off by pointing to New York's ban on hydraulic fracturing as evidence of what a groundswell of opposition can do.

Teachout's desire to, as she puts it, "stand up even when the door is closed and maintain that independence" is rooted in her upbringing.

"Certainly something I got from my mom is that everybody deserves respect," she said. "She's an absolute small-D democrat — everybody is smart, everybody's got something to say. That was pretty deeply ingrained."

Her Vermont upbringing also comes up as her defense to the carpetbagger charges she will face through the primary and, if she wins that contest, into November. In the same way that Democrat Sean Eldridge was pummeled as a downstate interloper during his 2014 run against Gibson, Teachout is relatively new to the district — though she denies she made the move to Dutchess County in March 2015 just to run for Congress.

She grew up in Vermont dairy country, not unlike the farming communities upstate. Though she lived in New York City, outside the natural-gas-rich Marcellus Shale, in 2014 she was a key voice in the anti-fracking movement and now makes protection of the district's waterways a key part of her agenda.

Name recognition will be key in the sprawling 11-county district — a horseshoe that reaches from Rensselaer County down to Dutchess County, west toward Broome County and back up to Montgomery County.

As she marched with the teachers down Main Street in New Paltz, Teachout slowly dropped from the front of the line backward to chat with teachers and parents who sported red T-shirts that matched the one Teachout was given for the event. One teacher told her he has been a supporter since 2014, likely a common sentiment among some Democrats. Another was friendly but puzzled as to who Teachout was.

As she tries to reach out to those who didn't watch the 2014 gubernatorial primary, Teachout distances herself from the left-of-center box that some placed her in two years ago, and continue to use as a label for her now. That's not to say she isn't progressive, but Gibson has proven himself adept at picking up independent votes en route to decisive victories in the past three cycles. For Teachout, or any of the other three candidates running for the seat, there is a risk to vehemently following a single political ideology too closely.

To that end, Teachout points to the key 2014 issues — which are still relevant to varying degrees — of corruption, the failings of the Common Core implementation and resistance to fracking as bipartisan issues.

What's more, in 2014, the state Conservative Party urged Democrats to support Teachout, as did the Public Employees Federation, one of the state's largest public sector unions.

"I'm a populist," she said. "If you want to put me in a box, that's the one I'll go in."

mhamilton@timesunion.com • 518-454-5449 • @matt_hamilton10