Antonio Delgado

Antonio Ramon Delgado (born January 28, 1977) is an American attorney and politician who has served as the lieutenant governor of New York since May 25, 2022. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented New York’s 19th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from January 3, 2019, to May 2022, serving two terms. He is the first African American and first person of Latino descent to be elected to Congress from Upstate New York, as well as the first Latino to hold statewide office in New York.

Delgado was born in Schenectady, New York, to Tony Delgado and Thelma P. Hill and raised in the city’s Hamilton Hill neighborhood. He is African American and has Cape Verdean and Latino ancestry, and has said he has Mexican, Colombian, and Venezuelan ancestry on his mother’s side. The eldest of four brothers, he grew up in a working-class community that shaped his later focus on economic opportunity and social justice. Delgado attended Notre Dame–Bishop Gibbons High School in Schenectady, where he played on the school’s basketball team and, in his senior year, was named to The Daily Gazette’s all-area second team.

After high school, Delgado enrolled at Colgate University, where he played for the Colgate Raiders men’s basketball team alongside future National Basketball Association player Adonal Foyle. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Colgate in 1999. Recognized for his academic achievements, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and studied at The Queen’s College, Oxford, earning a Master of Arts degree in 2001. He subsequently attended Harvard Law School, receiving his Juris Doctor in 2005. Delgado’s educational trajectory—from Schenectady to Colgate, Oxford, and Harvard—provided a foundation for his later work as an attorney, recording artist, and legislator.

Following law school, Delgado moved to Los Angeles in 2005 and entered the music industry. Under the stage name “AD the Voice,” he released a socially conscious rap album in 2007 that addressed issues such as inequality and systemic injustice. After several years in music, he returned to the legal profession and joined the New York office of the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, where he worked as a litigator. His combined experiences in law, the arts, and advocacy informed his approach to public service and political communication.

In the 2018 election cycle, Delgado ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York’s 19th congressional district, a largely rural and suburban district in Upstate New York. He won a crowded Democratic primary, defeating six other candidates, and advanced to face incumbent Republican Representative John Faso in the general election held on November 6, 2018. During the campaign, Delgado criticized Faso’s vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act and emphasized health care access, economic development, and infrastructure. Republican-aligned groups, including the Congressional Leadership Fund and the National Republican Congressional Committee, attacked Delgado’s earlier rap career, referring to him as a “big-city rapper.” The New York Times editorial board condemned these attacks as “race-baiting.” Delgado won the general election with 132,001 votes to Faso’s 124,408 and was sworn into the 116th Congress on January 3, 2019.

As a representative from New York from 2019 to 2022, Delgado contributed to the legislative process during two terms in office, serving during a period marked by intense national polarization, the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, and the COVID-19 pandemic. He served on the House Committee on Agriculture, including its Subcommittee on Biotechnology, Horticulture, and Research and its Subcommittee on Commodity Exchanges, Energy, and Credit. He also served on the House Committee on Small Business, including the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access, and on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, including the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit and the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. Delgado had 18 bills signed into law during his tenure, including the Small Business Relief Accessibility Act, the Strengthening Financial Aid for Students Act, the Improving Benefits for Underserved Veterans Act, and the Direct Support for Communities Act, reflecting a focus on small business support, education, veterans’ services, and local government relief. He voted to impeach President Donald Trump in 2019 and again in 2021. During the first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration, Delgado voted in line with Biden’s stated position 100 percent of the time. In the 2020 election, he ran for a second term, was unopposed in the Democratic primary, and defeated Republican nominee Kyle Van De Water, an attorney and former trustee of the village of Millbrook, New York, by a margin of 192,100 votes to 151,475.

Delgado’s congressional service ended in May 2022 when he accepted appointment as lieutenant governor of New York. On April 12, 2022, Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin resigned following his arrest in a corruption scandal. On May 3, 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that she had selected Delgado to fill the vacant office. Delgado was sworn in as lieutenant governor on May 25, 2022, becoming the first Latino to hold statewide office in New York. In the June 2022 Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, he won with 58 percent of the vote and subsequently appeared on the general election ballot as Hochul’s running mate. On November 8, 2022, Hochul and Delgado were elected to full terms, defeating the Republican ticket of Representative Lee Zeldin and former New York City Police Department deputy inspector Alison Esposito.

As lieutenant governor, Delgado’s tenure intersected with significant political developments at both the state and national levels. On July 2, 2024, Governor Hochul announced that she would seek reelection in 2026 with Delgado again as her running mate. On July 10, 2024, Delgado publicly called for President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 United States presidential election, a position that conflicted with Hochul’s continued support for Biden’s candidacy and highlighted emerging differences between the governor and her lieutenant. On February 13, 2025, Delgado called for New York City Mayor Eric Adams to resign from office amid legal and ethical controversies. In response, Hochul’s office stated that Delgado “does not now and has not ever spoken on behalf of this administration,” and City & State New York reported that the “legal and leadership crisis in New York City” was exposing a growing rift between Hochul and Delgado. On February 24, 2025, Delgado announced that he would not seek reelection as lieutenant governor in 2026 and would explore other options, while Hochul’s office indicated that she had already begun identifying a new running mate for the 2026 election.

Following these developments, Delgado moved to position himself for higher office. In June 2025, he announced that he would challenge Hochul for the Democratic nomination for governor of New York in the 2026 election. Subsequent reporting indicated that relations between the governor and lieutenant governor had further deteriorated. In August 2025, Politico reported that Delgado had conducted little official business in his role since announcing his primary challenge, and that Hochul had significantly curtailed his role in the administration, reducing his staff to one employee, revoking his executive email account, and seizing his state-issued cell phone. In February 2025, Delgado had already stated that he would not seek reelection as lieutenant governor in 2026, reinforcing his shift toward a gubernatorial campaign.

Delgado married filmmaker and producer Lacey Schwartz in 2011. The couple has twin sons and resides in Rhinebeck, New York, north of Poughkeepsie. Delgado self-identifies as Afro-Latino, is 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) tall, and has been included in broader listings of African-American and Hispanic and Latino members of Congress, as well as among minority lieutenant governors. His career has spanned law, music, and elective office, and he remains an influential figure in New York and national Democratic politics.