On election night in 2016, Tracy Mitrano sat in her living room with a glass of wine, watching the returns come in, expecting to see Hillary Clinton ascend to the U.S. presidency. By the end of the evening, as she tells it, she was drinking straight from the bottle, as a red wave swept across America — including her own congressional district in upstate New York — to elect Donald Trump.
In the aftermath, Democrats begged people to get involved in politics. Mitrano — an expert on cybersecurity and internet law, who has had appointments at Cornell University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst — answered the call, running against Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican who aligned himself with the new president. In a strongly conservative district, she ran as a centrist Democrat who supported gun ownership but also single-payer health care, who opposed free college but also the expansion of support for higher education. It was a nuanced mix of positions that, at moments, seemed like it might carry the day on the first Tuesday of November.
But earlier this month, Mitrano lost her bid to become the next representative from New York’s 23rd district, falling 10 percentage points behind Reed by the end of the night. Getting voters to understand the context of her positions and counter the simplifications of her opponent, she acknowledges, was difficult.
A voice well known to tech-savvy readers of The Chronicle and other higher-ed publications, Mitrano spoke about the challenges facing an academic who enters the political fray.
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Why did you decide to run?
Politics, citizenship, and democracy had been the focus of my adult life. As a cybersecurity specialist, I was concerned with the impact that cyber insecurity was having on the integrity of our electoral process, and I wasn’t sure that there was a person in Congress with a background in this area to really appreciate what is essentially a national security threat. So I began to explore running in the place where I lived all my life: western New York, the Southern tier, and the Finger Lakes. The representative in this area has made a brand out of the so-called Ithaca extreme liberal as a way to marginalize the only county in the district that has large Democratic registration. When I listened to what people in this district were telling me about health care, education, and infrastructure, those issues formed the foundation of my platform.
Was there a moment when you realized the campaign might be a real slog?
The only thing that still is deeply problematic is the degree to which politics is indeed dirty. I never lied in anything that I said about my opponent — every criticism was fact based. The thing that still does take my breath away is to hear the lies that my opponent cast about me and my position, and that his surrogates did to an even greater extent. The challenge is, Can we ever get beyond the lies again to campaigning that is fact based?
There is an incredible distaste for higher education in certain political circles these days. Was your background as a professor an asset or a liability?
It was an asset, but people assumed it would be a liability. I came from a modest background. My father never graduated high school. My mother was a barmaid. I grew up working in my father’s downtown restaurant, and met people from all walks of life. If I had been an academic transplant to the area, I doubt I would have been successful. But because I came from this background and brought my education to these issues, a lot of people appreciated I was thoughtful, that I was really trying to understand the issues, instead of just coming out with a position, with mischaracterizations and hyperbole and fear-mongering, which is what politics is today.
Why do you think people are resentful of higher education?
There is an anti-intellectual strain in American politics and thought, and an anti-elitism that has been peddled by the far right.
There is an anti-intellectual strain in American politics and thought, and an anti-elitism that has been peddled by the far right. But on top of all the media hyperbole and far-right castigation is a reality in people’s lives that I don’t blame them for having. As a woman who’s the head of the farm bureau in one of our counties here said to me: “I regret urging my daughter to go to college. She’s 30 years old now and she can’t get out from under the debt.” That kind of statement is a knife in the heart to someone who has dedicated her career to higher education. But it’s not her fault, and it’s not her daughter’s fault. It is the fault of American politics and the failure to address campaign finance and the ways these large corporations influence our lives.
Your partner is a woman. How was that received by people in your district?
In Ithaca, I was advised not to run because of that fact, but the people in Ithaca simply did not know the rest of this district. This is not a Bible Belt area. These are people who are absolutely good people, and their values are my values. They want people to be committed and honest and hard-working. It never came up.
When I ran for president of the student association at the University of Rochester, my opponents called my parents and said, “Do you know that your daughter is a dyke?” That was in 1980. I won, but I did not go immediately into politics, even though I had an inclination for it, because the time wasn’t right for that. I had dated both men and women, I wasn’t secretive about it, and I knew it would be an issue. I’m glad in the end, because politics is dirty and at a younger, less mature stage in my life, I would have been chewed up and spat out. At this stage, I’m older and I hope a little wiser, so I can take the slings and arrows of what is said about me in stride.
How did you handle your loss?
I hope I handled it with respect and grace, acknowledging how much hope people had and how grateful I am for this experience. You know, our campaign was notable for a couple of things: One is we had more women giving to our campaign than just about any other race for Congress. And secondly, we were noted for bringing people out who had never before been involved in the electoral process, and that experience changed their lives — and it changed mine, because it was the same for me. I met some wonderful people — Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, and a lot of other people around the district from all walks of life. Frankly, all of this should be seen not as a failure, but as a start.
What’s next for you?
We’ll see. Running again is a consideration, but it’s a little too soon for me to know. I left my position at the University of Massachusetts in December because as an employee of the state, I was not allowed to do any campaign financing. When I left my job, I left it unconditionally. So I do need to work because I’m not independently wealthy.
Where do you think we’re headed as a country?
If we continue to allow our politicians and the media to draw us apart, I think we’re headed in a genuinely frightening direction — a path that has a whole lot in common with fascism. I believe from my own experience running that people don’t want that. They want the center to hold and our politicians to start taking care of the issues that have become endemic. We have real basic need for health care, education, and infrastructure.
I would hope that more people come out to exercise a positive kind of leadership, to bring people back into the center, and to remember that democracy is not automatic. It is a right, but it’s also an obligation of everyone to engage in. I met many young people, especially in more rural parts of this district, who are disaffected. They don’t want to register to vote, they don’t believe it makes any difference, and you can be sure I took each and every one of them to gentle task about it.
So I am genuinely concerned about the direction of this country if we don’t right the ship. Just look at what our president does in terms of closing down media passes, how he speaks about people, how he catastrophizes immigration, how he scapegoats. This is a very well-understood playbook, and he is following it point by point. If we don’t take a more fact- and evidence-based approach to our politics, and have a clear idea of how to translate policy into legislation that will help people, then we will only exacerbate the extreme. Going forward, we all have to be a little more honest about that.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Scott Carlson is a senior writer who covers the cost and value of college. Email him at scott.carlson@chronicle.com.
