Stone Ridge, New York — population 1,900 — is 90 miles north of New York City, in the shadow of the Catskill Mountains. The hamlet is on the National Historic Register because the houses that greet visitors range from stately stone Colonial Era mansions to Federal and Greek revival style structures, a collection found nowhere else in America.
Wealthy people live here, and finding a house for less than $500,000 is difficult. But poor people live here, too. On Main Street, near a columned historic house, is the Rondout Valley Food Pantry, founded 35 years ago. It is a bustling place. People are hungry.
In the neighboring town of Rochester, 3,580 people lined up at its food pantry for 35,000 meals in 2023. Ten miles away at the tiny Rosendale Food Pantry, people come seeking food supplies.
“I’ll get on my feet soon,” one man told me. “Knee surgery has laid me up — just temporarily.”
Eleven miles from where I live in Stone Ridge is Kingston, New York, a hardscrabble city of 23,900; 18% of the population lives in poverty. The People’s Place, a thriving food pantry, offers fresh produce from May to October to over 1,200 people each Tuesday. They line up.
And yet, by the time this presidential and congressional election is over, the candidates will raise $20 billion in campaign contributions. $20 billion!
That’s a lot of money not going to the Hudson Valley Regional Food Bank, which last year fed 40 million meals to 350,000 people each month. I could substitute names of towns all over New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania — where this column circulates — and the conclusions would be the same: our priorities are screwed up.
The money going into this election — the most ever raised........