List of political figures of Upstate New York

• John Cornplanter Abeel, Seneca diplomat
• Susan B. Anthony
• Chester A. Arthur
• Joseph Brant
• Molly Brant
• John Brown (abolitionist), Adirondack farmer
• Grover Cleveland
• Verplanck Colvin, advocate for the establishment of the Adirondack Forest Preserve
• Roscoe Conkling
• Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis
• Deganawida
• Frederick Douglass
• James Duane, a lawyer, jurist, and Revolutionary leader from New York. He served as a delegate to the Continental Congress, a U.S. District Judge, New York state senator, and as Mayor of New York. Duanesburg is named for him.
• Allen Dulles
• John Foster Dulles
• Max Eastman
• Richard Theodore Ely, born in Ripley. Ely was an economist, author, and leader of the Progressive Movement who called for more government intervention in order to reform the injustices of capitalism, especially regarding factory conditions, compulsory education, child labor and labor unions. He opposed the individualism he found troubling in capitalism, calling for an evolution to a higher stage of social conscience. He helped inspire and lead the Social Gospel movement.
• Calvin Fairbank, an abolitionist minister who spent more than 17 years in prison for his anti-slavery activities.
• Millard Fillmore
• Barry Freed, aka Abbie Hoffman, of the Save the River environmental campaign to preserve the St. Lawrence River
• Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage of Fayetteville, suffragist, Native American activist, abolitionist, freethinker, prolific author, who was "born with a hatred of oppression" and who was the mother-in-law of L. Frank Baum.
• Henry Highland Garnet, abolitionist and orator
• Lois Gibbs, environmental activist
• Kirsten Gillibrand U.S. Senator, born in Albany
• B. Thomas Golisano
• John Hall, member of Congress representing the Catskills and the Hudson Valley, former member of the band Orleans
• Judge Augustus Noble Hand of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was from Elizabethtown and is buried there.
• Judge Learned Hand of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, first cousin of Augustus Noble Hand, was from Albany and summered in Elizabethtown as a boy.
• Hiawatha
• Charles Evans Hughes
• Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), raised in Frewsburg, was United States Attorney General (1940–1941) and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1941–1954). He was also the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
• Mary Jemison
• Guy Johnson
• Laurence A. Johnson, anti-communist
• Sir William Johnson
• Jack Kemp
• Rev. Samuel Kirkland
• John Lansing, Jr.
• Robert Lansing
• Roger Allen LaPorte, Vietnam War protester
• Christopher J. Lee, disgraced former Congressman
• Robert Livingston (1746-1813)
• Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood, attorney, politician, author, and feminist, the first female lawyer to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Louis Marshall, conservationist
• Eric Massa, disgraced former Congressman
• William E. Miller
• Harriet May Mills, suffragist
• Gouverneur Morris, St. Lawrence County landowner
• Lucretia Mott
• Carl Paladino
• General Ely S. Parker
• Red Jacket
• Thomas M. Reynolds
• John G. Roberts
• William P. Rogers, born in Norfolk and raised in Canton, was U.S. Attorney General in the Eisenhower administration and Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Franklin Roosevelt
• Elihu Root
• Margaret Sanger, birth control activist, native of Corning
• G. David Schine of Gloversville, an anti-communist and central figure in the Army-McCarthy Hearings of 1954 in his role as the chief consultant to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
• William H. Seward, 12th governor of New York.
• Horatio Seymour, Governor of New York from 1853 to 1854 and from 1863 to 1864. He was the Democratic Party nominee for president of the United States in the presidential election of 1868, but lost the election to Republican Ulysses S. Grant.
• James Schoolcraft Sherman
• Gerrit Smith
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Henry Stanton
• Tadodaho
• Mary Burnett Talbert (September 17, 1866 – October 15, 1923) of Buffalo, an American orator, activist, suffragist and reformer. Called "the best known Colored Woman in the United States," Talbert was among the most prominent African Americans of her time.
• Randall Terry, formerly of Binghamton, founder of the Operation Rescue organization.
• Sojourner Truth
• Harriet Tubman, resident of Auburn
• Martin Van Buren
• William Wadsworth
• Thurlow Weed
• William A. Wheeler of Malone, Vice-President of the United States under Rutherford B. Hayes
• Martha Coffin Wright
• Robert Yates

Downstate political figures with a profound influence on Upstate New York

• DeWitt Clinton, 6th governor of New York. Largely responsible for the construction of the Erie Canal.
• Robert Moses, chairman of the New York State Power Commission, responsible for building hydro-electric dams on the Niagara River and St. Lawrence River.