There’s no way to dress it up: The consequences for the country of Donald Trump winning the White House and Republicans taking the Senate and House appear dire. But as Democrats sift through the postelection damage, fighting among themselves and searching for lessons, one surprising bright spot is New York’s congressional races.
Two years ago, New York was a source of bitterness. Republicans flipped four congressional seats in the state—among them, a win by George Santos (yes, that George Santos)—which probably cost Democrats the House majority. Governor Kathy Hochul and New York’s skeletal Democratic Party took most of the blame.Things were different this cycle. Democrats have now flipped four seats back into their column, beginning in February, when Tom Suozzi of Long Island won a special election to fill the seat vacated by the disgraced Santos. The three wins on November 5 came against the stiff headwinds of a deeply unpopular Democratic president in Joe Biden and a rightward shift among voters in New York and across the country.
Laura Gillen, on Long Island, is the most vivid illustration of the turnaround in New York. In 2022, she lost, by slightly less than four points, to Republican Anthony D’Esposito. Two years later she calls me from Washington, where Gillen is dashing between orientation meetings for newly elected congressional members, having won her rematch with D’Esposito by over two points. “It’s hectic. Great-hectic,” she says. “I’m happy to be here.” The biggest differences between her race this cycle and last, Gillen says, were money and organization. In 2022, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the House Majority PAC spent roughly $1.1 million on Gillen’s race, slightly less than the Congressional Leadership Fund’s and the National Republican Congressional Committee’s outlay; this time Gillen’s race was boosted by more than $10 million, outdistancing her opponent by about $4 million. Gillen also received a parallel increase in field operations, part of a $5 million coordinated program for multiple candidates. Most of the money was raised by Gillibrand, Hochul, and Jeffries for the state party, and it paid for dozens of field offices and millions of door-knocks across New York.
The jump in support from the Democratic establishment also extended to the other key New York Democratic winners, John Mannion and Josh Riley, in upstate districts. Instead of leaving the job completely to Hochul, senior New York Democrats became intimately involved. Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, from Brooklyn, brought both political and personal investment to the effort: a shot at becoming House majority leader and trying to erase the home state embarrassment of 2022. In the aftermath, Jeffries tells me, party leaders categorized New York as a battleground state heading into 2024’s House races. “It was a commitment to making sure, at the highest levels, with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, that if New York had become a battleground state, it was important to have a battleground-state Democratic Party. That’s exactly what we set out to do.”
Elsewhere, the Democrats retained 27 out of 31 their most vulnerable House seats and held four out of five of 2024’s most competitive open seats. Still, even with five races still to be decided, Republicans will maintain their majority for the next two years, making any lessons from New York valuable. Pouring money and staff into close races clearly helped A change in thematic strategy also paid off. In 2022, New York Democrats were on the defensive as Republicans hyped crime and immigration as the main issues. This time, Democrats aggressively leaned into their vulnerabilities. “The Democratic Party of a decade ago was of the opinion that when you are getting hit on a bad issue, you need to pivot to a good issue,” a senior House campaign strategist says. “Like, pivot to health care because people trust us on health care. But you cannot pivot away from how people are feeling. So Laura Gillen and Josh Riley being willing to talk about people on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley being freaked out about immigration allowed us to narrow the margin of ‘who cares more about me.’ Then we win on other issues because Democratic policy is more popular.”
Gillen pulled this off most bluntly: She shot a TV ad standing in front of a sign at the Nassau County line, declaring, “We’re 2,000 miles from Mexico, but we’re feeling the migrant crisis almost every day.” After seeing the ad in October, a startled strategist from another state told me, “I had to look up that Gillen is, in fact, a Democrat.” The ad was savvy politics, but Gillen is not an extremist. “Our immigration system has been broken for decades. It’s about time we fix it,” she tells me. “And I’m hoping that we’ll be able to do that in a bipartisan manner, to secure our border, fix our asylum system, and find a pathway to citizenship.”
Congressional races are essentially local, with distinctive quirks. Gillen, for instance, benefited from reports about D’Esposito putting his alleged mistress on the public payroll. (D’Esposito denied that he had violated any ethics codes.) Culture war issues become more prominent as races expand from the district to the statewide and national levels. However, the notion of confronting a candidate’s weaknesses early and honestly should travel well. Ramping up empathy, particularly on economic issues, is also emerging as a theme. “It’s clear to me that House Democrats have been on a mission to make a difference in the lives of everyday Americans who have been dealing with the challenges of an inflationary economy over the last few years,” Jeffries says. “But we have to do a better job of making that clear to each and every person we hope to represent.” I am increasingly dubious that this kind of nibbling around the edges of the status quo is what will rescue the Democrats. For now, though, start spreading the news.
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