House Dems and GOP hone their messages for the suburbs

It doesn’t take an Ivy League political scientist to suss out that control of Congress runs through New York. Democrats here have their work cut out for them, following a disastrous midterm election cycle two years ago. They’re now targeting seats in Long Island, the Hudson Valley and Central New York. There’s a mix of candidates, old faces and new, doing their part, and if they succeed, they might make Brooklyn Rep. Hakeem Jeffries the next speaker of the House. But there's still some unfinished business left over from 2022, when an anti-Trump, pro-abortion message wasn’t enough for Democrats to win the state 

Democrats had reason to believe that their message would bear fruit. Campaigning in the wake of the U.S Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, Rep. Pat Ryan won a special election against then-Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro in a pre-redistricting 19th Congressional District, banking on the fact his party supported a woman’s right to choose while Republicans did not. Between that and the general existence of former President Donald Trump, Democrats thought they had it made, but attacks over public safety, a local version of the migrant crisis and a deteriorating economy whittled away their advantages until the man in charge of House Democrats’ reelection strategy – former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney – ended up as roadkill on Rep. Mike Lawler’s road to D.C.

Local issues and a shock Kamala Harris presidential campaign are in play, but elsewhere, Democrats appear to be saying the same things in 2024 as they did in 2022. In their minds, the message wasn’t the problem. Likewise, Republicans are planning to play the hits this summer and fall. 

Republicans smell blood

“Republicans are trusted to handle the economy and the border crisis, much better than Democrats are in the eyes of a lot of voters, both independent and Republican base voters,” said Savannah Viar, deputy communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Viar added that New York is firmly in the party’s crosshairs, and Republicans are prioritizing the state’s seats after making inroads into the Democratic stronghold. 

For years, New York Republicans have been operating with middling to nonexistent levels of power, but Lawler believes that Republicans now have a real opportunity in the state. “I think you're seeing it, you're seeing voters move,” he said. 

Allusions to far-left politics aside, suburban Democrats will need to stave off links to divisive policies in New York City and Albany. Mayor Eric Adams’ decision to bus asylum seekers upstate gave county executives whiplash, while the state Legislature’s bail reform policy has had critics on the left and right of the aisle arguing that eliminating automatic cash bail for some crimes made communities less safe.  In July, Molinaro summed it up by telling City & State that upstate voters simply aren’t buying what Democrats are selling. 

Congressional districts like Lawler’s are still within the bounds of New York City’s radio and airwaves, and seemingly unrelated stories of violence and corruption coming out of the five boroughs can color suburban voters’ views of the Democratic Party. Political consultant Sam Raskin said that the pipeline of slanted coverage was “uniquely unhelpful” in 2022, though he was more optimistic about this year. “They’re separate issues, like there's the immigration issues and there's the city stuff and some of migrants,” said Raskin, adding that he didn't anticipate the same level of “panic” this year. 

But GOP strategist Vince Casale thinks that Republicans in New York can claim victory by highlighting these trends because voters upstate are fed up with a leftward shift taking place in within the Democratic Party. He said Republicans are targeting “rank and file” voters who feel left behind, a strategy that’s worked before. “I think there are so many people who are in a situation where they’re focused on taking care of their families, putting food on the table and sending their kids to college,” Casale said. “They wish that it was just made a little bit easier for them and that the government wasn't making it so much harder to fill your gas tank.” 

Lawler has a similarly dismissive view of Democrats’ voter engagement strategy. “I don't think they get it,” the Pearl River Republican said. “I think they think they can just try to bamboozle voters into believing that they've learned their lessons, but not actually learning any lessons.” The congressional representative has been keeping himself busy in the lower Hudson Valley, fending off a challenge from former Rep. Mondaire Jones. Even as Jones has made his own enemies on the left, Lawler has attempted to paint him as too progressive for the district, linking him to left-wing policies like “defunding the police” and open borders. “Those issues don’t play well upstate,” Lawler said. 

Republicans have also sought to tie Democratic House candidates to incumbent President Biden’s economic policies, highlighting increased levels of inflation and bashing “Bidenomics.” But such attacks have become harder to land, now that Biden is off the presidential ticket and Democrats have swapped out their aging standard-bearer for a more youthful candidate, albeit one who has the exact same policies.  

Democrats are fighting back

State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs has spoken at length about the last election, arguing that it was outside factors and a truncated campaigning process – not the party’s messaging – that did Democrats in. “The turnout is going to be very different in 2024, than it was in 2022, because it's a presidential election, so that in and of itself just changes the whole picture,” he said. “Second of all, we're not going to have Democratic primaries in August for the congressional seats, which I think was a negative drag on our candidates in the 2022 election.” 

Jacobs expects an uptick in fundraising from outside the state now that New York’s importance to the congressional calculus is better understood. And with bail reform no longer the most controversial item coming out of Albany, he believes that Democrats won’t be as open to attacks over public safety. “This Democratic Party has made very clear that we are a middle-of-the-road party, and I think that Republicans will jump up and down as they always do, to try to paint us as leftist socialists, but you know, that's nonsense,” he said. 

Democratic hopefuls facing Republican incumbents are launching attacks based on the incumbents’ records. Laura Gillen is challenging Rep. Anthony D’Esposito in the 4th Congressional District for the second time this year. She has attacked the Long Island Republican for inaction on the border, highlighting his opposition to a bipartisan border deal. Josh Riley, who is challenging Molinaro in the 19th Congressional District, has done the same, while adding in barbs about Molinaro’s stance on abortion for good measure. “We've had hundreds of people show up at our office openings across the district, and people are really angry about Roe v. Wade being overturned, and very concerned about the risks of a national abortion ban if this election doesn't go the right way,” Riley said.

The Republican with the largest target on his back in New York may be Rep. Brandon Williams, especially after the most recent round of redistricting gave Democrats a slight edge in the 22nd Congressional District. Democratic state Sen. John Mannion is taking a crack at the incumbent, and after representing a healthily Republican district in the state Capitol, he thinks he’s well positioned to flip the district. He’s also banking on the fact that Williams’ willingness to back his party on controversial moves – like voting down the bipartisan border deal opposed by Trump – will alienate voters used to a more moderate brand of representation. “That is the kind of thing that people in this area just don't tolerate,” Mannion said. “You know, we’ve crossed all party lines here, but what people really reject is that far-right, new wing of the Republican Party that is referred to as MAGA.”

All together?

New York Democrats have identified part of the solution to their electoral woes as something simple: connecting to voters. The well-publicized alliance between Gov. Kathy Hochul, Jeffries and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is coming to fruition via a wide-ranging election committee with more than $5 million raised, over 35 field offices dotting the state’s seven key swing districts and plans to contact a million voters by election day. “The biggest evidence that Democrats have learned a lesson is that we're trying to campaign and then if we find people to vote for us, we need to ask for and earn their vote, and I think you'll see that in coordinated campaign efforts led by the governor and the state party,” Democratic consultant Jack O’Donnell told City & State. 

Traditionally, Democrats in New York would work to support their own factions, whether they be ideological or geographic, but Hochul has made a clear point of beefing up the state Democratic Party to do more for races across the state, especially after the calamitous midterms. In the process, the state is flexing a markedly stronger sense of party unity than before. “For a while, Democrats have been really good at not working together,” O’Donnell said. He added that while Democrats may have forgotten the efficacy of an all-for-one, one-for-all campaign strategy, but he started his career in such an environment and knows what it can do. “Having boots on the ground, having coordinated messaging, rapid response, opposition research and these field offices where we're actually sending campaigners out to knock on doors and talk to voters and ask for their votes, is a proven strategy,” he said. 

As part of this new coordinated campaign strategy, nine field organizers have already been hired to work across battleground districts in New York, with an eye towards turning out voters from communities of interest.  In Long Island’s 3rd and 4th Congressional Districts, Asian American and Pacific Islanders are being targeted, for example, and in the Hudson Valley’s 17th and 18th Congressional Districts, the focus is on Hispanic voters. Nashanta Lamont, the state Democratic Party’s constituency engagement director, said in a statement that her team is “meeting New Yorkers where they are and ensuring every community understands the power of their voice and vote in 2024 and beyond.”

An outlier

Rep. Pat Ryan was the lone Democrat in the Hudson Valley not to lose his race in 2022. Though it was a close victory over former Assembly Member Colin Schmitt, he succeeded in the 18th Congressional District where others did not. Rather than turning his race purely into an unofficial Trump or Biden poll or a one-issue campaign, he adopted a broader message about protecting personal freedoms. 

He plans to do the same this year as he faces Alison Esposito, a former lieutenant governor candidate who is viewed by national Republicans as their best tool to flip another seat in New York. Esposito, who previously worked as a New York City Police Department deputy inspector, spent most of her career downstate and has had to beat back claims that she has little connection to the district that she is now running to represent. But she’s in relatively friendly territory; although the district voted for Biden in 2020, it voted to send her and former gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin to the statehouse in 2022.

So far, many of her critiques of Ryan and Democrats have had a more national bent, although she told City & State that she believes all the issues in the race are local. “The migrant crisis is: I come out of my supermarket and I see migrants begging for money or selling fruit in Middletown,” she said. 

Ryan’s campaign has released some playful attack ads, but he is mostly taking a simple approach to reelection. “The way I campaigned consistently is focused on listening to the voters and the people in the district,” Ryan said. “All the other party stuff, I think, is for other people to deal with and worry about. We're just out there working our butts off, talking to as many voters as possible.” In the politically mixed bag that is his district – full of Democrats, Republicans and even Democratic Socialists – he said he wouldn’t make things partisan even if voters laid critiques of his party at his feet. “I think both parties have failed consistently for several decades to really understand how bad the income inequality is in this country, and especially in our district,” he said. “And to me, the lion's share of the blame lies at the feet of big corporations, and the ultra wealthy.”

All of the battleground races in New York are colored by local issues, whether it’s economic stimulation in Central New York, demonized utility companies in the Hudson Valley or the intense culture war brewing on Long Island. This November, both sides of the aisle will be pushing their message – Democrats with renewed vigor – in a high-turnout presidential year. The hope is that if they can reach enough of the right voters, they can either reverse or build upon Republicans’ victories in 2022. But with the cacophony of presidential politics drowning out discussion of local concerns, there’s a risk that voters will just tune out their messages entirely.