Will this Republican win John Mannion’s old Senate seat?

In the shadow of the competitive congressional race taking place in Central New York, the contest for the 50th state Senate District could determine whether Democrats maintain their supermajority in the chamber. With no wiggle room for Democrats heading into the election, Republicans’ best opportunity to break the supermajority may be to flip this vacant seat, which they nearly won back two years ago.

Democrat Chris Ryan, the former minority leader of the Onondaga County Legislature, is looking to replace state Sen. John Mannion, who is giving up the seat to run for Congress. Ryan is taking on Republican Nick Paro, the Salina town supervisor, who is attempting to take back a district previously long held by the GOP. Although the district changed significantly in redistricting, Republicans came very close to victory in 2022, when Mannion won his second term by just 10 votes.

Since Mannion was first elected in 2020, circumstances have become more favorable to Republicans, as the district now lacks an incumbent and the latest round of redistricting made it slightly more conservative. In the version of the district that Mannion won in 2020, Biden’s 2020 vote share was 56.6%. After redistricting, that fell to 53.6%. Even the slight shift away from Democrats doesn’t bode well for the party holding on to a seat they’ve struggled to control for years. “This is the No. 1 pickup opportunity for the Senate Republicans in the state,” state Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt recently told the Syracuse Post-Standard.

Republicans now have a voter enrollment advantage in the district that they didn’t have four years ago. In New York, it’s rare for a district to contain more registered Republicans than Democrats. Even in areas that lean conservative, it’s not uncommon to see moderate or split-ticket voters who support Republicans locally still register as Democrats and support them at the national level. So the fact that registered Republicans now outnumber Democrats in the state Senate district could be a bad sign for Democrats hoping to hold on to the seat.

Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, said the race in many ways is Paro’s to lose. “People are, generally in upstate, they’re not favorably disposed toward Albany,” Reeher said. Anti-Albany sentiments have helped Republicans win locally and at the congressional level for each of the past three years. And Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has incredibly low approval ratings that seem to drop even lower with each new public poll, which does nothing to help candidates from the party she leads. “(Upstate residents) look at Albany and they see supermajorities of Democrats and a Democratic … governor,” Reeher said. “So all of that, you know, would seem to help the Republican, all other things being equal.”

If Paro does win, it would be a return to form for Republicans, who controlled an earlier version of the 50th state Senate District for decades. Former Deputy Majority Leader John DeFranscisco represented the area for a quarter century until deciding not to seek reelection in 2018. That prompted Mannion to run for the first time in the hopes of riding a wave of anti-Donald Trump sentiment that helped propel his party to victory in other races and gain control of the chamber. But he lost a close race to Republican former state Sen. Robert Antonacci, who held the seat for two years.

Democrats got another chance in 2020, when Antonacci decided he would rather be a judge and chose not to run for a second term. In a presidential year, Mannion managed to flip the seat and helped to grow the Democrats’ state Senate majority into a supermajority. Now, that supermajority is at risk thanks to the same seat.

Still, it’s not all bad news for Democrats. It is once again a presidential election year, when the party tends to perform better as local candidates ride the coattails of the top of the ticket. That helped propel Mannion to victory in 2020, and Democrats are hoping it will once again help Ryan and other candidates in districts where they underperformed in 2022. Democrats also have a significant monetary advantage, as Ryan has outraised Paro and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee has far more cash to spend on its candidates than its Republican counterpart. Already, the campaign account has spent some $400,000 to back Ryan.