Two years after Democrats suffered embarrassing midterm losses in New York that cost them control of the House of Representatives, the state is poised to once again play a pivotal role — this time, the party hopes, in its favor.
From the suburbs of Long Island to central New York, Democrats in a half dozen key races are vastly outspending Republicans in the final days, in some cases by more than two to one. Party leaders have assembled a sophisticated new turnout operation.
And after effectively ceding the policy debate to Republicans last time, Democrats have embraced tougher stances on issues that typically play among conservative and moderate voters, like immigration and crime, while still hammering away on abortion rights.
Those tactical changes have made Democrats cautiously optimistic that they can re-elect their incumbents and pick up seats in the state next week. The two Republicans in most danger are Representatives Brandon Williams in Syracuse and Anthony D’Esposito on Long Island, two first-term congressmen in districts President Biden handily won in 2020.
Laura Gillen, the Democrat facing Mr. D’Esposito in a rematch of 2022, exemplifies the party’s shifting fortunes. She raised $2.5 million in the third quarter, more than her entire previous campaign. The money has allowed her to fund not only a multimillion-dollar TV blitz promising to secure the southern border and abortion rights, but to hire organizers to reach large Black and Latino communities.
“It’s a totally different campaign,” she said in an interview. “I am on offense on the border because my opponent has failed to deliver any kind of relief to New York State, or to address the crisis.”
With the congressional battlefield across the rest of the country deadlocked, the extent of Democratic inroads in New York and California could mean the difference between Republicans narrowly holding their slim majority and the chamber flipping.
That possibility has sent both parties scrambling for final advantages. Both Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democrat vying to replace him, planned last-minute campaign stops across the state.
And Mr. Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday served both parties’ interest: While Republicans viewed it as a huge voter mobilization opportunity, Democrats quickly seized on the event’s racist overtones to try to galvanize Puerto Ricans, a key voting block.
“Anybody I talk to on either side of the aisle is nail biting right now,” said Steve Israel, a former New York congressman who previously ran Democrats’ national campaign arm. “It’s beyond a typical election, because control of the entire House could rest on results in New York.”
It remains to be seen just how far Democrats can push into Republican-represented territory. An upstate race between Josh Riley, a Democrat, and Representative Marc Molinaro, a Republican freshman, is essentially tied after $45 million in total spending and is widely viewed as a contest that could tip the House.
Internal polling described by both parties has Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican, with a modest lead in a center-left Hudson Valley seat over Mondaire Jones, a former congressman.
Much of the uncertainty rests on a simple question: Were Democratic losses in seats they had long controlled a midterm aberration, or the sign of a more meaningful shift rightward in one of the nation’s most liberal states?
Republicans said they still had reasons to be optimistic even if they cannot repeat the results in 2022, when they flipped four swing districts. One party strategist predicted Republicans could lose one or even two seats in New York and still hold the majority.
Public and private polling has found Mr. Trump running anywhere from four to 10 points ahead of where he was in swing districts in 2020 and shows Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who narrowly won in 2022, has become deeply unpopular.
Though Republican candidates are playing defense over abortion rights, the other issues suburban New York voters say are most important to them — immigration, housing costs, crime — remain broadly favorable to Republicans.
“It is a nine-alarm fire for Democrats,” said Representative Elise Stefanik, the highest-ranking New York Republican. “Despite the smears, the incessant attacks and the millions of dollars they have amassed, all our candidates are on track to either win or tied.”
Mr. Molinaro’s campaign in the sprawling 19th District has been emblematic of Republicans’ approach. Long known as a congenial moderate, Mr. Molinaro has leaned into Mr. Trump’s grievance-style politics to blame Democrats for “surrendering the southern border” and allowing the influx of more than 200,000 migrants that has cost the state billions of dollars. Republican super PACs have spent millions of dollars attacking Democrats’ promises to fix the border as ineffectual.
The indictment of Mayor Eric Adams of New York City on corruption charges in the middle of campaign season has given Republicans a fresh opening to argue the perils of one-party rule in New York.
“If it’s not disgust, it’s fatigue with a single party in this state that makes decisions irrespectful of the impact it has on ordinary New Yorkers,” said Mr. Molinaro, who beat Mr. Riley by just over a point in 2022.
And yet, there are also key differences from two years ago, when Democrats emerged from a haywire redistricting process underfunded and unprepared for the churning political winds that turned against them in districts they never expected to be competitive. On an election night when the party beat expectations nationally, the results in New York were especially stinging.
This time, their candidates have tried to pivot to emphasize many of the same themes as Republicans, who have found themselves forced to defend voting records on border and abortion issues highlighted by Democrats.
“House Republican incumbents can’t point to a single thing that they have done to make life better for the people of New York,” Mr. Jeffries said.
Repeating a strategy deployed in the midterms, Democratic candidates have also put Republicans on the defensive on abortion rights. Ms. Gillen conceded that voters in abortion-friendly New York had not “really believed” the rights were at risk in 2022. “People are much more acutely aware now,” she said.
Mr. D’Esposito, who declined an interview request, has also had to contend with a series of stories raising ethics concerns about his decision to place a mistress on his congressional payroll. Still, Republicans believe he has an outside shot at holding the seat as they attack Ms. Gillen, a former town supervisor, on one of the Long Island’s most potent issues: property taxes.
Democrats are feeling even more bullish about the chances of unseating Mr. Williams, who has consistently trailed State Senator John Mannion in the 22nd District around Syracuse in private polls from both paries.
Leaders in both parties also say that a pair of Democratic incumbents are also most likely safe. They are Representatives Pat Ryan in the Hudson Valley and Tom Suozzi, who flipped the Third District on Long Island in a high-stakes February special election.
An outspoken centrist and leading critic of his own party, Mr. Suozzi said he had seen progress.
“The Democrats are going to do much better this cycle,” he said, “because they are listening to the people’s concerns and embraced the message of a secure border and public safety.”
Republicans seem to have the upper hand in other swing district races, though.
John Avlon, a Democrat and former CNN commentator, has run a spirited campaign against Representative Nick LaLota in the First District on Long Island. But even prominent Democrats privately concede his chances of winning are small.
Upstate, Mr. Riley and Mr. Molinaro have each built and lost small leads, and party strategists predicted the result could tip with the presidential contest.
Perhaps the brightest spot for Republicans has come in Mr. Lawler’s 17th District, home to affluent Westchester County suburbs and a large Democratic voter registration advantage.
Mr. Lawler has been hammered in TV ads from Mr. Jones and Democratic super PACs, which attack him as a threat to abortion rights and an ally of Mr. Trump. They insist the race is not over.
Yet Mr. Lawler appears to have succeeded in building his own moderate brand while chipping away at Mr. Jones’s image with old news clips that paint the Democrat as extreme.
There are signs they are working. Mr. Jones had to spend $250,000 in an ad in recent days trying to distance himself from comments he made in 2020 in support of defunding the police.
“Now,” he says in the ad, “Lawler is trying to fool you by highlighting something dumb I said when I was younger.”
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