There are few places in America that are bluer than the State Capitol in Albany, N.Y., where Democrats have held supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature, as well as the governor’s mansion, since 2018.
But a Republican resurgence in the 2022 has created unexpected headwinds for local Democrats this year.
In the years since Democrats seized power, they have enacted a sweeping progressive agenda, from changes to criminal justice and housing laws to the passage of an amendment that would enshrine abortion in the State Constitution if it is also approved by voters on Tuesday.
But backlash against some of those initiatives — from bail laws to congestion pricing — have created an opening for Republicans eager to reclaim control.
“The underlying current here in New York itself is beneficial to us as the opposition party,” said the state Republican chairman, Ed Cox, noting concerns about inflation, crime and immigration as among Republicans’ greatest campaign assets.
He contended that the state worked better when Democrats and Republicans shared power as they had for most of the last century. “People are eager to support that,” he said.
He acknowledged that some lawmakers “may not like” former President Donald J. Trump, who is a Republican, but “they’ll also say, ‘Wait a second, single-party government and policies are making life tough here in New York.’”
Democrats’ supermajorities — controlling two-thirds of the seats in both the Senate and Assembly — give them the power to override vetoes by Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat. And while they have not yet used that power, lawmakers nonetheless say the supermajority empowers the Legislature and provides a benchmark for Democratic support in the state.
“If a candidate comes in winning by a landslide, they feel they have more of a mandate,” said Jeffrey Dinowitz, who chairs the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee.
“Having a supermajority,” he added, “means that we have a very strong mandate.”
In 2022, Democrats won 101 of 150 seats in the State Assembly, and 42 of 63 in the State Senate — slightly fewer than their peak in 2020. Since then, a handful of lawmakers have resigned, leaving open seats that Republicans are determined to win. Many of the seats overlap with hotly contested congressional districts.
Dorey Houle is running for State Senate in the Hudson Valley, which is part of New York’s 18th Congressional District. That’s where Alison Esposito, a Republican and a former New York City police commander, is looking to unseat the Democratic incumbent, Pat Ryan.
Ms. Houle acknowledged that most of the attention was focused on the top of the ticket. Even so, Ms. Houle, who previously taught American Sign Language at the College of Staten Island, said “there are a lot of people who are still very concerned with the direction that specifically New York State is heading in.”
Ms. Houle is challenging State Senator James Skoufis, a powerful lawmaker who leads the Senate Committee on Investigations and Government Operations.
Like Mr. Ryan, Mr. Skoufis has tried to appeal to centrist voters, including moderate Republicans, by openly criticizing Democratic initiatives like congestion pricing — a strategy that he hopes will help him prevail in a district that the Republican candidate for governor, Lee Zeldin, won by 13 points in 2022.
Candidates from both parties are trying the centrist approach.
Mike Sigler, a Republican candidate for the State Senate in Ithaca, caused a stir when he said in a debate with the Democratic incumbent, Senator Lea Webb, that he does not intend to vote for either Mr. Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris for president in November.
Mr. Sigler said in an interview that he believed the former president had not been as presidential as he would have liked in his first term, but that he has seen signs of improvement.
“You need somebody who’s going to be a president and a leader for the country,” Mr. Sigler said. “I’m starting to see more of that now in his public appearances.”
The Central New York district has 25,000 more Democrats registered to vote than Republicans. Even so, political advisers urged caution in straying too far from party ideology.
“The risk is, if you look like you’re running away from your own party, your party’s voters run away from you,” said Vince Casale, a Republican strategist.
Assemblywoman Gina Sillitti of Long Island is walking that line in a district in Nassau County that has seen an influx of conservative voters. The past elections have seen Republicans flip seat after seat on Long Island, leaving Ms. Sillitti as one of the few Democrats standing there.
Ms. Sillitti is hoping her centrist record and ground game will persuade voters to give her another term. “I try to, you know, press upon people that I am a democratic voice for Long Island and for my district in a city-centric conference.”
Ms. Sillitti has received nearly $300,000 from the Assembly Democrats’ campaign arm — money that should help to somewhat insulate Democrats from criticism that they had not allocated financial resources properly in this election cycle. Assembly Democrats are also spending in Central New York, where the incumbent Democrat, Marianne Buttenschon, faces Christine Esposito, a former Rome school board member who counts crime as her No. 1 issue.
In nearby Syracuse, the seat that Senator John Mannion vacated to run for Congress has become one of the Republicans’ best prospects of flipping a Senate seat, alongside a majority Asian district based in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where the incumbent Democrat, Iwen Chu, is battling against the Republican candidate, Steve Chan, a former police officer.
New York’s unexpected status as a national House battleground has meant that legislative races may be influenced by a deluge of political spending by congressional candidates — a phenomenon perhaps most sharply observed in Assembly District 100, which straddles two swing-district congressional races.
In District 100, Middletown is represented by Mr. Ryan, a Democrat. But the rest of the district is in Congressional District 19, where the Republican incumbent, Marc Molinaro, is facing Josh Riley in a fiercely competitive rematch from 2022 that has fueled an eye-popping $45 million in spending.
Many of those ads hammer Democrats in Washington and Albany over their handling of the migrant influx, and the decision to send $2.4 billion to New York City this year for the crisis.
The Republican candidate for Assembly in District 100, Lou Ingrassia Jr., has also echoed these sentiments, accusing Democrats of “a failure of leadership on the state and national level.”
Faced with a deeply unpopular issue, Democrats statewide have sought to turn a negative into a positive. Mr. Ingrassia’s opponent, Paula Kay, a former aide to the vacating seat holder, Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, said that her ties to the controlling party would give the district voters a greater voice in Albany.
“Quite frankly, I’m the only candidate who will have a seat at the table, who will be able to make decisions,” she said.
In another Senate race overshadowed by a congressional battle, Senator Anthony H. Palumbo of Suffolk County is appealing to his core Republican backers to send him back to Albany “to bring balance and common-sense solutions,” like lower taxes and more latitude for law enforcement.
But Democrats sense opportunity in Mr. Palumbo’s district, which overlaps with the race between the freshman Republican congressman Nick LaLota and John Avlon, a former CNN commentator.
Filings show that the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee has poured more than $700,000 into bolstering its candidate, Sarah Anker, a former Suffolk County legislator. The support, according to the committee chairman, State Senator Michael Gianaris, said had nothing to do with a lawsuit that Mr. Palumbo had filed against Senate Democrats in 2023.
“The fact is, we make our decisions based purely on the numbers and that district popped as a real good chance for us,” Mr. Gianaris said, adding: “It would give little extra fun to defeat him.”
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