Channeling anxiety over persistent crime and inflation, Republicans ran a near-clean sweep through New York’s congressional toss-up races. While their party struggled in states like Virginia and Michigan, Republican candidates made deep inroads into the suburbs of Long Island and the Hudson Valley, even enclaves of Brooklyn and Queens where President Biden had won handily. By the time they were done, Republicans had won four Democratic House seats, more than in any other state, and had won a shocking prize: the defeat of Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the House Democratic campaign chairman charged with protecting power of his party in Congress. The Republican surge in New York, which also dented the Democratic lead in state races, did not lead to an upset in the governor’s contest. But Gov. Kathy Hochul’s five-point victory over Representative Lee Zeldin, a Trump-backed Republican, appeared paradoxically to have an impact on Republicans, who won in areas where Mr. Zeldin had performed well. “It was a terrible night in New York,” said Howard Wolfson, a top Democratic strategist, summing up his party’s disappointment. “It’s infuriating that a night as good as it was for Democrats overall is undone by the arrogance and incompetence here.” Republicans, on the other hand, were thrilled. They argued that their resurgence not only laid the groundwork for a new Republican majority in Congress, but also pointed a way to reclaim old strongholds in Nassau County and New York’s hard-working boroughs outside Manhattan for years to come — if it is still not a road to win across the territory. “House Republicans wouldn’t have a majority if it weren’t for New York State,” said Representative Elise Stefanik, New York’s top Republican in Washington, who predicted the party would also reject what is seen as a prime chance to pick up the votes. Democrats in Syracuse. “How about that irony?” Although the race for control of the House was still too close to go national, Ms. Stefanik’s party needed to pick up just five seats nationally to win the House, a number that seemed within reach. In New York, Republicans were set to win three seats after losing one in redistricting. The only other state where more than one has been shot so far is Florida, though Arizona may also follow suit.
Who will control Congress? Here’s When We’ll Find Out.
Card 1 of 4 Much remains uncertain. For the second election day in a row, election night ended without a clear winner. Nate Cohn, The Times’ chief political analyst, takes a look at the state of the House and Senate races and when we might know the outcome: Home. The Needle suggests the House is leaning Republican, but the GOP is nowhere close to being declared the winner in several key races where late mail-in ballots have the potential to help Democrats. It will take days to count those ballots. The conclave. The Senate race will come down to four states: Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona. The pending ballots in Nevada and Arizona may take days to count, but control of the chamber may ultimately hinge on Georgia, which is headed for a Dec. 6 runoff. How we got here. Political conditions seemed ripe for Republicans to make big midterm showings, but voters had other ideas. While we wait for more results, read our five suggestions and analysis on why this ‘red wave’ didn’t materialize for the GOP The repeal, particularly on the House map, was not entirely unexpected since New York’s once-in-a-decade redistricting process went down the drain. Democrats in Albany began the year hoping they could draw new lines that would protect their incumbents and cost Republicans up to four seats in the state to offset Republican gains elsewhere. But New York’s highest court, in response to a Republican lawsuit, struck down the maps as unconstitutional and put more competitive alternatives in their place. In a few other states, courts ruled that Republicans had drawn maps but failed to enforce those rulings, but in New York, the justices insisted on a redistricting this year — instantly turning the state into a crucial, if unlikely, House battleground. . And yet, even accounting for the changing playing field, many Democratic House candidates in New York appear to be underperforming compared to their counterparts in other states. For vociferous local Democratic power brokers, the result added fuel to old feuds and long-standing disagreements between the party’s left and more moderate wings. On the left, where prominent progressives affiliated with the Working Families Party are putting aside differences to help Ms. Hochul cross the finish line, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has led calls for the resignation of state party chairman Jay Jacobs, who he also leads the Nassau County Democratic Party. “It’s no secret that a huge amount of party leadership in New York State is based on big money and old-school, calcified political engineering that creates a very anemic voting base that is disengaged and disenfranchised,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. in an interview, adding that she was “clear” about the need to rebuild the party apparatus from the bottom up. While many progressives did not name Ms. Hotchul, they lamented that many candidates failed to articulate a bolder agenda that would inspire the state’s 6.5 million Democrats and invest in more resilient grassroots organizing, rather than trying to sway voters. for fear of Mr. Zeldin. UPDATED Nov. 9, 2022, 8:20 pm ET “If you stand for something and fight for it and voters think you’re not just trying to be a lighter version of your Republican opponent, they come out and vote,” said Michael Gianaris, the deputy Senate majority leader. There was clearly a strong mix of issues: Polls showed that voters living in the New York suburbs and in urban Orthodox Jewish and Asian enclaves were unusually motivated by rising crime. Foreign spending records flooded the airwaves and Republicans showed up in droves. Ms Hochul failed to generate significant excitement at the top of the ticket and her party faced typical mid-term opposition for any party in power. And then there was the redistricting fiasco, for which many liberals blame Mr. Jacobs and his onetime patron, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. In their telling, Mr. Cuomo cut a corrupt deal with Senate Republicans a decade ago to put in place a flawed redistricting process and appointed the conservative judges who drew the lines. When the party put a ballot proposal before voters last fall to try to fix it, the measure failed, and some, including Mr. Gianaris, accused Mr. Jacobs of not spending money to advance the measure against a conservative attack. . In an interview, Mr. Jacobs said he was “thrown under the bus” for something he was never asked to do. He defended his administration, saying he had raised and spent millions of dollars this fall on statewide turnout drives. And he blamed Mr. Gianaris, who oversaw the map-making process in Albany, for making such a blatant grab of House seats that the courts couldn’t help but intervene. “People say things, but they just don’t know what they’re talking about,” Mr. Jacobs said. But the argument between the competing factions is broader, with much of it rooted in a years-long debate over crime and changes the Legislature made to the state’s bail law in 2019. The changes were designed to stop the use of bail in cash to try to make the criminal justice system fairer. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx, said she believed too many Democratic candidates hurt their own cause Tuesday by “leaning into Republican narratives about crime and safety” instead of reframing them. to talk about guns. violence and its roots. But more moderate Democrats like Mr. Wolfson argued that voters had repeatedly given Democrats clear signs that they needed to proactively tackle “crime and disorder” and that, fairly or not, the bail changes were disproportionately blamed for rising crime. . Long Island Republicans have successfully used the issue as a wedge to help sweep the Nassau County election in 2021, and this year, Mr. Zeldin and his allies up and down the ballot have made it the focus of their campaign. Although Ms. Hochul did push through amendments strengthening the law this spring, she generally avoided making public safety a top campaign message until the final weeks of the race. She also upset some of her fellow Democrats when she appeared at times to downplay the extent of the threat. (Ms. Hochul did not make any public appearances Wednesday to discuss the results.) “We had an early warning system flashing red and people just ignored it,” Mr Wolfson said. Republicans spent millions of dollars hammering their opponents on public safety and frustration with the state’s economic crisis on their way to winning all four House seats and several Senate seats on Long Island. In Nassau County’s south shore, Anthony D’Esposito, a retired police officer and local Republican official, won a district that Mr. Biden had won by 14 percentage points. Republicans achieved a similar swing just to the north, where Jorge Santos, a far-right candidate, led his Democratic opponent by eight points. Similar attacks were used by assemblyman Mike Lawler, Mr Maloney’s opponent…
