All eyes are on the Empire State in the battle for the House, where there are at least five toss-up House races that could make or break a majority for either party. In the state, Republicans are fighting to hold onto seats they won in 2022, while Democrats are working to rebuild neglected party infrastructure.
In 2022, Republicans flipped four House seats in New York and held on in a close race in New York’s 22nd District. Although Democrats chipped away at those gains, retaking the Third District in a special election in early 2024, these five districts, alongside two other New York districts Democrats have identified as competitive, could be House majority-makers in 2024. By some estimations, the races in New York State delivered the House majority to the Republicans in a year that otherwise saw the GOP perform historically poorly for a midterm election.
This year, however, Democrats in New York seem to be feeling optimistic. They feel that the issues in 2024, particularly the focus on abortion, are more favorable to them than the crime-focused campaign in 2022. They also see Rep. Tom Suozzi’s victory in the special election in New York’s 3rd District as a template that they can work from in the general election.
This year, Democrats like Rep. Pat Ryan, who was one of the Democrats to hold onto his seat in 2022, told Salon that the party's new infrastructure gave the campaign the ability to “knock more doors, make more phone calls, and reach more voters than ever before.”
Democrats have said they were caught flat-footed by voters' perceptions of crime in the state. Others have argued that the Democrats inherited a party that was hollowed out in the wake of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation. Others still have pointed to the quick turnaround between redistricting and the 2022 general election as a hurdle in the 2022 campaigns.
A spokesperson for the DCCC, Ellie Dougherty, told Salon that the New York Democrats see the current issue set as more advantageous than the focuses in the 2022 campaign, saying that Democrats are “laser-focused on delivering on critical issues impacting their communities like protecting reproductive rights, lowering costs, and strengthening the border."
“Meanwhile, their Republican opponents have repeatedly peddled extremism and propped up corruption, which is why New Yorkers will reject them in November,” Dougherty said.
In 2024, Democrats face a different political landscape compared to 2022. Instead of a gubernatorial race at the top of the ticket, there is a presidential race. In years past the presidential elections have been a boon to down-ballot Democrats in New York because of high turnout in the heavily Democratic state.
While high turnout could still help Democrats, former President Donald Trump is polling better in New York than he did at this point in 2020. A recent Siena College survey found Trump with 39% support in New York. A survey from Siena College taken in late September 2020 found that Trump enjoyed just 29% support at this point in the race. Trump ended up losing the state with 38% support in New York in 2020.
State Democrats are facing issues beyond the presidential race. According to a recent Siena College survey, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s approval rating has sunk to an all-time low of just 39%. New York City Mayor Eric Adams was also recently indicted for allegedly exchanging favors in return for illegal donations from the Turkish government.
Democrats also think that the scandals of former Rep. George Santos, who represented the Third District before Suozzi, and the recent scandal surrounding Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, who gave part-time jobs to both his paramore and the child of his fiancée, has helped deflect Republican attacks against Adams’s alleged corruption.
In addition, the New York State Democratic Party is touting the “coordinated campaign,” an effort to get Democrats elected that initially drew comparisons to past promises to invest in down-ballot races but seems to be more serious than previous such endeavors.
What the coordinated campaign aims to do is to take pressure off of House campaigns by organizing a ground game on their behalf. So far, the state Democratic Party has opened up 40 field offices in the state, hired 100 full-time staffers and recruited 20,000 volunteers dedicated to things like canvasing and voter outreach.
Separately the Democrats have launched a new program aimed at organizing the party’s voter contact and outreach data and making it available to partner organizations. The Democratic firm TargetSmart was brought on board to help update and manage voter files in the interest of tracking voter outreach and Stac Labs was hired to help coordinate field efforts in New York.
In a statement issued Sept. 20, the state party indicated that the coordinated campaign effort had already seen volunteers knock on some 325,000 doors and make more than 1 million phone calls.
Whether the coordinated campaign lives up to the hype, it’s clear that the effort from the state party is already above and beyond what the party did to help down-ballot Democrats in 2022. In 2022, Hochul’s gubernatorial campaign was the closest the party came to having a coherent statewide effort.
The national party is also dedicating significant resources to New York. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dedicated some $3.5 million to electing Rep. Tom Suozzi in a special election earlier this year. This is only a fraction of the more than $21 million spent on the race but represents a significant investment from the DCCC.
