Republicans in New York state underperformed expectations last night. It’s part of a larger pattern that the party needs to worry about.
The headline results were the special House elections in New York’s old 19th and 23rd Congressional Districts. In the 19th District, Pat Ryan, a Democrat, defeated Marc Molinaro. This seat, which Democratic former Rep. Anthony Delgado abandoned to run for lieutenant governor this year, is R+4, according to FiveThirtyEight, meaning that over the last couple of elections, it was on average 4 percentage points more Republican than the national electorate. So it’s a bit alarming to have a Democrat win it by about 4 points instead. It may be that the district moved leftward in the last two years, but given that this year’s electorate is supposed to be more strongly Republican than usual, this is a pretty bad wipeout.
This is a confusing result, because both Ryan and Molinaro won primaries and will be running for Congress in the general election this fall, but not against each other — Ryan runs in the new 18th District, which is more Democratic at D+3, whereas Molinaro runs in the new 19th District, which now be only R+1.
In western New York, Joe Sempolinski won the old 23rd District, defeating Democrat Max Della Pia. But even in victory, he underperformed, winning an R+15 district by less than 7 points.
Combine that with the abortion referendum loss in Kansas earlier this season, and you get a sinking feeling that Democrats are effectively mobilizing their voter base on that issue. The New York Times tends to be a bit fanatical about abortion and place it first on everything, which may give reasons for skepticism, but the paper might actually have a point in this case.
Then again, this may not be a national problem. It could be a problem of particularly poor candidates, low-turnout special elections, and the weird dynamic of Molinaro having to run in two differently drawn districts at the same time. It may also be a New York-specific problem — if abortion cuts in the Democrats’ favor here, it may cut against them in other places.
Earlier special election results from Texas point to better Republican prospects. So do last night’s local results from Florida, where the backing of Gov. Ron DeSantis helped propel 19 conservative candidates to general-election victories in important school board races and seven more into runoffs. (Yeah, I know, school boards. But those are actually a pretty big deal in Florida right now — maybe the nation’s hottest cultural issue right now at its geographical epicenter, in terms of both COVID-19 mandates and left-wing indoctrination on race and gender.)
DeSantis’s success is a reminder that one thing Republicans in New York lack is a well-known and popular leader. That’s simply inevitable when your state party is a perennial punching bag.
It would probably be a mistake to take a more or less fair-fight district in New York as a bellwether for anything. But if Republicans are going to put together a House majority, they have to win seats such as the old NY-19. Currently, they have seven House incumbents in New York state, and unless they can win in upstate districts worse than the old NY-19, they will only have six after this November’s election.
Last night in New York, Republicans didn’t do what they needed to do. That’s a problem.
