House Republicans are aiming to make the head of the Democrats’ campaign arm a high-profile political trophy on their way to winning the majority in 2022.
Republicans need to net about five seats to reclaim the House majority they lost in 2018, and they see New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as vulnerable.
Maloney has represented the 18th Congressional District since 2013, including portions of Orange, Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties. It’s an R+1 district, according to the Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voter Index. President Joe Biden won the district over former President Donald Trump 52% to 47%. And Maloney won reelection in 2020 with just over 55% of the vote. He won by a similar margin in 2018 and 2016.
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The GOP’s campaign arm sees an opportunity to take down the DCCC chairman this cycle. The National Republican Congressional Committee included Maloney on their list of 47 targeted Democratic districts to flip in 2022.
“House Democrats are advancing a dangerous, socialist agenda that doesn’t work for the American people, and it’s not lost on Hudson Valley voters that Sean Patrick Maloney is leading the charge,” NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “Maloney’s embrace of Democrats’ efforts to raise taxes, open our borders and defund the police is why he will lose in 2022.”
Maloney’s likely opponent is Republican Assemblyman Colin Schmitt, who is trying to link the congressman to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.
“He’s now gone full Washington, D.C., and has left the Hudson Valley behind,” Schmitt told the Washington Examiner. “He’s voting 100% of the time with Nancy Pelosi. He sold us out. He sold out our local law enforcement. He’s aligned with the radical left, turning his back on cops.”
A Maloney spokesperson disputed Schmitt’s claim that the lawmaker “abandoned” his district, pointing to the over 180 town halls he’s hosted, in-person and virtual, including four in recent weeks in which he discussed his work with local law enforcement.
“Since coming to Congress, the chairman has passed 41 pieces of legislation into law, returned $37 million in federal payments to taxpayers (including $12 million to veterans), and assisted over 9,000 people with cases involving Social Security, Medicare, IRS, and the VA,” the spokesperson said.
A DCCC spokesman, Chris Hayden, said Republicans’ plans to take down Maloney won’t work. Hayden linked the NRCC chairman to Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been stripped of her committee assignments for social media posts before she was in Congress promoting white supremacist and antisemitic conspiracy theories and advocating violence against Democratic officeholders. Democrats are also pointing to their strong win in a New Mexico special election House race last week.
“Tom Emmer’s 2022 plan is on full display here; a grab bag of lies about Democrats coupled with a loving embrace of dangerous QAnon cheerleaders like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Colin Schmitt,” Hayden said.
“But you can’t blame him — he needs to distract voters from the fact that every single Republican voted against putting shots in arms, checks in pockets, and $350B in state and local funding that is funding police departments across the country,” he said.
And New York Democrats have slammed Schmitt for speaking to a group of D.C.-bound pro-Trump supporters, who attended the outgoing president’s Jan. 6 protest, which devolved into a riot at the Capitol over Congress’s certification of Biden’s presidential win.
Schmitt, however, defended the group he spoke to, telling a local News 12 reporter at the time they were not part of the violence at the Capitol, which he had previously condemned.
Maloney is known as a skilled party strategist who, before winning his seat in 2012 by defeating an incumbent Republican, was staff secretary for President Bill Clinton. The job title belies its importance, as the staff secretary effectively controls the paper flow to the president. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh held the same position during President George W. Bush’s administration.
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Maloney was tapped in November as head of the House Democrats’ campaign arm. He won the position after Democrats surprisingly lost a dozen House seats, even as Biden won the White House. Maloney replaced the now-retiring Rep. Cheri Bustos, an Illinois Democrat, whose district twice voted for Trump and who in 2020 had a closer-than-expected race herself.
One wild card in the 18th Congressional District matchup is redistricting. State Democrats in New York control the political mapmaking process. New York is losing a House seat due to slower population growth over the past decade than other states. If state Democrats redraw maps aggressively enough in the party’s favor, they could turn the current 18-9 House seat edge favoring Democrats to 23-3. Such a move would likely make the district Maloney represents considerably more Democratic.
