In the weeks after Democrats lost their House majority in 2022, party leaders in New York – the epicenter of the implosion – jockeyed hard to deflect blame.
If only they had fought so ferociously before Election Day, critics joked.
This year, that same state party is being cast in a different role – the lead in a complicated but largely successful story that ends with New York’s perennially blundering Democratic operation picking off Republican incumbents in the US House and helping to depress GOP gains in what could be a Washington trifecta come January.
CNN has yet to project the House majority, but New York Democrats have at the very least played a critical role in keeping the GOP’s House margins narrow so far, in what turned out to be disastrous year for the party around the country. Donald Trump is, once again, the president-elect, and Republicans have flipped the Senate.
But even that has been overshadowed by the country’s broader shift toward Trump and the emergence of his MAGA movement as the kind of multicultural, working-class coalition Democrats pine for.
New York fared about the same as other traditionally deep-blue states at the top of the ticket. Vice President Kamala Harris easily outpaced Trump, winning by about 12 points, but her final margin of victory was dramatically lower than Joe Biden’s 23 points only four years ago, which was consistent with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 showing.
Trump increased his advantages in parts of the state that supported him in the past, profited from low Democratic enthusiasm in liberal areas, and feasted on swing voters’ discontent in parts of New York City and its suburbs – enough to make him the first Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988 to win Nassau County, on Long Island.
Trump’s surge in Gotham
The picture was no less bleak for Democrats in New York City, where Trump improved on his past performances in nearly every neighborhood, from its most progressive enclaves to more traditionally conservative outer-borough turf. It was no fluke, either. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat who scorned party liberals during his 2021 campaign, performed best in many of the same areas.
Recently indicted on federal corruption charges, Adams has seen his approval ratings plummet to historic lows. But it was not his criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the border or his open disdain for progressive activists that set off the backlash.
“Eric Adams’ problems right now are not a rejection of Eric Adams’ ideology at all – it’s an objection to rampant corruption and criminality,” Democratic strategist Alyssa Cass said. “But they still like what he has to offer.”
His tough-on-crime message, which shared more with Trump’s than Biden’s (or that of Harris once she entered the race), has also remained a winner. Crime is trending down in the city, and around the country, but statistics don’t tell the full story, Republican City Council member Joe Borelli told CNN.
“Say whatever you want about the crime rate, the toothpaste is behind the glass,” Borelli said, referencing retailers like Target and CVS that still keep everyday items like shampoo, toothpaste and deodorant behind a barrier in their stores.
The backlash against Democrats was evident across the five boroughs.
In Brooklyn, Democratic state Sen. Iwen Chu’s loss to Republican challenger Steve Chan was especially tough for many in the party to stomach. In 2022, Chu became the first Asian woman elected to the state Senate. But Chan’s fierce opposition to city plans for a homeless shelter in the district – coupled with his vocal appreciation for Trump, his disdain for the “far left” and a consistent message that crime is up despite a national downward trend – carried him to a clear general election victory.
Walking through Bensonhurst days after his election, Chan, a retired police sergeant, told CNN that public safety and the economy were dominating factors in his race.
“People are fed up in South Brooklyn,” Chan said. “People are fed up in the Bronx. From corner to corner of New York City, we saw Republicans gain traction in voter sentiment, and it’s all because of the quality of life; their wallets are hurting as well and they’re speaking out in volumes.”
Born in Hong Kong, Chan said the district’s large immigrant population, made up of Asian Americans, Latinos and some Eastern Europeans, sees a difference between themselves and recently arrived migrants.
“Immigrants like myself and my friends in this neighborhood – and we’re all immigrants – they understand what Donald Trump is saying,” Chan said. “The fact that we are even pooled with the new wave of migrants is kind of an insult to the migrants of yesteryears who came and built a life for themselves. They understand that President Trump is not talking about them.”
That argument popped up across the city, in some of its most diverse areas. Asked about Trump’s support from Latino men and his increasing strength with Black male voters, Brooklyn-born House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries suggested to NY1 on Wednesday that he was not surprised.
“I think that people have been feeling economically distressed for decades, certainly in many communities of color,” Jeffries said. “And we’ve got to do a better job of transforming that economic reality.”
State Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist poised to challenge Adams in next year’s mayoral primary, said national Democratic Party leadership needed to feel the heat.
“I think Tuesday was a referendum on the economy, especially for working-class voters and for working-class New Yorkers,” Mamdani told CNN. “And it is enraging that the Democratic Party allowed Donald Trump, of all people, to present himself as the candidate who would make Americans’ lives more affordable and would bring peace back to the world.”
But even as Democrats in the city – much like many others around the country – mourned and stewed over their losses, they maintained their dominance in the state Legislature. The hotly contested US House races outside New York City also delivered incongruously good news.
Democrats blaze a new path in the suburbs
In the suburbs and in a key Central New York district, Democratic challengers flipped three seats won by Republicans in 2022. Rep. Tom Suozzi’s victory, after winning a special election last year to replace Republican former Rep. George Santos, takes the number up to four. And in the Hudson Valley, Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan was reelected by more than 13 points, up from a margin of just over a point two years ago, bulldozing a prized Republican recruit.
Republicans had been making gains, especially in the suburbs, since 2021, when a red wave hit local Democrats on Long Island. Republicans then flipped four House seats in 2022, cueing an existential crisis for some state Democratic leaders.
The organization had operated under the thumb – and for the benefit – of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for a decade before his resignation in 2021. Absent that leader, the party seemed to lack direction. And despite the many warning signs, Democratic candidates in 2022 seemed unprepared or unwilling to address anger over inflation, cost of living, crime, immigration and border security.
They paid dearly.
Even New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, atop the ticket for the first time after being Cuomo’s running mate in 2018, came within about 6 points of losing to her Republican challenger, then-Rep. Lee Zeldin. Cuomo won by more than 23 points four years earlier. (The Republican nominee he defeated, Marc Molinaro, was among the GOP House victors in 2022.) Shortly before this year’s elections, chatter about a potential primary challenge to Hochul in 2026 bubbled up.
This year, though, both the Democratic party infrastructure and its closest allies – at least on paper – managed to turn the page, or at least briefly set aside old ideological grievances.
Hochul, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Jeffries launched a battleground state-style coordinated campaign that opened about 40 offices in swing districts and hired nearly 100 new staffers – revamping what the party in a postelection memo called a “moribund operation.”
Ryan, part of a short list of Democrats to consistently win tough elections over the past three years, eased past GOP challenger Alison Esposito in his Hudson Valley district despite being considered one of the party’s more vulnerable incumbents.
“The New York state coordinated (campaign) was a night and day, huge difference maker for us,” Ryan told CNN. “We didn’t really have any of that last time. This time we had six field offices, over a dozen full-time organizers, a campus organizer, a Latino constituency organizer. A lot of that field work and organizing work showed.”
Ryan also emerged with a warning for Democrats as they reenter the political wilderness.
“If you’re using words like moderate or progressive, you’re missing the whole f**king point. It’s not ideological,” Ryan said. “It’s really about who is fighting for the people and who is empowering and enabling elites.”
The same brand of ideologically agnostic politics that has lifted Ryan also benefited a new outside group called Battleground New York, which was formed by a coalition of labor and progressive organizations. Its aim was to create the kind of massive field operation the party itself never seeded. The group ended up raising more than $11 million – and won four of the five House races it played in.
“Battleground fit into an overall Democratic ecosystem that came out of the shortfalls of 2022,” spokesperson Eric Koch said. “We worked in conjunction with partners at the state party, House Majority PAC and others to create a really strong ecosystem that (nearly) wiped out the sort of fluke Republican class of 2022.”
Koch and others also credited Biden and Harris for helping New York Democrats win back those seats. Biden’s part, they said, came in his decision to drop out. Harris was mostly applauded for running a do-no-harm-style campaign that, as many of her close allies have said, insulated the party from even deeper down-ballot losses.
“She knew she had to build a coalition that ranged from Dick Cheney to AOC. So she was saying, ‘We need a lethal fighting force.’ ‘We need to protect Ukraine and Israel.’ ‘We need to be a leader in the world’,” former Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said. “All very middle-of-the road, strong Republican things that meant the messaging was much more in line with how our voters feel.”
