Within the Margin

Let’s get a look at the final forecast map before breaking down the competitive races:

Next, we’ll go district-by-district for the competitive seats.

New York – 26 seats, after losing one from the 2020 Census.

Current: 19 Dems, 8 Reps

Projected: 19 Dems, 7 Reps

I don’t have the energy to recount the twists and turns in NY’s amateur-hour redistricting saga. Suffice to say, the Congressional map was ultimately drawn by a special master who made mostly reasonable choices. I will note that the eliminated seat is essentially the old NY-23 in the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes; represented by Tom Reed (R) until his resignation earlier this year and by Republican Joe Sempolinski since his narrower-than-expected August special election victory. There are many competitive seats here, though a few are likely out of reach in a year where there’s a real chance of a close race for governor for the first time since 1994 (two Pataki re-election landslides in 1998 and 2002, followed by four easy Dem wins by Spitzer and Cuomo). On to the districts, starting with Long Island:

NY-1: Lee Zeldin vacated the eastern Long Island seat, held since 2014, to run for governor. The new 1st takes in more of the North Shore and less of the South; recent trends have seen the former getting bluer and the latter getting redder in contrast to historical norms. Accordingly it goes from a seat Trump won by 4.2 points to one evenly-matched in 2020. This year, though, all signs are that the Island is experiencing a red wave even if the rest of the country is a little more uncertain. Bridget Fleming, a Suffolk County legislator, would be a very strong candidate in most circumstances. Former elections commissioner, Amityville trustee and Navy veteran Nick LaLota couldn’t properly get a state senate candidacy off the ground in 2020 but is running a smooth enough Congressional campaign with the winds at his back. Likely Rep.

NY-2: Long Island’s South Shore, stretching from Massapequa Park to Eastport. Freshman Andrew Garbarino (R) faced a rematch with veteran and Babylon town councilmember Jackie Gordon, who he defeated by seven points in 2020. The district s bluer but still narrowly voted for Trump, and Garbarino strong profile as a level-headed, constituent-oriented member would serve him well even if it wasn’t shaping up as a Republican year on the island. Likely Rep.

NY-3: Long Island’s North Shore, including Glen Cove, the town of North Hempstead, and a small piece of northeast Queens. Moderate Democrat Tom Suozzi vacated this seat in a hopeless primary challenge to Kathy Hochul. In his place, Dems have nominated businessman and DNC member Robert Zimmerman, whose profile as a big political donor is not exactly what this political moment called for. Reps are running George Santos, an insurrection-supporting investment banker who lost to Suozzi by 12.5% in 2020. It’s believed to be the first matchup of openly gay candidates in a Congressional general election, but don’t confuse Santos for a socially moderate Republican. It’s a tough year for LI Dems but Zimmerman probably holds on against a candidate who’s extreme by North Shore standards. Tilt Dem.

NY-4: southwest Nassau County. Moderate Dem Kathleen Rice has held this seat pretty effectively since 2014, but is retiring – perhaps to avoid the difficulties entrapping so many Long Island Dems last year and today. Laura Gillen is running, and she’s familiar with the ups and downs of Nassau politics: in 2017, she became the first Democratic supervisor in a hundred years in the massive Town of Hempstead. Two years later, she was defeated. Republicans nominated Hempstead councilman Anthony D’Esposito, and he’s closing out the race with a well-funded negative ad buy calling Gillen a foe of police – which nothing in her record as town supervisor supports. Quite the opposite, actually. Biden got 57% here but local elections since then show quite a different picture. I think Gillen has just enough to hold on, but if I were to make a last-minute switch in any district it would probably be this one. Tilt Dem.

NY-11: Max Rose flipped this Staten Island/southern Brooklyn district in 2018 and former assemblymember and NYC mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis took it back in ‘20. I’m not convinced she’s a strong incumbent, but she came out of redistricting with her district sufficiently intact. It goes from a 10.6-point Trump win to 7.2, and that’s going to be enough in downstate NY this year. Likely Rep.

NY-17: Rockland, Putnam, northern Westchester and a small part of southern Dutchess. DCCC chair and five-term incumbent Sean Patrick Maloney has made everything harder than it has to be this year. Freshman assemblymember Mike Lawler has some political chops and comes across as what used to pass for a mainstream Republican. Maloney’s attempts to make him into a MAGA extremist seem to be falling flat. But Maloney has gotten some help down the stretch from endorsements in the Hasidic communities that seemed to be up for grabs this year, and probably has just enough juice in this Biden +10 district to hold on. Tilt Dem.

NY-18: Most of Ulster and Dutchess and all of Orange. Ulster County executive, West Point grad and combat veteran Pat Ryan (D) rode incredible margins in Ulster and Columbia counties, and acceptable loss margins in Dutchess, Otsego and a host of deep-red counties, to a special election in the old 19th in August over GOP dream recruit Marc Molinaro. That was in a district Biden won by a point and a half; now Ryan gets to run in the new, more compact 18th that Biden carried by eight and a half. His opponent is two-term Assemblymember Colin Schmitt, a proud Trump Republican who boarded a bus on January 6 to give a pep talk to those who would storm the Capitol hours later. Schmitt speaks slowly and with apparent gravitas to conceal his extremist tendencies; he also pretends to be a veteran when he does not qualify as such under federal and state standards. Ryan is well-positioned to survive despite a late barrage of outside spending against him, though rock-bottom early vote turnout in Poughkeepsie and Newburgh ought to have Democrats very concerned. Lean Dem.

NY-19: The successor to the 19th that Dems held in a post-Dobbs special election after Antonio Delgado resigned to become lieutenant governor. Includes northern Ulster as well as Columbia and Greene counties, Binghamton, Ithaca and various rural areas in between. The old 19th voted for Biden by a point and a half; the new one by a little over four and a half. Dutchess County executive Marc Molinaro is running here after his special election defeat, but he won’t have any of his hometown turf in Dutchess this time. He did well in most of this territory when he ran for governor in 2018, through it’s worth noting Andrew Cuomo was never popular in this district. Molinaro’s opponent is Josh Riley, an Endicott native who has been working as a U.S. Senate staffer. Riley has run a smooth and positive campaign, while Molinaro notes that Riley’s recent return to the district means he hasn’t been paying property taxes (very high in parts of NYS) here. But Riley skillfully reminds voters of his local roots, so he can probably dodge those attacks. Siena has twice shown Riley up five points – that feels too good to be true, but it’s worth noting that Ulster and Tompkins (home to Ithaca) counties produced massive turnout and vote shares for Dems in the August special elections. I expect the Dobbs decision to generate that result again, offsetting resurgent GOP turnout in the very red counties like Chenango, Schoharie and Tioga that also feature prominently in this district. Tilt Dem.

NY-21: Permit me one district of personal privilege. In the North Country seat (which also includes parts of the Capital and Leatherstocking regions), Elise Stefanik has won easily since 2014 even while transitioning from a relatively moderate Republican to an ardent Trump acolyte virtually indistinguishable from a Matt Gaetz for a Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Democratic candidate is a high school classmate of mine, and more importantly a former CIA officer who served as Director of Counterterrorism for President Obama’s National Security Council. He overlapped with the Trump administration as well before departing for private sector work. Castelli is a relentless campaigner, a believable moderate, and is driven by the oath his took to defend this country from enemies foreign and domestic – and by Stefanik’s failure to honor hers, most notably on and since January 6. I understand the district is virtually unwinnable, especially in a year when Dems are struggling in NY. But I need to believe that Americans can still believe in our best tendencies enough to overcome our worst, and so I need to believe this result is not written in stone. Likely Republican.

NY-22: Renumbered from NY-24, this is the Syracuse/central NY district. John Katko held its predecessor from 2014 onward despite its Democratic lean; Katko was genuinely moderate and not deferential to Trump. He opted to retire rather than face annihilation in a primary after voting for impeachment. Redistricting, meanwhile, largely preserved the character of the district – it’s Onondaga (Syracuse), Madison and Oneida (Utica/Rome) counties, along with a handful of souls in Oswego County. Siena’s poll found GOP businessman Brandon Williams leading Navy vet Francis Conole by five in late September, and then found the Dem in the lead by four last week. Given this Biden +7.6 district’s tendency to prefer Congressional Republicans to go with their Dem presidents, I continue with the Tilt Rep rating. 

NY-25: No, I don’t think this one is as close as Republicans are claiming. Biden won it by 20 and Morelle might be weaker than that, but he’s not losing it. Safe Dem (still).