“Well, we lost the presidential election,” The New York Times recorded former House speaker Nancy Pelosi as saying this past weekend, “[but] in many cases, our Democrats in the House ran ahead of the presidential ticket. So, your branding that we all got rejected, we didn’t. We’re still in the fight right now, and it’s going to be a very close call.”
And then she laid claim for the Democrats’ ownership of a much-disputed constituency. “We are the kitchen-table, working-class party of America,” she said.
Donald Trump received the highest proportion of New York State votes in a presidential election in this century. His total in the statewide unofficial returns was 3.438 million votes, almost a million fewer than Kamala Harris’ 4.346 million. By contrast, in 2020 Joe Biden got 5.245 million in the solidly blue state, close to two million more than Donald Trump’s 3.252 million. In almost all the state’s counties Harris received fewer votes than Biden had in 2020, while Trump had more in 2024 than in 2020.
As elsewhere, there was a lot of down-ballot ticket-splitting. U.S. senator Kirsten Gillibrand, for instance, ran about 100,000 votes ahead of Harris statewide, while Gillibrand’s little-known Republican opponent was 300,000 votes behind Trump’s total.
Pelosi’s observation that in many cases House Democrats ran ahead of the presidential ticket is correct. Despite the strong Republican presidential showing, the Democrats flipped three House seats in New York State – one in Nassau County, one here in the Hudson Valley-Catskills region, and the other in Central New York.
Retro renderings of revenge and restoration resonated with a restless electorate in the 2024 national election. Trump markedly improved his New York State performance in 2020, which in turn easily outstripped how he did in the state in 2016.
“I spent a lot of time this year tracking the Democratic campaigns in swing states and districts, and I was repeatedly struck by how similar their messages were,” wrote columnist David Leonhardt in Monday’s Times. “They were feisty, populist and patriotic. They distanced themselves from elite cultural liberalism. They largely ignored Trump.”
Here’s what happened in the three Hudson Valley congressional races that some had touted – incorrectly, as it turned out — as the battleground districts that could determine which party would control the House of Representatives:
Mike Lawler
Responding to relentless Democratic advertising tying him to Trump’s coattails, GOP freshman congressmember Mile Lawler used a stratagem that adroitedly avoided the linkage. Harris, he said, was worse.
Lawler, now 38 years old and a former state assemblymember, beat former congressmember Mondaire Jones in the 17th CD this month by an unofficial total of 192,111 votes to 169,329, with winning margins in Putnam County and the portions of Rockland and Dutchess counties in the district. He was outvoted by Jones only in the part of heavily Democratic portion of Westchester County.
For the past two years, Lawler has been a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Financial Affairs Committee, providing him with opportunities to assist constituents with legislative help and member items. Lawler recently boasted that he was “set to deliver more than $70 million for New York’s 17th Congressional District in his first term in office.”
Though assuring his constituents that he’d work with people of various political persuasions to bring money to his district, he left little doubt as to his own core loyalties.
“You can look at a district like mine, where Joe Biden won by ten points four years ago, and when all ballots are counted Donald Trump very likely will win my district, or come just short, which is significant movement across the country,” Lawler told The Hill last week. Lawler said the success of the Republicans, led by Trump, all “boils down to one thing: the issues.”
Pat Ryan
Like Mike Lawler, congressmember Pat Ryan – with a very different political outlook – expanded his hold on the Hudson Valley congressional district he currently represents. In unofficial 2024 results, the Gardiner Democrat had 196,904 votes to Republican-Conservative Alison Esposito’s 149,896 in the three-county Democratic-leaning 18th CD.
The West Point graduate, a combat veteran who serves on the Armed Services Committee and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of the House, spoke in Kingston on the night of the election of “a difficult and divisive and dark moment in our country.” It was a time, he said, when “our better angels are what we’re going to need to continue to call on in the coming hours and days and weeks.”
Two years ago, Ryan narrowly defeated assemblymember Colin Schmitt, whose electoral margin in Orange County – with almost half of the district’s voters — almost exceeded Ryan’s edge in Ulster and Dutchess counties. This time out, the well-financed Ryan ran well ahead of former GOP candidate for lieutenant governor Esposito in all three counties.
Ryan, it should be remembered, became a congressmember by narrowly winning a special election to fill the seat vacated by the elevation of Antonio Delgado to lieutenant governor. That gave him seniority over those like Lawler first elected in November 2022 – an important consideration in the distribution of member-item money.
Ryan has used his standing to strengthen his political position within the 18th CD. His House committee assignments have provided opportunity aplenty to bring home the bacon.
Josh Riley
This was the local race that flipped a congressional seat. The derisive accusation that Marcus Molinaro had morphed into a latter-day MAGA Trumpian may have cost the former Dutchess County resident his congressional seat.
An identification with Trump may have been an asset in much of the rest of the country, but it was a liability in the 19th CD, stretching from Columbia County westward through the Catkills to Tompkins County on the west. Riley lives in Ithaca,
Unofficial election-night returns showed Josh Riley with 183,709 votes to Molinaro’s 178,022. The Cornell vote in Tompkins County provided Riley a huge plurality while Trump ran close to his 2020 level. Riley also won Columbia County and the part of Ulster in the district, and he broke even in Rensselaer County to the north and Broome County in the south. The results in those areas were sufficient to offset Molinaro’s advantage in the more rural small counties of the district.
According to Politico, Riley attacked Molinaro as “a career politician” and Molinaro called Riley “a D.C. insider.”
“For too long in our economy and our politics, the deck has been stacked against everyday people,” said Riley the day after the election, “and it’s been stacked in favor of big, powerful special interests who pay politicians to do what’s best for their bottom line, not yours.” Riley said that form of inequity had to change.
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