After weeks of turmoil, a massive shakeup for the Democratic presidential ticket is raising the party’s hopes for down ballot contests across New York.
“The enthusiasm is tangible. There has been a shift,” John Mannion, a Democrat looking to win a Syracuse area congressional seat, said.
That district, currently represented by Republican incumbent Brandon Williams, is one of a handful of races across the state that could — if Democrats succeed in flipping them — help Mannion’s party snatch control of the U.S. House. The others are on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley.
Mannion argues President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside from his reelection bid was the right move, saying that while voters he speaks with believe the president has “done a great job in a challenging time,” his age is “a concern.”
In 2020, Biden bested former President Donald Trump in reliably blue New York by more than 20 points.
However, polls from earlier this year had Biden ahead by only single digits, sparking concerns he could be a drag on down ballot contests.
“You had Democratic candidates that were moping around thinking, ‘Oh my god, the top of the ticket is going to kill us this year.’ — just like [Governor] Kathy Hochul’s relatively poor performance at the top of the ticket hurt them in 2022,” Lawrence Levy, who heads the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said.
In 2022, Hochul beat her Republican rival Lee Zeldin in the governor’s race by approximately six percentage points. Meanwhile, Republicans flipped several congressional seats across the state, contributing to Democrats losing the House majority that year.
But now, with Kamala Harris taking the reins, there is a sense of excitement that analysts and some Democrats argue could reshape New York’s trajectory in November, potentially giving them a better shot at flipping competitive seats.
“I think there’s a lot more enthusiasm now, amongst Democrats, among African-American Democrats, among young people, among women,” Democrat Rep. Tom Suozzi said.
Consider New York’s fourth district in Nassau County — one of the most racially diverse of New York’s competitive seats. Biden carried the district by more than 14 percentage points in 2020, before Republican Anthony D’Esposito won the congressional seat in 2022.
Levy argues that seat is ripe for the picking for Democrats.
“One of the reasons that Anthony D’Esposito was able to flip the heavily Democratic suburban district two years ago was that Black voters, Latino voters, came out way under their proportions of the population,” Levy said. “Now with the prospect of the first Black female president, you may see turnout in these Black communities that will approach what it was for Barack Obama.”
Still, the Republicans representing competitive districts in New York are projecting confidence. They are working to tie Harris to her boss and his administration’s policies.
“Kamala Harris has the same weight that Joe Biden does,” D’Esposito said. “She is going to be running on the record of her and Biden. And that record is dismal.”
“The policy issues that have plagued the Biden administration, the things about their open border, the things about spending money we don’t have, about inflation — Harris has been with Biden every step of the way,” Suffolk County Congressman Nick LaLota said.