How the New York Democrats’ Midterm Debacle Unfolded and What Comes Next
Illustration by David Hollenbach.
A cascading series of blunders by leading NY Democrats handed half of Congress to the Republicans. Can the state party's dysfunction be reversed?
This year’s midterm elections saw the much-anticipated Republican “red wave” turn into a red trickle in most of the country with one glaring exception: bright blue New York.
President Joe Biden won the state by 23 points in 2020. Democrats control all of New York’s statewide offices and wield super-majorities in both houses of the state legislature. National Democrats expected that the party’s control over the once-in-a decade redistricting process would help shore up its razor-thin congressional majority.
Instead of expanding their majority, New York Democrats lost four congressional seats in an election in which their party didn’t lose more than two seats in any other state. Meanwhile, as The Indypendent goes to press, the Republicans appear headed for a tiny (one to three seat) House majority once all the mail-in votes are counted in California. The New York Dems’ debacle will be the difference between ceding control of the House of Representatives to a MAGA heavy Republican caucus intent on creating partisan gridlock as opposed to continuing Democratic control of the White House and Congress that would make more progressive legislation possible during the second two years of the Biden administration.
There was no one cause, nor one culprit, for the New York Dems’ face plant. Instead, the causes of their failure flowed into each other as tributaries forming a mighty stream of hubris, incompetence and cronyism that would lay waste to their own electoral aspirations and that of Democrats across the country.
A Journey in 11 Steps
1. State Senate Leaders Rush a Top Court Pick
Madeline Singas was a controversial choice to join the New York Court of Appeals (the state’s highest court) when she was nominated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in May 2021. Singas, the Nassau County DA was a career prosecutor who once redacted information from a police report that could have helped prove the innocence of three men that were wrongfully convicted of double murder and spent 24 years behind bars before being released in 2021.
Singas is well to the right ideologically of the Senate Democrats, including Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris who championed the nomination of his fellow Greek American. Five state senators led by Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn) wrote a public letter opposing Singas’ nomination. Salazar told The Indypendent she thought she could rally enough Democratic votes to block Singas’s confirmation. But the fix was in. Two weeks after her nomination, the State Senate leadership brought Singas’s nomination to the floor. They took advantage of pandemic-era rules to rush her nomination through while several senators were outside the Senate chamber. Singas got her 14-year term on the high court. It wouldn’t take long for Gianaris and his Senate colleagues to rue the day they put her there.
2. Kathy Hochul Takes Command, Sort of
Cuomo resigned in disgrace in August 2021 after being credibly accused of sexual harassment by 11 women. His Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul was sworn in as New York’s first governor. She soon won praise from fellow Albany politicos for running her administration in a more collegial manner than the vengeful Cuomo. At the same time, she quickly took advantage of the power of her office and New York’s lax campaign-finance laws to raise tens of millions of dollars from the same wealthy special interests that bankrolled Cuomo.
With a huge campaign warchest, she could look forward to mimicking Cuomo’s tried-and-tested electoral strategy: Carpet bomb New York with television and digital ads while doing minimal in-person campaigning. Hochul also decided to keep Jay Jacobs, a longtime Cuomo ally, as the head of the New York State Democratic Party despite the grumblings of progressives.
3. Dems Go to Sleep on a Key Ballot Initiative
With redistricting coming up in 2021, Albany Democrats put a measure on the ballot to ensure that the courts would not take over the process if a bipartisan commission could not agree on new legislative maps. New York Republicans spent $3 million to oppose the initiative and toured the state to rally opposition to it. The New York Democratic Party spent no money nor did it campaign for the measure which was defeated. Jacobs had other priorities at the time, namely stopping India Walton,
Chair of the New York State Democratic Committee Jay Jacobs. Photo by NYS Democratic Party.
a socialist who won the Democratic primary in the Buffalo mayor’s race. Jacobs backed Buffalo’s incumbent mayor, who ran as a write-in candidate, while denouncing Walton, a Black woman, as being the political equivalent of a former KKK grand wizard. Walton would ultimately lose. Hochul ignored renewed calls for Jacobs’ resignation.
4. Dem Legislators Pass Redistricting Maps
After the bipartisan redistricting commission failed to agree on new maps, responsibility for completing redistricting shifted to the Democratic-led state legislature. In February, the legislature released maps that would have put the Dems on track to win 22 out of 26 seats statewide. New York City’s only Republican district, NY-11, was redrawn to loop in heavily Democratic Sunset Park and Park Slope to offset conservative-leaning Staten Island. A district that would have pitted Park Slope stroller moms against retired Staten Island cops in the middle of the largest media market in the country would have been a culture-war blockbuster for the ages. But alas, it was not meant to be.
5. Singas Delivers the Decisive Vote
Chief Justice Janet DiFiore. Photo: NYSBA.
After their stinging defeat in the legislature, the Republicans decided to go shopping. Judge shopping, that is. They found a sympathetic district judge in Steuben County, in New York’s rural Southern Tier, who ruled that the legislature’s maps violated the state constitution.
Chief Justice Janet DiFiore. Photo: NYSBA.
The case made its way to the Court of Appeals where a 4-3 majority upheld the lower court. Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, a close ally of Andrew Cuomo, authored the majority opinion. Madeline Singas delivered the decisive fourth vote. The case was remanded to Judge Patrick McAlister in Steuben County who was given the final say over redistricting.
6. Hochul Raids Congress for a New Lt. Gov
Hochul originally tapped Harlem State Senator Brian Benjamin to be her lieutenant governor. Benjamin brought racial and gender diversity to the ticket as well as regional balance with Hochul being from Western New York. He also brought five indictments on federal corruption charges that were announced by federal prosecutors on April 12. Whoops!
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