Melanie Mason, Mia McCarthy and Emily Ngo at Politico:
New York Democrats similarly swelled their efforts after being stunned by the loss of four House races in 2022. House Majority PAC plowed $50 million into the state, nearly quadrupling its previous investment, and two separate efforts founded in the wake of the midterm drubbing beefed up the Dems’ ground game.
The New York Democratic Party launched a “coordinated campaign” — led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was blamed for some of the 2022 losses — that knocked three times more doors in battleground districts than in 2022. A coalition of labor unions and left-leaning groups called Battleground New York raised $11 million and focused on turning out three groups: “drop-off voters,” voters of color and newer voters.
As a result, Democrats flipped four seats between a February special election and last month’s contests, reversing their midterm losses.
Two of the newly elected New York House Democrats — Laura Gillen and Josh Riley — won after losing by mere points in 2022, both appealing to independent and Republican voters and voicing their willingness to stand up to their fellow Democrats on border security.
“Frankly, I think in 2022, we, the Democrats, were surprised by some of those races, and certainly had not put a lot of money or organization or attention into those,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. “This time around, there was no surprise. … the state party was far more involved. Certainly, we in the delegation in Congress were very actively campaigning in those districts, and you just had high-quality candidates.”
