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Democratic congressional candidate Pat Ryan has won a special election to represent a hotly contested upstate New York swing district seen by many as a bellwether for the Supreme Court's abortion decision ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
In a battle of two Hudson Valley county administrators, Ryan—the sitting Ulster County executive—defeated neighboring Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro Tuesday night to hold control of the seat recently vacated by Democrat Antonio Delgado, who resigned his post to serve as lieutenant governor under current Governor Kathy Hochul.
With 95 percent of the count complete, Ryan had 51.9 percent of votes to Molinaro's 48.1, the race had been called by the Associated Press.
For many observers, Tuesday night's vote was largely considered to be one of the first major tests of voter enthusiasm following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision earlier this year to overturn the landmark abortion protections established under the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
Though voters in Kansas resoundingly rejected a measure earlier this year to remove abortion protections enshrined in the state's constitution, the New York vote was the first match-up of a Republican and a Democrat in the wake of that decision, with the contest taking place in a highly competitive district in a state where abortion is currently legal.
Prior to redistricting, New York's 19th Congressional District—which encompasses parts of New York's Hudson Valley and the Catskill Mountains—was traditionally considered to be a swing district in the state's congressional map. President Joe Biden won the district by 2 points in 2020. Barack Obama won the district by sizeable margins in 2008 and 2012. And in 2016, Republican President Donald Trump took the district by 7 points. Until Delgado, however, the district's voters had not elected a Democrat to represent them in Congress since Democrat John Hall won reelection in 2008.
The calculus for Democrats grew even more challenging after the New York Supreme Court overturned newly drawn congressional maps designed to benefit Democrats, leaving Republicans with a slight competitive advantage in the district.
At summer's start, the National Republican Congressional Committee slated NY-19 as one of six target seats it believed it could flip throughout the state. The NRCC and the Republican-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund had invested more than $1.8 million in spending to oppose Ryan, according to campaign finance reports, an amount roughly three times what liberal groups spent attacking Molinaro. Entering election night, even progressive pollster Data for Progress projected Molinaro—a moderate—to win by 8 points, buoyed by a relatively low turnout of young and college-educated voters as well as a gravitation of independent voters to the GOP.
But on the ground, Democratic enthusiasm was high, aligning with similar increases in turnout seen in elections held in other, Republican-dominated districts around the country this year.
In Ulster and Dutchess Counties—the source of roughly half the district's votes—early voting totals weighed heavily in Ryan's favor, while figures like Hochul traveled to the district Monday night to rally Democrats to the polls. Meanwhile, Democrats in the district blamed divisiveness within the regional Republican Party and Molinaro's unwillingness to wade into the abortion debate as potential boons for Democrats within the district, where Ryan's campaign placed heavy emphasis on issues like abortion access.
That strategy, according to early polling on the race, was likely his best bet for success. According to a June survey by Public Policy Polling, Ryan trailed Molinaro by three points but had the potential to come back and win by running on abortion rights.
"I think that there's a real conversation to be had here that Hudson River Valley voters are not culturally conservative like a lot of the voters in those other districts that have traditionally voted Republican," Paolo Cremidis, a former New York State Democratic Party official and executive director of the Outrun Coalition rural progressive organizing group, told Newsweek.
"I've seen a lot of Democratic energy on the ground," he added. "Molinaro refusing to talk about choice and other issues that are vehemently important right now for voters in the district has been kind of handicap, because he's stuck in a position where he can't make arguments about choice. He hasn't been able to really nuance his position."
The trend wasn't just consolidated to the Hudson Valley, however. In the special election to represent the Southern Tier's 23rd Congressional District, Democrat Max Della Pia came within single digits of flipping a district Trump won by double-digits in 2020, consistent with a national bump for Democrats following the repeal of Roe.
Ryan and Della Pia will be tested again in November, however. While the special election has been decided, both will be on the ballot again November 8 to decide who will represent the district through 2024.
"Whether it's tonight or Nov. 8th, we're going to win the 19th Congressional District," Molinaro told supporters on primary night.
About the writer
Nick Reynolds is a senior politics reporter at Newsweek. A native of Central New York, he previously worked as a ... Read more