NELSONVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — Voters in a ring of congressional districts around New York City where Republican candidates often do well but Donald Trump struggled in 2020 could decide which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives for the next two years .
Eleven districts within 90 miles of Manhattan are expected to be among the most closely contested House races in the country on Election Day.
Republicans now hold a slim 6-5 lead in the nearly continuous circle that starts in the suburbs of Long Island, runs through western Connecticut and New York’s Hudson River Valley and Catskills regions, then through the Northeast of Pennsylvania before retreating back to New Jersey.
Both parties have a chance to win seats across the wide territory of densely populated suburbs, leafy suburbs and former mill towns. Democrats have made the region a key part of their strategy to regain a majority in the House of Representatives, but voters in the districts were far from uniform in their thinking in recent elections.
They are united in two important ways: Most have been open to Republican candidates, but they have also shown a distaste for Trump. That means having the former president at the top of this year’s Republican primary could be decisive in congressional races unless opposition to him has softened or the region’s voters are willing to share their fate.
Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in all but two of 11 districts in 2020. Two years later, voters sent Republicans to Congress in seven of them. In three of those districts where Republicans won in 2022, and in two others where Democrats prevailed by razor-thin margins, Trump lost to Biden by at least 10 percentage points, according to voting data from The Associated Press.
It’s not clear whether the political dynamics that allowed Republicans to do well outside New York in the 2022 midterm elections still exist today. In that election, many suburban voters were concerned about a spike in violent crime following the COVID-19 pandemic. But crime rates have fallen since then.
“The messaging environment in 2022 made the battlefields very uphill for Democrats,” said former U.S. Rep. Steve Israel, a Long Island Democrat who once chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
But in a presidential election year, with Trump waging a fierce campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, “the messaging environment is defined by the top of the ticket.” said Israel. “In these districts, this threatens to become a referendum on Donald.”
The Republican candidates’ ability to outperform Trump two years ago was illustrated in New York’s 17th Congressional District, a suburb north of the city that is home to the village of Sleepy Hollow, Sing Sing Prison and celebrities like Bill and Hillary Clinton. and billionaire George Soros.
Trump owns a golf club and a private estate in the district, but still lost to Biden there by 10 percentage points. In 2022, Republican Mike Lawler narrowly defeated U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat who had been in power for a decade.
Now Lawler is campaigning heavily against Mondaire Jones, a former Democratic congressman who was one of the first two openly gay Black men to serve in the House when he was elected in 2020. Jones lost his seat when his district boundaries were crossed. redrawn.
Both candidates have tailored their strategies to attract moderate voters while criticizing each other for being in competition with radicals.
“People are waking up to the fact that even if they don’t believe Mike Lawler is as bad as Marjorie Taylor Greene, they can’t afford to vote for him because he’s amplifying the chaos and extremism we see in Washington . ,” Jones told The Associated Press, referring to the far-right congressman from Georgia.
Democrats have also claimed that Lawler wants to ban abortion, which the Republican denies. Lawler said Democrats are trying to mislead voters on an issue that has proven to be a winner for many Democrats since the Supreme Court ended constitutional protections for abortion rights in 2022.
“It speaks to the fact that they have nothing else to talk about or talk about, from the economy to the border to the international crises around the world,” Lawler told the AP.
Lawler’s approach has worked with voters like Michelle Patterson, 71, who lives in a small house decorated with Trump flags and Republican yard signs in the village of Nelsonville.
She described Lawler as “common sense” and Jones as a “radical” and said Democrats are trying to distract voters with their warnings about abortion access.
“He is not advocating a ban on abortion!” she said of Lawler.
It’s a harder sell for other voters.
“I don’t believe him,” said Jill Ferson, 77, a social worker who lives in the village of Croton-on-Hudson, when asked if Lawler said he won’t support a federal abortion ban.
Ferson said her biggest concerns in this election are keeping Trump away and preserving abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
A similar dynamic occurs in the other ring districts.
On Long Island, Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito is trying to hold on to a congressional district just outside New York City that Biden won by 15 percentage points. D’Esposito tries to portray Democrat Laura Gillen as soft on crime while criticizing Democrats for immigration policies he blames for the influx of migrants.
Gillen, a former city supervisor, has rejected those criticisms and said that if elected she would push for increased law enforcement and border security.
Northwest of the city, Democrat Josh Riley is seeking to dethrone U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro, a Republican, in a rematch of their close 2022 contest. The district runs from the Hudson River Valley to the Finger Lakes.
In some New York districts, Democrats could face questions about the indictment of New York Mayor Eric Adams, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he accepted bribes and illegal campaign contributions. But Adams isn’t on the ballot, so that may not matter to voters. While some Republicans have used the scandal to argue that corruption is rampant within the Democratic Party, Trump has spoken sympathetically about Adams and portrayed his prosecution as politically motivated.
In northeastern Pennsylvania, a presidential battleground, three perpetually contested congressional districts are home to incumbents with a knack for survival. Among them is Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who is seeking a fifth term in a district that favored Biden by 5 percentage points in 2020. His opponent is Ashley Ehasz, a former Army helicopter pilot, whom he favored by nearly 10 percentage points two years ago.
Solid blue New Jersey and Connecticut also have at least one competitive race each.
In a New Jersey district where Trump’s Bedminster golf club is located, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. to a second term against Democrat Sue Altman, a former leader of the state’s progressive Working Families Alliance.
In Connecticut, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes is again paired with former Republican Sen. George Logan, whom she defeated by less than 1 percent two years ago in a district that Biden won by 11 percentage points.
During a recent debate, Hayes accused Logan of hiding his support for Trump. Logan denied that, but didn’t say Trump’s name once.
