The road to 2027 runs through the Empire State.
New York is again expected to play a pivotal role in determining which party takes control of the House of Representatives — four years after the GOP’s four-seat pickup turned the tide in 2022.
Pundits and political insiders across the US have their eyes on the state despite its status as Democratic-friendly territory, all because of high-profile battleground seats in the few remaining swing districts.
“We have a chance in New York to play an important part in winning back the House majority,” state Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs said.
“Hakeem Jeffries will be the next speaker of the House,” added Jacobs, referring to the House Democratic Minority Leader from Brooklyn.
He predicted the Dems will back the House comfortably, with all incumbents winning reelection and the potential of picking up two additional seats in the Hudson Valley and upstate.
State Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox agreed that New York is an important piece of the House puzzle as the GOP clings to a 218-214 majority with one independent member and two vacancies in the 435-seat House.
“Of course New York is important. The New York races were important in the Republicans taking the House in 2022,” he said.
New York’s battlegrounds helped Republicans gain control of the House four years ago as a red wave swept them into the majority.
Republicans picked up two seats on Long Island and two in the Hudson Valley.
Republican George Santos defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman for the North Shore Nassau County-Queens seat in the Third District after Democrat Tom Suozzi ran for governor instead of re-election.
Meanwhile Joseph D’Esposito defeated Democrat Laura Gillen in the Fourth District, which covers Nassau’s South Shore and beach communities.
In the lower Hudson Valley’s 17th District, Republican Mike Lawler scored an upset by knocking off Democratic incumbent Sean Patrick Maloney, then the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Republican Marc Molinaro beat Democrat Josh Riley in the redrawn 19th District.
Republicans benefitted from GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin performing performing better at the top of the ticket in the swing House districts than Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul.
Even former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blamed Hochul’s weak performance in the swing districts as contributing to Democratic losses.
But the picture was different four years ago, when then-President Joe Biden was facing backlash in the midterms and the hangover from the COVID-19 outbreak and inflation were issues that hurt Democrats.
The party’s fortunes mostly reversed two years later, as Democrats were better prepared in the 2024 presidential election year and won back three of the four most competitive seats in the state.
Suozzi ran for his old seat after Santos was exposed as a fraud and expelled from the House. He won the seat in a special election in February 2024 and held onto the seat in a three-point victory over former Assemblyman Michael LiPetri that fall.
Elsewhere, Gillen, defeated one-term incumbent D’Esposito in a rematch in the Fourth Congressional District and Riley won his rematch against Molinaro in the 19th District.
Only Lawler survived, defeating former Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones in 2024.
This time, four seats remain competitive.
3rd District – Rep. Tom Suozzi vs. Mike LiPetri
Incumbent Suozzi is facing off against Mike LiPetri, an attorney and former state Assembly member, who narrowly lost to Suozzi by 3-percentage points in a 2024 election.
The district encompasses suburban nabes in Nassau County’s North Shore, while also including parts of Queens and Huntington in Suffolk County.
Suozzi is serving his second stint in the House of Representatives after representing the district from 2017 – 2023, breaking to run for governor in 2022, where he lost in the Democratic primary to Governor Kathy Hochul.
But Republican Michael LiPetri is giving Suozzi, a former Nassau County executive, a run for his money.
A Super PAC with Trump ties donates about $10 million into LiPetri’s race. The challenger has snagged an endorsement from Suozzi’s hometown police department, which had supported Suozzi in the election just two years ago.
4th District – Rep. Laura Gillen vs. Jeanine Driscoll
Incumbent Gillen is facing off against Driscoll, the receiver of taxes in the town of Hempstead.
A series of diverse communities along Nassau County’s South Shore make up the swing district, which was won by a Republican in a 2022 election before Democrat Gillen took over the seat in 2024.
Gillen had run against Republican Anthony D’Esposito in 2022, before defeating him in 2024. D’Esposito, the inspector general in the US Department of Labor declined to challenge Gillen this year.
Gillen has come under fire for previously taking credit for funding programs she’d voted against and has been accused of being a “serial tax hiker.”
17 District — Rep. Mike Lawler vs. Cait Conley
Lawler faces off against Democrat Cait Conley, an Army combat veteran and former national security adviser in the Biden Administration.
An analysis by the tracking firm Ad Impact found that more than $50 million has been spent combined on ads for Lawler-Conley race — $30 million by Republican groups and $20.9 million by Democrats.
That’s the second-highest ad spending on a House race in the country, behind only House District 1 in North Carolina, where $50.4 million was spent.
21st District — Anthony Constantino vs. Blake Gendebien
The race in the red-leaning 21st district in the North Country is surprisingly competitive after Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik decided not to seek re-election.
Democrat Blake Gendebien, a farmer, is running against firebrand Republican businessman Anthony Constantino, who doesn’t live in the district.
In a sign the Democrats believe they have a shot at winning the seat, their House Majority PAC spent $1.4 million, including on an ad rapping Constantino for supporting Trump’s trade war with Canada.
Constantino is a Trump booster who won the GOP primary against an assemblyman backed the local Republican and Conservative Party leadership after Trump endorsed him. The owner of a printing company, he has poured $17 million of his fortune into the race.
The Conservative Party ballot, which typically backs a Republican candidate in House races, was left blank.
The split on the political right over Constantino, coupled with frustration over higher fuel and other day-to-day costs, provides Gendebien and Democrats a “perfect storm” to win the seat, said campaign strategist O’Brien “OB” Murray.
“It’s a fractured Republican Party,” Murray said. “When the Republican and Conservative parties are not in sync, it’s a problem.
“It provides an opportunity for the Democrats to take advantage of the split. It could be the perfect storm for the Democrats.”
Murray was involved in the last North Country race when there was a split on the political right in 2009. He worked on the campaign of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in a three-way race that included Republican Dede Scozzafava and Democrat Bill Owens.
Owens won the race after then-Vice President Joe Biden stumped with him the eve of the election.
Vice President JD Vance will stump with Constantino in the district on Monday to rally the Republican base and other conservative-minded voters to back him.
Murray said Vance is the “perfect surrogate” to tell Republicans that keeping the Stefanik seat “is too important” to cede to Democrats over party infighting.
Additional reporting by Vaugh Golden
