A New York special election revealed the strength of abortion rights messaging, and Democrats dealt with another messy incumbent vs. incumbent primary.
Tuesday night’s primary elections featured 2022’s last truly competitive intra-party state races: the Florida and New York primaries.
Because of redistricting quirks and incumbent advantages, only a handful of congressional seats were contested, but those that were saw fierce campaigning.
After New York state’s redistricting process went awry and the state’s top court ordered new districts to be drawn, Democratic incumbents were pitted against each other in some districts, while others became free-for-alls. Florida also saw a slate of competitive races, including the race to replace Rep. Val Demings and a slew of far-right challenges to Republican incumbents.
And finally, in Oklahoma, a run-off election between two Republicans vying to replace retiring Sen. James Inhofe resulted in victory for Rep. Markwayne Mullin.
Here are four winners and two losers from the day’s races.Winner: Campaigning on abortion rights
Democrats’ hope that the fight for abortion rights would drive turnout got another boost on Tuesday, with Pat Ryan, the Ulster County executive, winning a special election in New York’s 19th District after he made the issue a centerpiece of his campaign.
Earlier this year, Ryan said he planned to “nationalize” this race and released a television ad emphasizing how he defended the country’s freedoms as a veteran and claiming he’d do the same for a woman’s right to choose. Tuesday, Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive, by a close margin in the GOP-leaning battleground district.
Molinaro’s record on abortion is more moderate than some Republicans. When running for the New York governor’s seat in 2018, Molinaro said he would support strengthening laws that protect abortion rights, but balked at backing the Reproductive Health Act, a state bill that would have expanded abortion rights. During the House race, he argued that while he is “personally pro-life,” he would want to leave abortion access up to state legislatures. While Ryan worked to keep the race centered on abortion, Molinaro sought to put the focus on issues like the economy and the state’s criminal justice reform law instead.
Tuesday’s outcome offers one preview of how abortion rights could mobilize voters in swing districts come November. It’s particularly notable that Democrats succeeded in NY-19, which was seen as a pick-up opportunity by Republicans. Democrats are hopeful that their promises to protect abortion rights will turn voters out in their favor and combat the backlash that the president’s party typically faces during the midterms.
Both the outcome of the Kansas ballot initiative on abortion a few weeks back and Tuesday’s special election indicate it’s certainly possible this could be the case. Ryan will go on to serve the remainder of New York Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado’s term in the House. Both he and Molinaro will also run for seats in the 18th and 19th districts this fall, respectively, as redistricting has reshaped the district they ran in this week.
–Li ZhouLoser: New York progressives
Progressives didn’t have the best primary night in New York. Upstarts suffered from both a splintered field and the court-inflicted chaos of the state’s 2022 redistricting process on Tuesday night.
In the most hotly contested open seat, New York’s 10th Congressional District, Daniel Goldman, the main congressional attorney in the first impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump (and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune) spent Tuesday night on the verge of beating out a field of more progressive candidates with a little over a quarter of the total vote. That field included a sitting progressive, Rep. Mondaire Jones, who entered the race after his old seat was eliminated and he was forced to choose between running in the new seat that overlapped with his old district or finding another race.
The race became a bit of a microcosm for tensions running through the modern Democratic Party, with conflict along race, class, and ideological lines.
