CNN
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The hollowing out of state party structures. The governor’s misguided campaign. The failed redistricting plan that removed sitting members of Congress.
New York Democrats offered a variety of excuses for the disastrous 2022 midterm elections, in which Republicans picked up four seats outside New York City and secured a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
With less than two months until the 2024 general election, the state party, its campaign allies, chastened candidates and Gov. Kathy Hokele are betting on what many are calling a revitalized political project — a series of projects, really — to send the state packing with Democratic candidates in next year’s House elections, especially from suburban districts.
Former President Donald Trump’s rally on Wednesday in Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito’s Long Island district underscored the importance of the New York race. D’Esposito is one of five freshman New York Republican lawmakers facing an onslaught from Democrats trying to win back suburban voters. In 2022, D’Esposito defeated Democrat Laura Gillen, flipping a district that would have seen Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020 if the current race held. Gillen is in a rematch this year.
Reps. Marc Molinaro and Mike Lawler of the Hudson Valley, Nick LaRota of Long Island and Brandon Williams of Central New York are the other Republicans facing tough reelection battles in still-Democratic states that Kamala Harris is expected to win handily.
“New York is why Democrats lost the House in 2022,” said Pamela Shiffman, president of the Democracy Alliance, a liberal group that has spent heavily in New York this year, “and it’s going to be why we take back the House in 2024.”
She’s not alone in this analysis: In August, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pointed to New York specifically when asked about Democrats’ loss of the majority at a Politico/CNN event at the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.
Pressed for an explanation, Pelosi said, “I think it has to do with the gubernatorial race.”
The brief but scathing remarks ratcheted up pressure on Hockle, who has been singled out in New York and national Democratic circles for blame for the 2022 election, and by extension state party chairman Jay Jacobs. The governor has argued that new investments and a stronger coalition between party officials and the liberal grassroots will thwart a rerun after November.
“We have transformed this party, we have transformed it into the strong and powerful party it should be,” Hochle told New York delegates at the Democratic convention.

Democratic activists in New York are deeply divided about whether Horckle and his allies are trying hard enough, or in the most efficient way. But the effort is clear: For the first time in recent years, the party and its allies seem more interested in fielding its own candidate in the general election than engaging in an intraparty primary.
“I give credit to the organization on and off the ballot,” said Ana Maria Archila, co-chair of the state’s Working Families Party, which has said it is part of a coordinated effort and is accustomed to internal infighting in the past.
Archila said the “threat of President Trump and a pro-Trump Congress” is driving efforts to coordinate among the various groups, noting that a Trump presidency would mean defeat, but a majority in the House would pave the way for Brooklyn native Hakeem Jeffries to be elected speaker.
The new coordinated campaign combines the state party and Hawkle’s efforts with those of Jeffries, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and New York Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, who is up for re-election this year.
Jeffries’ former campaign manager, Lizzie Weiss, is the state party’s campaign manager.
The committee has nearly 40 offices in battleground states with dozens of staffers and more than 10,000 volunteers conducting phone banking and door-to-door canvassing for Democratic candidates, according to the committee. Hawkle has raised more than $22 million for his next campaign in 2026, with $5.5 million going to the state party and $3 million to the coordinating campaign.
Outside groups, frustrated by years of infighting among officials such as former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, have also stepped up spending and on-the-ground investigations.
The Jeffries-backed group, Battleground NY, a coalition of labor unions and progressive groups including Indivisible and the state Working Families Party, has been active for nearly a year. The group actively campaigned for Democrat Tom Suozzi, who won a February special election to replace Republican George Santos, who was indicted in his Long Island district.
“The 2022 election hasn’t seen a strong coordinated operation until the last few weeks,” Gaby See, a strategist at Battleground NY, told CNN. “We believe they need to talk to voters early.”

A Democratic official familiar with Jeffries’ involvement said he is determined to avoid embarrassment in 2022.
“Jeffries is totally focused on New York because he has to be,” one of the sources said. “He’s doing it all: fundraising, campaigning, strategizing, meeting with stakeholder groups, holding regular conference calls with delegates to strategize, building connections with donors.”
See said Suozzi’s success earlier this year underscored the importance of closer engagement with voters. While Republicans focused on immigration, crime and the Gaza conflict, Suozzi and Democrats didn’t shy away from those issues, attacking Republicans on local issues such as the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which Trump and Republicans capped in the 2017 tax overhaul.
In a social media post on Tuesday, Trump wrote that he would work with Democrats to “bring back SALT” — a surprising claim given his role in rolling back SALT, but another sign of the issue’s influence in New York suburbs.
House Majority PAC, a super PAC with ties to Jeffries, announced the creation of the New York fund in February and has set aside a total of $45 million for New York state elections.
The fund was recently backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who donated $10 million in July. In the weeks leading up to Election Day, much of the spending will be on paid media, including TV, digital and radio ads and direct mail, boosting Democratic challengers in one of the nation’s most expensive media markets.
A New York-based Democratic strategist who is not involved in any of the congressional races told CNN that Haukl’s lack of a running bid this year should also give the party’s House candidates a boost.

“One big difference is that the congressional race is being run by people in New York, unlike the (2022) gubernatorial race, where people from outside the state were campaigning in New York,” the strategist said. He also offered some sympathy for Haukle, saying he “understands” the job of governor better now than he did two years ago, when he first spearheaded a slate of candidates after Cuomo resigned in August 2021.
“She was thrown right into the gauntlet: there was no coalition government and the state party was not buoyed,” the strategist said.
Democrats’ biggest test is likely to come in the 17th Congressional District, located north of New York City in New York State’s Hudson Valley.
Lawler, a Republican incumbent who could run for governor in 2026, defeated Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the House Democrats’ campaign leader, two years ago and will face former Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones this fall.
Rep. Lawler has sought to distance herself from Trump in a district that he would have lost by 10 points in 2020. She has reaffirmed her support for Trump while refraining from divisive rhetoric. Last week, Rep. Lawler joined more than 20 other House members in a bipartisan “Unity Pledge” to honor the results of the 2024 presidential election.
“In our country, we speak our minds at the ballot box and then come together to govern once all the votes are counted,” Lawler said in a statement, appealing directly to Democrats who need to be re-elected.
In a potential blow to Democrats, Jones will not appear on the Working Families Party ballot this fall because he broke with New York’s progressive wing during the primary, a blunder that could split the anti-Republican vote in November.
Another potential hurdle facing Democrats in the battleground state are efforts by state party lawmakers to capitalize on the backlash against the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Abortion rights enjoy broad bipartisan support in both Republican and Democratic states. Ahead of the contest, New York Democrats tried to leverage their party’s large voter registration advantage to boost voter turnout across the state by adding measures to protect reproductive rights to the ballot.
But New York’s Equal Employment Amendment has become a growing source of frustration for Democrats trying to win back swing votes in suburban areas. Though the amendment doesn’t actually use the word “abortion,” some Republicans have used it as a weapon, criticizing its broad language and its addition of protections for “gender identity” and “gender expression.”
“There has never been a greater attack on the rights of women and girls in New York state in our lifetimes than Proposition 1 in November,” former Rep. Lee Zeldin, who narrowly lost to Hawkle in the 2022 gubernatorial election, said this spring while sitting down with former college swimmer Riley Gaines, a prominent opponent of transgender athletes participating in women’s sports.
Democrats are now complaining about both the development of the amendment and the lack of funding for the campaign organized to push it: $20 million pledged last year has barely materialized; the current figure is closer to $3 million, though party leaders are rumored to be ramping up spending later.
Another Democratic strategist with deep ties to New York told CNN that while there is anxiety about 2022 and bickering over who should get the credit if Democrats make a comeback this year, the reality is just as uncertain as the broader chaotic political situation.
“There’s more attention on this than the last few elections, not just from state parties but certainly from the national committee,” the strategist said. “Whether that happens, I think it’s still an open question.”