Why New York was the state where Republicans stole the most seats in the House

Despite having taken the majority in the United States House of Representatives from the Democrats, the Republicans were frustrated in the midterms, the presidential mid-term elections, because the expected “red wave” ” did not happen – that is, an overwhelming victory in the House and the resumption of the Senate (which will continue to be controlled by the party of President Joe Biden).

However, the US legislative elections had a great consolation for the opposition in a Democratic stronghold: the calculation until the beginning of the night of this Thursday (17) pointed out that, from 18 seats in the House that the Republicans took from the rival party, four were in New York, a traditional blue state (blue state, where the Democrats always win).

It was the state where there was the most “theft” of seats on both sides in these midterms. In the current legislature, New York has 19 Democratic and eight Republican Representatives. In the one that will take office in January, they will be from Biden’s party and 11 from the opposition representing the state in Washington. The summed numbers differ between the two legislatures because New York lost a seat in the House after the Census of 19.

The legislative election in the state was marred by controversy before it happened, because an April decision by the state Court of Appeals overturned a new distribution of New York’s electoral districts. The judiciary understood that the new congressional map in the state favored the Democrats.

“As a result, judicial oversight is needed to facilitate the rapid creation of constitutionally suitable maps for use in the 2022 election and to safeguard the constitutionally protected right of New Yorkers to a fair election,” Judge Janet DiFiore wrote in the ruling, in which she argued that the proposed distribution was “substantially unconstitutional, since it was designed with an inadmissible partisan purpose”.

For the Republicans, the four seats stolen in New York were decisive for the resumption of control of the Chamber, although without a red wave .

“If you look at the map of the United States and take into account the concept of the red wave, many of us Republicans are disappointed by the lack of results in across the country,” said congressman-elect Nick LaLota, on Fox News.

“But when you focus on in New York and in Long Island, especially, it was possible to see something different happening here”, added the deputy, for whom the candidacy of the republican Lee Zeldin for governor (he was defeated by the re-elected Kathy Hochul, of the Democratic Party) “mobilized many suburban voters from the interior of the state of New York”.

The also elected Republican deputy George Santos, son of Brazilian immigrants and one of the four chair “thieves” in the state, commented to Fox News that another factor that helped in the growth of the party in New York was the attrition of the Democrats.

“What we are experiencing in the state of New York is that, for the first time in five decades we are being governed by the same party in New York City, in Albany and in Washington,” he said. “The people of New York have no one to blame [por seus problemas] other than the Democrats.”

Another assessment is that the Democratic Party has lost space in the New York bench ( although maintaining the majority) because it did not know how to address the main concerns of the local population, such as violence.

“A good night [para os democratas nas midterms] could have been great if the New York Democrats had not screwed up the redistribution of precincts and ignored voters’ concerns about crime and lack of safety,” wrote Howard Wolfson, a consultant to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who was a member of both parties, but rejoined the Democrats in 2018).

“These mistakes cost the Democrats seats that could have been won in the Chamber and made them waste millions of dollars that could have been used otherwise. Time to correct the course”, he evaluated.

2018

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