Democrats said they’d help NY’s Max Rose get his House seat back. Now he’s flying solo.

NEW YORK — Max Rose is on an island.

Democrats are clinging to control of the House, but the party has barely lifted a finger to help the Staten Island moderate reclaim his old seat from New York City’s lone Republican member of Congress.

Not that he wants to be associated with the Democratic committee, as he courts the city’s most fortified conservative bastion. But like fellow Democrats nationwide, his campaign keyed on abortion in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s fall — it’s just not resonating with voters as strongly as Republican messaging on crime.

That leaves Rose in a familiar place: Trailing Nicole Malliotakis, who unseated him in 2020. Rose, a U.S. Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, has prevailed as an underdog before. He was in a similar bind when he defeated Republican incumbent Dan Donovan and flipped the seat in 2018, only to lose it two years later.

“This race is neck and neck, and it will be neck and neck until the very end,” Rose said in an interview.

Staten Island is the city’s least-populous borough and its great conservative redoubt — a home to blue-collar municipal workers that skews significantly whiter than the citywide average. Richmond County, which covers the island, is named for King Charles II’s illegitimate son, and the borough has long seen itself as an afterthought among New York City’s larger boroughs.

That self-perception has engendered an independent streak on Staten Island — one that led to a successful referendum to secede from the city in 1993 (the state quashed it) and has made the borough — which went to Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 — a perennial political battleground in an otherwise blue city. The district, where Democrats still outnumber Republicans, also includes a relatively conservative slice of Brooklyn.

“People are desperate for a balance in Washington. They’re not happy with the one-party Democratic rule at the city, state or federal level. And it’s quite frankly been a disaster,” Malliotakis said in an interview. “Particularly in my district, in Staten Island and southern Brooklyn, it’s more conservative than the rest of the city. They’re desperate for balance and I provide that.”

Bucking the party

Rose has been quick to distance himself from the national Democratic party, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom he opposed in a leadership vote during his sole term in Congress. He was one of the last Democrats to come out in support of impeaching Donald Trump and says President Joe Biden shouldn’t run for reelection. Rose and Malliotakis both recently opposed moderate Democratic Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to house asylum seekers in a cruise ship berthed in a Staten Island port.

He ran an ad two years ago denouncing Democrat Bill de Blasio as “the worst mayor in the history of New York City, though he is friendlier with Adams, who recently said he plans to endorse Rose.

The DCCC identified the contest as a race to target, along with five other New York seats. But they reckon Rose’s chances are slimmer than other competitive New York districts and are not directing as many resources there, according to a person involved in the effort. The DCCC did not immediately comment.

No outside groups have paid for TV ads in the race this year, according to data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm. By contrast, in 2020 political action committees and other groups funded $17.8 million in TV ads, with big spending by both the Democratic and Republican Congressional Campaign Committees, PACs affiliated with both parties and advocacy groups including End Citizens United and the center-right American Action Network.

It’s been a muted affair this time around — after a bruising ad war between Rose and Malliotakis two years ago when the race drew millions in outside spending from national groups who viewed the district as a prime battleground.

Rose has spent $1.3 million on TV ads in the general election, while Malliotakis has spent $1.6 million, according to AdImpact. In all, Malliotakis has raised $4.5 million for the race and has $873,430 cash on hand, while Rose has raised $3.7 million and has $651,991 cash on hand.

Rose may be flying solo, but Malliotakis is quick to tie him to the left wing of his party — especially on crime, a key issue in her campaign. She has the endorsements of several NYPD unions as well as unions for firefighters and correction officers, valuable currency on Staten Island.

“People are afraid to take the subway. People are always looking over their backs. They’re afraid they’re going to get car jacked in a parking lot,” Malliotakis said.

Rose has also condemned Malliotakis’ vote against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, and she has Trump’s endorsement in the race.

“I shed blood in Afghanistan after I swore an oath to protect and defend the constitution,” Rose said. “Her loyalty is to Donald Trump. It’s not to the constitution. That’s horrible.”

But Trump remains popular on Staten Island, where Reagan Democrats “have morphed into Trump Democrats,” according to Richard Flanagan, author of “Staten Island: Conservative Bastion in a Liberal City.”

“The nationalization of congressional campaigns [means] Malliotakis has an edge … In a midterm election with a Democrat in the White House, Rose is the underdog for sure,” Flanagan, a professor at the College of Staten Island, said. But, he added, “it’s not a safe Republican seat by any stretch.”

A familiar strategy

After the Supreme Court overruled Roe this summer, Rose pounced on the issue like so many other Democrats. An emphasis on abortion rights worked for Democrat Pat Ryan, who won an August special election in another New York swing district that was viewed as a bellwether on the issue.

Rose has been hammering Malliotakis over her anti-abortion views — including one stark ad tying her to the deaths of pregnant women that briefly earned an age restriction on Twitter.

“This is perhaps the only issue on which Nicole Malliotakis has been consistent over the course of her entire time in public life,” Rose said. “She voted against reproductive rights when she was in the New York legislature. She voted against protecting reproductive rights post-Dobbs decision as a member of Congress.”

When the Malliotakis declined to take a stance on a 15-week abortion ban introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), saying she hadn’t seen it, Rose showed up at her office with a copy of the bill.

Malliotakis says she supports exceptions to abortion bans for rape, incest and the life of the mother, buts she believes the issue should be decided at the state level.

She calls it largely irrelevant to voters in New York, where abortion rights are codified in state law and in the process of being protected in the state constitution, though she said she is “very opposed” to New York’s law allowing abortions up through 24 weeks of pregnancy.

“It doesn’t affect any woman in this district, because in New York, you have the least restrictive access to abortion. And so, that’s not what women talk to me about,” Malliotakis said. As for the Graham bill, she told POLITICO she would “probably vote against it.”

And she may be right. Voters in the district consistently ranked abortion below the economy and crime, according to the most recent polling.

The Spectrum News/Siena College poll, released last month, found 41 percent of voters ranked the economy as their top concern, followed by 21 percent for crime. The economy and crime were also respondents' top second choices, another question found. Abortion was the main issue for just 8 percent of voters, according to the poll.

Rose and Malliotakis have both called for rollbacks to a controversial New York law banning cash bail that was passed in 2019 and has taken dubious blame for a rise in crime. Rose opposed the law, but Malliotakis still faults him for supporting any kind of bail reform.

Malliotakis debuted two new crime-focused ads in the election’s waning days. One featured the widow of a slain NYPD officer condemning Rose’s participation in a Black Lives Matter protest. Another ad has Malliotakis herself accusing Rose of supporting a “pro-crime agenda.”

Rose is running his own ad slamming Malliotakis’s stance on guns, featuring footage of a mass shooting on a Brooklyn subway car and other high-profile gun attacks. “Nicole Malliotakis could have stopped shootings like this. Instead, she voted against an assault weapons ban and background checks,” the ad says.

The Siena poll showed Malliotakis holding a 6-point lead, with 49 percent of voters choosing her compared to 43 percent for Rose. Independents liked her more than twice as much as Rose, at 62 percent to 25 percent.

Longtime New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf said Rose’s strategy could work – but predicted it was more likely voters in the district, especially those on the conservative south shore of Staten Island, would turn out over concerns about rising crime.

“Is it crime, or is it a woman’s right to choose?” he said. “You have to give the edge significantly to Malliotakis.”

Redistricting falls through

A redistricting plan passed by the Democratic state legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Katy Hochul might have eliminated Democrats’ Staten Island problem — part of a map that could have allowed Democrats to pick up three seats in New York.

The maps, which a court shot down as gerrymandered, grafted Brooklyn’s famously liberal Park Slope neighborhood onto the district, as well as the nearby immigrant enclave of Sunset Park. The result was a district that voted for President Joe Biden over Trump by a 55 to 45 percent margin, replacing one that voted for Trump by a similar 10-point margin just two years before.

A Republican judge tapped a special master to draw new lines, which ended up looking similar to the old district, encompassing Staten Island and a piece of southern Brooklyn that is more conservative than the rest of the borough. The final district voted for Trump by a 54 to 46 percent margin.

Rose said he was undeterred by the reversal.

“When I ran and won this district, it was the old district. So, lines are going to come and go, just like polls are going to come and go,” he said. “I have no concern or regard for whatever the lines may be. We’re running the same race.”

But for Republicans, the 11th District serves as a prime example of how Democrats’ redistricting overreach backfired. The party is now defending seats across the state.

“Democrats tried to redraw the lines to tilt the scale to give the guy who was fired an advantage, to come back to shove him down the throats of the people in this district. And that was wrong,” Malliotakis said. “I’m glad the courts saw it as such…It’s a fair map now. It’s still a competitive district, but it’s a fair map.”

Anna Gronewold and Zach Montellaro contributed to this report.