New York's Democratic Party shows new interest in electing Democrats

ALBANY, New York — The New York State Democratic Committee is trying something new this year — working to elect Democrats in New York.

After a brutal showing in 2022, top Democrats like Gov. Kathy Hochul promised the party machinery would launch an unprecedented coordinated campaign to elect party members up and down the ballot in 2024. That would be a key to Democratic efforts to retake the House in a state that is home to at least half a dozen battleground districts.

Similar guarantees have been made in the past and resulted in expenditures that weren’t much more than rounding errors in competitive races. But four months out from Election Day, there’s now at least some evidence that the state party is more actively involved in this November’s races than in those from yesteryear.

The party will soon announce that the coordinated campaign with entities like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has already hired 60 field staffers and fellows and plans to soon have 100 on the ground. It is also in the process of opening up 30 field offices in competitive congressional districts.

And campaign finance disclosure reports filed in recent weeks suggest a jump in the party’s activity.

Three different federal and state committees controlled by New York Democrats raised a combined $5.9 million in the first half of 2024. That’s up from around $1.5 million in the first halves of both 2016 and 2012, the two most recent presidential years without a pandemic.

The party accounts have $4.3 million in the bank. That’s up from $1.5 million at this point in 2016 and $433,000 in 2012.

That money comes as the DCCC is expected to pour tens of millions of dollars into the state. And progressive groups have now put over $2 million into an effort to boost a state-level Equal Rights Amendment they hope will energize the left.

Hochul “has made unprecedented investments” into the state party, spokesperson Jen Goodman said. “The governor, in partnership with [House Minority] Leader [Hakeem] Jeffries and Sen. [Kirsten] Gillibrand, is working tirelessly to fundraise, organize, and mobilize for 2024, laying the groundwork to flip the House majority and elect Democrats across the state.”

The money from the state party isn’t overwhelming in the grand context of elections in New York — some individual state Senate races alone can top $5 million apiece. And some successful down-ballot Democrats are cooperating with the centralized efforts but largely conducting their campaigns as they have in the past.

But even skeptics acknowledge that Hochul has been more dedicated to the cause of electing Democrats than her predecessors.

It became somewhat of a scandal when then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer used $1.3 million of the party’s money to help win a state Senate special election in 2018. Doing so ran afoul of the traditional gentlemen’s agreements to leave state legislative battles to the state Legislature’s leaders.

Spitzer’s tenure lasted only two weeks after that race, so the Democratic Committee didn’t remain aggressive for long. The most notable big expenditure in the coming years came when the party spent $5.3 million on TV ads in 2013, all of which went to highlight what a great leader Andrew Cuomo was.

The party under Cuomo, Hochul’s immediate predecessor, stayed out of battles over the razor-thin Republican majority in the state Senate that occasionally existed with the help of a group of breakaway Democrats. Flipping that chamber would have given Democrats sole control of New York’s government, but would have potentially led to a Legislature that could work to force Cuomo’s hand — as eventually happened when Democrats won the house in 2018.

Cuomo agreed to create a $10 million fund to help Senate Democrats when he was seeking the Working Families Party’s endorsement in 2014, but only wound up giving it $1 million. Two years later, he pledged a more aggressive campaign but again didn’t follow through — “You can’t call that campaigning,” he told Republicans about his efforts.

Down-ballot Democrats didn’t need the party’s help in the Blue Wave years. But consternation by party activists reemerged following a disastrous 2021 election, which included the defeat of a Democrat-driven constitutional amendment on redistricting that would have cleared a path for the party to gerrymander congressional lines. Democrats did nothing to help that year’s ballot questions, and were caught off guard when the Conservative Party spent over $3 million to defeat them in October.

Then in 2022, Republicans flipped three congressional seats and held on in other battleground districts. Democrats ended an election that started with hopes they’d win as many as 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts by winning only 15, and criticism of the state party became a national focus.

Party activists who have pushed for more active efforts from Democrats in the past hope this year’s campaign is more than a temporary fix. State committee member Erica Vladimer said that new field offices should have a permanent presence.

“We need to be lifting up what Democrats from the town level all the way to the federal level are accomplishing between these campaigns,” Vladimer said. “We can’t just flip the House in 2024; we have to hold onto those seats in 2026 and 2028 and 2030, and the state party doesn’t seem to be recognizing that.”