NY migrant crisis looms as campaign issue in 2024 battle for control of Congress

New York's Democratic leaders have struggled for months with the problem of housing tens of thousands of migrants who have been bused to New York City and left in its care.

But another concern looms as the crisis continues with no end in sight: the potential fallout for their party at the polls next year.

At stake are a handful of competitive congressional seats from Long Island to Syracuse that will help determine which party wins control of the closely split House. Democrats, who suffered surprising defeats on friendly turf last year, need to win back blue-tinted districts to recapture the majority from Republicans.

The messy battle over asylum seekers complicates those plans. Republican attack ads are practically writing themselves from a stream of headlines and TV images as Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and President Joe Biden — all Democrats — cast blame on one another and trade shots about who should be doing more.

"I think it's going to be a potent issue for Republicans," said William F.B. O'Reilly, a GOP consultant from Westchester County who worked on Rep. Mike Lawler's successful bid last year to unseat Sean Patrick Maloney in the Hudson Valley.

The crisis — crystallized in scenes of migrants sleeping outside a shelter at the Roosevelt Hotel — has created a "sense of chaos" and handed Republicans a sequel to last year's crime-focused campaigns, O'Reilly told the USA Today Network. Democratic in-fighting has only worsened the perceptions.

"This is an easy sell that one party is allowing this to happen," he said.

Isaac Goldberg, a Democratic strategist working on several House campaigns in New York, argued it was far too early to predict the political impact of the migrant crisis, pointing out that the 2024 election is 14 months away and that many equally pressing issues could arise.

But he cautioned that Democrats at all levels must treat the issue as a crisis and be up-front with their response plans. The worst mistake they could make, he said, was to "pretend that it isn't a critical, crisis-level issue for a lot of voters."

What do voters say on the migrant crisis topic?

Just how deeply the issue has struck New Yorkers was made plain by a Siena College poll last month.

Some 82% of voters Siena surveyed declared it a "serious problem." Though their views on whether migrants were a benefit or a burden were more mixed, clear majorities of voters from all over — New York City, the suburbs, upstate — said the state should try to slow the influx of migrants, rather than accept more and work to assimilate the newcomers.

In a worrisome sign for Democrats, President Joe Biden and Gov. Kathy Hochul both got meager marks for their handling of the influx of asylum seekers. Just 30% or less of the voters from the suburbs and upstate approved of how each had managed the crisis.

That was the first measure of how voters had digested the steady media coverage. Right after the poll's release, Hochul took a more aggressive tone toward the White House, rebuking the Biden administration for doing too little to heed pleas to speed work permits for migrants and offer federal properties to be used for shelters.

Why are New York's House seats critical?

Both parties covet New York's swing seats. Democrats yearn to flip six Republican-held districts Biden won in 2020, including Lawler's and embattled Rep. George Santos' in Long Island and Queens. Republicans, who flipped four seats last year, are determined to keep them and add the seat of Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan in the Hudson Valley.

Out of 18 Biden districts in the U.S. with GOP House members, fully a third are in New York. Democrats need wins there to gain five House seats and make Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn the next speaker.

Campaigns are already in full swing, and both parties have pledged huge sums. The Democrats' House Majority PAC announced in February it would drop $45 million in New York. Republicans outbid them: Rep. Elise Stefanik, the New Yorker who leads the House GOP conference, told Politico last week the party will pour $100 million into campaigns in New York swing districts.

How might the migrant issue play out in campaign?

Republicans have pounced on the migrant crisis, giving a preview of next year's campaigns. They cast it as the result of Democratic leadership and policy failures and opposition to Republican proposals to tighten border security.

"Gov. Hochul and Mayor Adams have been an absolute disaster in dealing with this crisis," Lawler told Fox News on Thursday. "And not only have they been behind the eight ball from the beginning, but the very policies that they embraced for years have created this crisis."

Housing plan: NY to spend $25M in state funds to rent homes for thousands of asylum seekers

Democrats may redirect blame to Republicans for blocking past attempts in Congress to reform immigration policies. They also may fault Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for packing people onto buses to deposit them at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

"They should never have been sent by the Republican governor of Texas in the first place," former Rep. Mondaire Jones, one of three Democrats vying to challenge Lawler, told the USA Today Network in July when he launched his campaign.

Republicans tend to feel safe talking about immigration — as Democrats do on abortion — and are clearly on the attack on New York's migrant issue, while Democrats are on the defensive, Kyle Kondik, communications director for the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told the USA Today network.

How dominant that issue will be next year is hard to predict, Kondik said. But it's clear that Democrats sniping at one another looks bad.

"It would probably be helpful for them all to get on the same page," Kondik said.

What's the latest on the migrant crisis?

More than 100,000 migrants have been bused to New York from the southern border since spring of 2022. Around 60,000 are being sheltered in the city, and more than 2,100 have been bused to hotels in seven counties north of the city, from Yonkers to outside Buffalo, where they are being housed at the city's expense.

The city has estimated its costs will total about $12 billion over three years. State officials say the state has committed $1.5 billion.

Back to school: Nearly 250 kids from asylum-seeking families set to start school in four upstate counties

Adams has urged Hochul to override county orders that have blocked the city from moving asylum seekers to other parts of the state. Hochul opposes that idea and argues the city is the best spot because of its public transportation and other services. In the meantime, a slew of lawsuits over the city's ability to shelter migrants outside its borders are grinding their way through court.

Buses from the southern border continue to arrive in midtown. Adams, speaking at a rally on Thursday to demand faster work authorization for asylum seekers, cast the influx as a national issue far beyond the city's control.

"So don't critique what we've done," Adams said. "Don't tell us how we could have done it better. Don't sit in the bleachers and be a detached spectator on this full contact sport called asylum seekers. Get on the field and fight this battle with us."

Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: NY migrant crisis may be trouble for Democrats in 2024 US House races