Republican Nicole Malliotakis defends NY-11 seat

NEW YORK — Rep. Nicole Malliotakis won reelection as New York City’s lone GOP House member Tuesday in a rematch against the moderate Democrat she unseated two years ago.

Malliotakis fended off challenger Max Rose in New York’s 11th Congressional District which covers the relatively conservative borough of Staten Island and a right-leaning slice of Brooklyn. Malliotakis had 62 percent of the vote to 38 percent for Rose Tuesday night.

“What an amazing, amazing mandate from the people of Staten Island and southern Brooklyn,” she said at an election night party. “That’s what this race was always about — about stopping the disastrous policies that we’ve seen under one-party rule. I’m very hopeful that we will see a balance come to both our state and our country tonight.”

Rose conceded the race in his own election night speech.

“While tonight’s outcome is certainly not what we hoped for, in this party and as proud Americans, we respect the outcomes of elections,” he said. “The truth is that believing in and fighting for what America can and must become is not for the faint of heart. May I add, neither is being a Staten Island Democrat.”

Rose, a U.S. Army veteran, focused his campaign on abortion rights, seeking to motivate voters after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Malliotakis, meanwhile, hammered away at New Yorkers’ sense of lawlessness, accusing Rose of supporting a “pro-crime agenda” and blaming him for a controversial state bail reform law that he opposed.

Her message appears to have resonated more forcefully. A poll weeks before Election Day showed that voters in the district saw the economy and crime as the top issues, with abortion trailing far behind.

Malliotakis beat Rose by a much more dramatic margin this year than 2020, when she won by six points.

The district voted decisively for Donald Trump in 2020, even though registered Democrats outnumber Republicans there, and its House seat has repeatedly flipped between Democratic and Republican control. Rose won the seat in 2018 by defeating an incumbent Republican.

Democrats attempted to seize an advantage this go-round by passing a redistricting plan that would have grafted solidly Democratic sections of Brooklyn onto the district. But that plan was thrown out by the courts as an illegal gerrymander.

Instead, Rose struggled in a year where Democrats were scrambling to avoid losses in the midterms, and he didn’t get any advertising help help from the DCCC. The NRCC and outside groups also stayed out of the ad fight, making this year’s race a relatively muted affair. By contrast, outside groups poured millions of dollars into ads during their 2020 contest.

Malliotakis, who voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election, also enjoyed Trump’s endorsement in the race.

The Staten Island race is the only competitive congressional contest centered in New York City, where the winners of the Democratic primaries in other districts are almost assured victory in their general elections.

Other city House incumbents were reelected or poised to be Tuesday evening.

And in a district covering portions of Manhattan and Brooklyn, Dan Goldman, an attorney who represented House Democrats in Trump’s impeachment, won election in a new seat carved out by redistricting.