Voices: The winners and losers from last night’s primaries are especially telling

Primary night in New York ended in a political earthquake when Democrats won a special election to fill the vacant House seat in the state’s 19th district. While the previous occupant – now-Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado – was a Democrat too, the fact that the party could hold a swing-district race in a special election is a sign that they might not be heading for a complete catastrophe in the House in November.

But elsewhere, last night’s races were not so clear-cut. Establishment Democrats largely staved off their progressive challengers. Overall, challengers to incumbents didn’t fare so well – and a traffic jam of left-wing Democrats in New York’s 10th district left an opening for a moderate to win.

And those are just the headlines from New York; Florida voted too, and threw up plenty of news of its own. Here are last night’s winners and losers.

Winners: House Democrats

Pat Ryan’s victory in New York’s 19th district was an indisputable boon to Democrats at a time when they badly needed one.

Nestled in the Hudson Valley and the Catskills, the 19th is the epitome of a swing district: it voted for Barack Obama in 2012, Donald Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan built his winning campaign around his own military service and the importance of safeguarding abortion rights after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v Jackson ruling overturned Roe v Wade. That he won a swing district on such a platform shows that the right to abortion — one of Democrats’ top issues — really does have the sort of electoral salience they need to achieve.

Losers: House Republicans

Conversely, the fact that Democrats could hold a seat like the 19th in a low-turnout election against Marc Molinaro, a decidedly more “normal” Republican who serves as the executive for Dutchess County, is a sign that the momentum in the House campaign may have shifted across the aisle just a little.

The GOP did not lose this campaign for lack of trying. As Roll Call reported, the National Republican Congressional Committee spent $1.2m on the race, while the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is affiliated with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, dropped $515,000 to back Molinaro. And yet, Democrats were able to defy that moneybomb while spending comparatively little.

Losers: Progressives

Progressives had some reasons to smile after Tuesday wrapped up. Congress looks set to get its first Generation Z member after 25-year-old Maxwell Frost won the Democratic primary in Florida’s 10th district to succeed Representative Val Demings, who in turn is running to challenge GOP Senator Marco Rubio.

Representative Jamaal Bowman, a member of the Squad, overwhelmingly won his crowded primary in New York’s 16th district. And Representative Jerry Nadler, who opposed the Iraq War and supported the Iran nuclear deal, beat back Representative Carolyn Maloney in New York’s 12th District.

But in races where they faced more establishment candidates, progressives took more losses. In New York’s 17th district, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the moderate chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, beat back state Senator Alessandra Biaggi. Having beaten an incumbent in 2018, Biaggi struggled to raise money to compete with Maloney – who only announced he would run in the newly redrawn 17th district after this year’s round of redistricting, effectively muscling out progressive Congressman Mondaire Jones.

Left without a home, Jones tried to run in New York’s 10th district. But he found himself in a tumble of progressives including former congresswoman and city comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman, New York City Councilwoman Carlina Rivera and Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou.

The overcrowding worked to the advantage of Representative Daniel Goldman, a self-funded moderate Democrat who was an attorney during former president Donald Trump’s first impeachment and an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune. And early Wednesday morning, it became clear Goldman had scored a narrow win over Niou – a result that might leave some progressives rueing how none of the candidates were willing to drop out.

Winners: Establishment Democrats

Along with Maloney and Nadler — as well as Goldman, who is currently on the cusp of winning — establishment Democrats notched a big win when Representative Charlie Crist beat Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried in the contest to challenge Florida’s incumbent Republican governor, right-wing star Ron DeSantis.

Crist was once a Republican, serving as governor from 2007 to 2011 before becoming an Independent and later a Democrat. He narrowly lost a 2014 Senate race to his successor as governor, Rick Scott, before finally making it to the US House of Representatives in 2016. Fried, by comparison, is the sole statewide-elected Democrat in Florida, having won her race the same year as DeSantis, and campaigned on the slogan “Something New.”

But in the end, voters overwhelmingly chose Crist, whom they likely felt was better equipped to defeat DeSantis. He now faces a steep battle: Florida has become more conservative since he last ran across the state – and DeSantis has amassed a massive warchest while he weighs a 2024 White House run.