Out-of-state money increasingly fuels LI races

WASHINGTON — Long Island’s four U.S. House members are receiving millions of campaign dollars from individual donors living in California, Texas, Florida and other states far from New York.

Amid a pitched battle for party control of the 435-seat chamber, candidates are tapping into national networks of donors that funnel contributions to races the two parties think could make a difference. While handicappers don't rank Long Island's races among the year's tightest, they are competitive enough to attract significant out-of-state money.

The campaigns of Reps. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) and Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) are attracting hundreds of thousands of dollars more from individuals living in other states than from New Yorkers, according to filings through March with the Federal Election Commission.

Freshman Rep. Laura Gillen (D-Rockville Centre) has already taken in $402,000 from Californians. And Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) has received more than $200,000 from donors in both California and Florida, still months ahead of the November elections.

Some of the candidates seeking to replace these four lawmakers in Washington have themselves received tens of thousands in out-of-state money. For instance, Garabino's Democratic opponent, former Suffolk County Executive Patrick Halpin of Oak Beach, has so far received $64,600 from non-New Yorkers.

Big names like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders have led the way in nationalized fundraising. But the Long Island candidates' success shows that lesser-known politicians are also tapping into small-donor fundraising networks across the country, as campaigns have become more expensive, politics more nationalized, and online and other mechanisms for reaching donors more effective.

"Rank-and-file members have to raise from everywhere, too, just to keep up," says Jacob Rubashkin deputy editor of the non-partisan Inside Elections newsletter. "It’s just a numbers game: There are a lot more potential donors outside the district and outside the state than there are inside."

Nationalized politics

Experts say several factors are driving the trend.

For one, there’s the rising cost of Congressional campaigns, with the Supreme Court virtually — though not totally — ending limits on Political Action Committee donations with decisions in 2014 and 2016. That has ratcheted up the need for House members and other candidates to find money anywhere they can.

Also, Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2016 showed the power of raising small-dollar contributions through social media, focusing on individual donations as opposed to contributions from party or special interest political action committees or transfers from other politicians.

These individual donations can arrive in amounts much smaller than $100 or up to a maximum of $7,000 per individual during the 2025-2026 election, primary and general contests combined. Either way, those can add up.

Then there is the shifting balance of power in the House, with the GOP currently holding an edge of a mere three seats. Since 2007, Republicans have controlled the House for six two-year terms and Democrats for four, shifting back and forth.

And then, a big factor is that there are fewer actual competitive congressional races nationally. With more sophisticated use of data, parties have been able to draw districts more clearly favor one party over the other.

Donald Nieman, a professor of history at Binghamton University, notes that about 40% of House districts in 1998 were within 5% of the national presidential vote, meaning that they followed shifting national political trends and weren't locked into wide margins for one party or the other cycle after cycle.

But by 2024, only about 20% of House districts fell within 5% of the national presidential vote, he said. There were nearly 60 competitive races in 1996 but now, in 2026, non-partisan political handicappers say there are fewer than 20 truly toss-up races and less than three-dozen competitive ones.

"Donors — big and little, individuals and PACs — funnel their money into the few competitive races, irrespective of whether those were on Long Island or Central Iowa," Nieman explains. "Because that's where they can make a difference and shift control of the House."

Local responsiveness

One cost of this is that it could make members of Congress less responsive to the people in their districts, said Josh Huder, a congressional expert at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute.

This U.S. Constitution’s framers intended House members to represent the diverse needs and wishes of their respective localities. The idea was that their much smaller districts, now numbering 435, would allow a tighter local focus than is possible for senators who represent entire states.

"This, in my opinion, is one of the biggest problems with Congress," Huder said. "National fundraising networks weaken members' connections to local constituents and interests."

The drive to find increased campaign cash has coincided not just with the explosion of the internet since the mid-1990s, but also the modern 24-hour news cycle, with media outlets increasingly catering to specific political audiences.

"People don’t view politics through the lens of, like, this person can help me fix potholes," said Sarah Breyer, a former research director at the non-partisan OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign donations. "They view it in terms of the House will be held by my party and can make a difference on abortion rights, or other issues. A lot of politically minded people don’t care as much about their specific member, they care about the balance of power." 

Breyer — who is now a director at Public Agenda, a nonprofit, non-partisan research organization that focuses on topics related to democracy — led an OpenSecrets study published in January 2023 documenting the rise of out-of-state money in congressional races.

From 1998 through 2016, the percentage of contributions from in-state donors to U.S. House candidates typically hovered around 75%, the study found. But by 2018, that in-state percentages on the average fell to 66%, and below 62% in 2020 and 2023.

That meant that more than a third of the contributions received by House candidates nationally were arriving from out-of-state.

How well a candidate is hooked into these fundraising networks does not necessarily reflect how well-known they are nationally. Often, their political party leaders, party colleagues or supporters send out lists of candidates in key races, or important to certain legislative aims.

Also, it’s never been easier to reach out to donors in places far from home. Digital fundraising platforms like "ActBlue" and "WinRed" enable campaigns to process millions of small-donor contributions — along with ever-evolving fundraising uses of email, texting and social media.

Thankful for support

The four incumbents on Long Island don’t apologize for their out of state money.

LaLota underscores that he’s still received nearly four times more donor support this cycle from New Yorkers than the two Democrats running in the state’s June 23 Democratic primary for a chance to unseat him.

Garbarino, who is chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement that he is "grateful for the strong support my campaign has received from across Long Island, New York, and the country." 

A statement from Gillen's campaign said she is "proud to have earned nationwide support for her reelection." And Suozzi's campaign spokesperson, Kim Devlin, said his out-of-state fundraising "reflects a growing appetite for leaders who are willing to put results ahead of partisan finger-pointing and endless political insults." 

The increasingly huge out-of-state dollar figures often get used by opponents in campaign attacks, Breyer said, but that is more common in Western states.

In the cases of these Long Islanders and other New York candidates, Rubashkin jokes, they "are spared the worst of whatever political backlash can come from taking out-of-state money."

"Usually," he said, "it's candidates getting hit for taking more money from New York than their home state."