Season of ambition and division begins in NY Congress scrum
The redrawn Long Island-based 3rd Congressional District has driven State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, right, to pivot northward to compete against Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in the Hudson Valley. Credit: James Escher (Biaggi), AP / Andrew Harnik (Maloney)
Congressional races this year are liable to lack the traditional feel of contained neighborhood brawls. In today’s web-driven, hyperpartisan atmosphere, primary candidates are likely to focus on who's the better warrior against the rival party in the general election.
Experience, integrity, credentials and reasoned debate all take a back seat once the adrenaline starts to flow. Close current margins in the House and Senate will help fuel the fervor of a midterm like no other. Informed voters know every seat could count in deciding whether the GOP recoups an upper hand in Washington or Democrats retain it.
Political temperatures kept rising this week. Once state judges threw out the majority party’s gerrymandered House lines in New York and replaced them with a GOP-friendlier version, candidates went district-shopping all over Long Island, New York City, and the northern suburbs.
Back in February, sharp-elbowed State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi announced her candidacy to succeed Rep. Tom Suozzi as he runs for governor against his party’s leadership. Long Island-based CD3 had been redrawn in a crazy shape around Long Island Sound all the way to Westchester County, Biaggi’s current base. But the courts turned it into a solid-shaped Nassau-Queens district, driving her to pivot northward to compete against Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in the Hudson Valley.
Biaggi, now gone from Long Island's radar, clearly likes to buff her credentials as a party rebel. Maloney heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s state efforts — and thus can be called an “insider.” Rather than compete against him in that neck of the woods, Rep. Mondaire Jones is swiveling toward a Brooklyn-based multiway primary due to include ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio, the barely-also-ran former presidential and gubernatorial candidate and, possibly, against 80-year-old former New York City Comptroller Liz Holtzman among others.
As long as they live in New York, congressional candidates can run anywhere in the state before having to reside in the district. And this year, candidates who successfully petitioned in one district before the courts scrapped the proposed lines can use those signatures to qualify in another district — another boon for opportunistic outsiders.
On Long Island, Republicans, too, may get a taste of ferment. Robert Cornicelli — like Biaggi on the other end of the left-right spectrum — isn’t shy about infringing on arguably incumbent turf. He’s challenging one-term CD2 Rep. Andrew Garbarino, whom the Suffolk GOP organization has no interest in replacing.
Having taken office only last year, and less strident than many GOP caucus members, Garbarino runs in what now looks like a purple district. Cornicelli, however, carries the endorsement of former President Donald Trump aide Michael Flynn, a spreader of fringe conspiracy stories who twice pleaded guilty to perjury but was pardoned by Trump. Cornicelli argues he's more likely to keep the seat in GOP hands.
For New York Republicans, that clash may be unusual in a district they now hold. In CD1, now represented by Rep. Lee Zeldin — who like Suozzi is leaving to run for governor — the more party-collegial Suffolk Republican Nick LaLota is a contender.
Categories like “centrist” or “left wing” or “moderate” or “far right” can blur once candidates get down to chasing pockets of local community support and group endorsements.
Still, voters’ choices in this November House midterm will be as binary as ever, between red and blue, like it or not, here and elsewhere.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
