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New York’s Harbinger Election
The freedom to choose an abortion shifted the balance in an upstate congressional race; a sign of things to come this fall?
For all the attention that focused the last few weeks on two congressional races happening in the heart of New York City, one pitting two Democratic lions of the House against each other and the other a free-for-all battle for a rare open seat in a heavily Democratic district, the big story coming out of Tuesday’s primary elections of greater importance to the rest of the country happened way upstate, in the bucolic hills of the Catskills and the upper Hudson River valley south of Albany. That’s where Ulster County executive Pat Ryan, a Democrat, went head-to-head against Marc Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive. Both counties were part of the sprawling 19th district, which was held by Antonio Delgado, a Democrat, until he was handpicked by the state’s governor Kathy Hochul to become her lieutenant governor in the wake of an ethics scandal that caused his predecessor to step down.
With 92% of the precincts reporting, Ryan is ahead with 51.1% of the vote, and he — along with most political observers — is stunned. “I honestly can’t believe it,” he told the crowd at his election night party. As Greg Sargent notes in the Washington Post, Ryan’s own advisers “did…
