Representative Nicole Malliotakis defended her seat on Tuesday against Max Rose, the Democrat whom she unseated two years ago, preserving her status as the lone Republican in New York City’s House delegation, according to The Associated Press.
Ms. Malliotakis was widely expected to win re-election in New York’s 11th Congressional District, which encompasses Staten Island and a section of southern Brooklyn, and is the most conservative-leaning in the city.
Shortly after The A.P.’s race call, at around 9:45 p.m., Ms. Malliotakis led Mr. Rose by more than 26 percentage points. She held a significant lead with voters in Staten Island, which makes up the bulk of the district.
In Ms. Malliotakis’s re-election campaign, she followed her party’s strategy of focusing on the economy and public safety, pinning rising inflation and crime on Democratic leaders and, by extension, on Mr. Rose.
In particular, she focused on changes to New York’s bail laws made by state Democrats in 2019, which she blamed for an uptick in crime. Though Mr. Rose was not involved, she noted that he had voiced support for the principles behind bail reform in the past.
Mr. Rose focused his campaign heavily on abortion access, arguing that Ms. Malliotakis would support further restrictions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. He also tried to link Ms. Malliotakis to far-right factions of her party, zeroing in on her voting against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
But Ms. Malliotakis, a former state assemblywoman, was able to build on the success she found in 2020, when she beat Mr. Rose by about six percentage points, and kept the seat in Republican hands after it flipped parties in each of the previous two elections.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
