Although the district in central New York leans Democratic, it has been safely held by a moderate Republican, Representative John Katko, who is retiring.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — For years, Democrats have avidly eyed a congressional district in central New York as ripe for the flipping.
The numbers were in their favor: The party enjoyed a voter registration edge over Republicans; in 2016, district voters favored Hillary Clinton by about four percentage points over Donald J. Trump; four years later, Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the district by nine points.
Yet every two years, Representative John Katko, a local Republican with moderate views, outperformed his party to defend his seat. This year, Mr. Katko is no longer a factor: He has chosen not to seek re-election.
Mr. Katko’s open seat in the 22nd District represents a rare chance for Democrats — who are all-in on trying to protect their majority in Congress — to win a Republican-held seat.
It is not expected to be easy: With Republicans riding a national wave of anger over inflation and fear of crime, recent polls show a tight race between the Republican candidate, Brandon Williams, and his Democratic opponent, Francis Conole, a Naval intelligence officer with deep ties to the district.
“This is a very volatile year,” said Stephanie Miner, the former Democratic mayor of Syracuse. “And that’s going to be reflected in what happens in this race.”
Voters will have a clear contrast in choosing between the candidates; Mr. Williams seems most unlikely to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Katko, who was recently listed as the third most bipartisan member of Congress.
A conservative businessman who lives outside the district, Mr. Williams embraces Donald Trump and ran without his party’s backing in the primary.
He has characterized Mr. Katko as a RINO, or Republican in name only, and criticized his lack of loyalty to Mr. Trump. And in a recent debate against Mr. Conole, Mr. Williams made clear that, if elected, he had little intention of working with Democrats.
“I want to translate bipartisan, which really means politics as usual,” Mr. Williams said in Wednesday’s debate. “We can’t afford politics as usual. We really need a fresh perspective.”
Mr. Conole has attacked his opponent’s hard right stances on issues including his support for tax and spending cuts and his opposition to abortion rights. He has also raised $2.6 million for his campaign, ending the last filing period with more than half a million cash on hand, to his opponent’s $236,000.
But Mr. Williams has the support of a vast Republican campaign apparatus. Last week, he was joined on the campaign trail by a handful of House Republicans, including the House minority whip, Steve Scalise, and Representative Lee Zeldin, the party’s candidate for governor of New York.
Republican interests have also spent nearly $6.5 million on television and radio ads to bolster Mr. Williams in the last six weeks, according to the advertising firm AdImpact — the vast majority from the Republican Congressional Leadership Fund.
In a media call on Thursday, the state Republican chairman, Nick Langworthy, expressed confidence about Mr. Williams’s chances, predicting inflation would be a driving factor for voters.
“Voters cannot and will not trust the people who made this economic mess to fix it. And that’s why we have the momentum in this race with 12 days to go,” he said.
The momentum is also being seen elsewhere. Gov. Kathy Hochul is leading the Republican nominee, Mr. Zeldin, in some polls by single digits — an unusually tight race for left-leaning New York. Nationally, pundits ask not whether Republicans will retake the House of Representatives, but by how much.
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The sea change in New York, of all places, is the latest sign that Democrats are struggling to assure voters they have a plan to tackle rising inflation and other economic woes. Their ability to do so could hold the key to determining swing districts across the nation, analysts say.
“I see this race as a talisman race for the House, not just here in New York State, but throughout the Northeast and Midwest,” veteran Democratic political strategist Bruce Gyory said. “I would not bet on the outcome.”
This Syracuse-area district was Democrat-leaning even before the current redistricting cycle. Spanning Oneida, Onondaga and Madison Counties, it is one of state’s rare purple districts, a place that repeatedly sent Mr. Katko to Washington at the same time as it chose Ms. Clinton and President Biden over Mr. Trump.
Mr. Katko has stayed pointedly neutral during this campaign, refusing to endorse Mr. Williams, though he has been supported by the rest of the Republican establishment.
This silence has allowed the Democratic candidate, Mr. Conole, to claim his legacy as a bipartisan deal maker.
“Central New Yorkers and Americans are exhausted with the extremes. They’re not going to move this country forward,” Mr. Conole said in a recent debate hosted by Syracuse.com.
Mr. Conole was born and raised in the district, the grandson of the former Onondaga County sheriff, Patrick Corbett, the first Democrat elected to the post. He served in Iraq before joining the Pentagon, staying through both the Obama and Trump administrations. He ran for Congress in 2020, losing in the Democratic primary to Dana Balter.
“I made the decision to run because of the multitude of crises we face,” Mr. Conole explained in an interview, listing gun violence, the climate, economic distress and abortion rights. “We now have fundamental freedoms at risk. Before that we had elections denied, Jan. 6 — the very guardrails of our democracy on the line.”
Mr. Williams came to the area over a decade ago, when he and his wife purchased a homestead outside Skaneateles, N.Y., where they farm hazelnut trees and truffles. The son of a wealthy Dallas Democrat, Mr. Williams has attended top schools, served on a nuclear submarine, worked on Wall Street and founded a venture capital firm and software company. This is his first time running for office.
In an interview, Mr. Williams described what drew him to postindustrial central New York, which has seen a sharp economic decline with the offshoring of manufacturing jobs.
“The more prosperous a community has been, you know, a lot of times it’s becomes transactional and transitional,” he said. “You just have this fabric of families here that you don’t find really in a lot of other communities.”
Reviving the area’s economy has been a focus of local leaders, especially Democrats who hope the announcement of a new Micron semiconductor factory, which is projected to create 50,000 jobs in the region, will help to temper some of those concerns.
On Thursday, President Biden, whose low approval ratings have made him a rare sight on the campaign trail, appeared in Syracuse to deliver a message of economic hope, referring to the Micron factory — billed as the largest private investment in the country’s history — as one of the “bright spots where America is reasserting itself.”
He specifically cheered Representative Katko for supporting the CHIPS and Science Act that provided the subsidies credited for sealing the deal, saying, “John is Republican. I like him a lot.”
Mr. Williams has criticized the CHIPS Act, but he has also said that he would have voted for the semiconductor subsidy.
Voters like Randy Watson are hopeful that Mr. Williams will bring them some relief. A town supervisor in Vernon, about an hour east of Syracuse, he showed up for a breakfast town hall hoping to hear from Mr. Williams and introduce himself.
His biggest concern, he said, was inflation, which was “just killing everyone.” Mr. Watson, a Republican, said he blames Democrats in Washington for financial policies that have overstimulated the economy.
“I really hope they stop giving away our tax money,” Mr. Watson said. “Everyone had so much because of Covid, and they just spent and spent and spent.”
Others see more complex causes of economic distress, including global pressures.
“If you think the Democratic Party is responsible for inflation, you aren’t paying attention,” said Kathy Kelly, of Syracuse. Ms. Kelly believes that Democratic policies have set the country on the right direction, but that there is still much work to do. She worried that voters concerned with their own immediate economic situation could miss the bigger picture.
“We want our elderly to be taken care of, and we want job security,” she said, adding: “The bottom line is, people want the same thing.”
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
