The NPR Politics Podcast - Control of House of Representatives Runs Through New York

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

Democratic under-performance in New York state cost the party control of the House of Representatives in 2022. Now, a new coordination strategy has the party hopeful that it can reclaim the chamber �� as their chances of holding the Senate continue to dwindle.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hi, this is John from Madison in the battleground state of Wisconsin. I'm up early with excitement and some nerves as I'm about to start my first day of parental leave. This podcast was recorded at 1.05 p.m. on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but from now through the election,

I'll be in a semi-routine of bottles, diapers, naps, stories, and snuggles. Okay, here's the show. No wonder he's whispering. Congratulations, John. Congratulations. I'm freshly back off that period, and it is the most beautiful, challenging moment of my life. So good luck, and enjoy every minute. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason,

senior national political correspondent. And today we are talking about the great state of New York. In 2022, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives with the help of a mini red wave in the traditionally blue New York state. Democrats lost seats in suburban districts, mostly around New York City. And Deirdre, they are hoping this time around to win those seats back. I'm hoping we just go back two years, though, and start there. What happened in 2022 that led to this little red wave? I mean, Democrats themselves admit they were a little blindsided and a lot unorganized. Back in 2022, there was a big concern about in those districts surrounding New York, about the issues of rising crime rates about border security.

There was a Republican candidate for governor Lee Zeldin, he was a House Republican, challenging Kathy Hochul, who had come in after Cuomo stepped away after his own personal scandal. So she was running sort of as the first time statewide and was sort of overwhelmed and unprepared to respond to these issues. caught off guard. So the Republicans who were coming out to vote, who were concerned about these issues, were able to bring this class of House Republicans in in 2022 and helped Republicans win control of the House. I talked to New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. She's behind this new effort, this coordinated campaign that Democrats have mounted for 2024. And she said a week before the 2022 midterms, she asked her staff, like, what are the candidates doing? Where are the rallies?

There was no big rallies. There was no organized canvassing. There was no coordination at all amongst local candidates and House candidates. So what Gillibrand and other top state party leaders, including Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, the head of the New York State Party, and Governor Hochul have done, is stand up this coordinated campaign to add a bunch of resources. They have hired 100 staffers. They have 37 offices in these five battleground districts. Republicans only have five offices in those districts. And what they're trying to do is model this effort on what traditionally purple states like Wisconsin do. They are used to having major swing state races

across up and down their ballot. New York wasn't. And that was a problem that they're trying to fix in this cycle. Well, Mara, I'm curious because this story really does get at one big theme of this election compared to 2022. We saw crime as a major issue in the 2022 midterms in a bunch of big cities. It was it was at play in some local races here in Washington, D.C. I remember it was a big part of the Philadelphia mayor's race. But violent crime generally has gone down since then. And I guess I wonder, Mara, do you think crime will be as big of an

issue to voters this time around? I think crime and immigration are really good issues for Republicans. But if you want to measure just Donald Trump's advantage on these issues over Kamala Harris, the advantage has shrunk. He still has one. Republicans still have one. But yes, violent crime is way down. And Democrats have gotten smarter about talking about immigration. So there was a special election in New York to fill George Santos's seat. He's the guy who got kicked out of Congress. And Tom Suozzi, who was the Democrat in that election, he won. And he is now considered a model for how Democrats can talk about immigration. You can see it at the very top of the party where Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are talking much tougher about immigration, about border security, instead of about decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

So I think crime and immigration are still important issues, not as big as they were in the midterms. And also Democrats have learned how to talk about these issues. And what's interesting about these races, all of these swing suburban districts, Biden won them. And now a Republican incumbent is trying to get reelected. And those kinds of seats are the path that Democrats think is the way back to getting the majority in the House. For sure. Not just in these New York races that we're focused on talking about today. But there are an equal number of seats in California that both Democrats and Republican strategists say will determine who controls the House of Representatives. Both big blue states where the presidential election will not be fought.

I think it's also interesting getting at the issue of crime and safety. Gillibrand said something that was interesting to me. Her first ad that she went up on the air on. And look, she's not in a competitive race, but she's part of this coordinated effort. Her first ad was on what she's done personally to make New Yorkers safer. Her third ad is on reproductive freedom issues. That's sort of something that I think other Democratic candidates in New York are likely to replicate, as Mara talked about with Tom Suozzi. I covered the special election in New York earlier this year, and he was responding to what voters were saying

on the ground. Well, so Deirdre, you're saying that Democrats are basically looking at 2022 and say, we did not have our stuff together. We are coordinating, we're kind of changing everything, we're putting a lot more boots on the ground in the state to kind of help organize this. How are local Republicans responding to that? I mean, is there a sense from the Republican side that this is going to be a tougher fight? They freely acknowledge that they are going to be outspent and that Democrats have put a lot more boots on the ground. They've hired 100 staffers, like I talked about, 37 offices in these five districts. Senator Gillibrand talked about how

they had knocked on 350,000 doors, essentially in the week before I sat down to talk to her in her Senate office. They're really focused on the ground game. And Gillibrand was arguing that voter engagement, addressing the issues of concern that voters have about crime, about inflation, and making sure New Yorkers realize that their vote matters. Because like Mara said, it's a blue state. There isn't a lot of presidential campaign activity, but their vote will matter in terms of which party controls the House of Representatives. And that's a big message with this coordinated campaign. And this is a huge test of how much a ground game counts. In other words, Democrats have more money and a more robust ground game in the presidential level.

And we're going to find out whether that matters or does the continuing issue advantage that Republicans have on crime and immigration, will that balance out the better funding and the more robust get-out-the-vote effort the Democrats have. One Long Island Republican, Nick Lolota, that I talked to, who's one of these five House Republican freshmen, said, I know I'm going to be outspent, but voters trust Republicans on these two issues, crime and inflation. And that's the big question. Mara's right. I mean, I think this will shake out on Election Day and when we see the results come in New York. Okay. Let's take a quick break. When we get back, I want to get into the specific tax policy that could also play a big role

in some of these races. This message comes from the podcast Pod Save America. It is here to help with all of the election analysis. Co-hosted by former Obama aides, the show is having honest conversations about the state of this race, and they want you to join. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform now. And we're back. And as I mentioned, we're going to talk a little bit wonky about taxes because they seem to be coming up a lot in some of these races, specifically the SALT deduction, which is the state and local tax deduction. Deirdre, can you just explain a little bit about what this is and how it's changed in recent years?

Right. Back in the 2017 Trump tax bill, part of that deal capped the amount homeowners in high-cost states can deduct on their taxes for state and local property taxes. Blue states with high-cost cities like New York, California, these are big issues because the cost of living, the cost of housing, mortgages are just so much greater in those areas. So it's essentially what happened was a tax increase on a lot of these homeowners. And after that bill passed, Democrats were able to flip some seats because of that issue. Races in suburban New Jersey outside New York, they picked up a couple seats. So I think that the political impact of this tax debate can't be underestimated when it comes to the control of the House, because the issue of the SALT deduction is a huge issue in New York races and California races.

Such a big issue that New York races and California races, such a big issue that Trump decided to reverse himself. He went and had a rally in Uniondale on Long Island recently and vowed he would restore that tax break. Democrats called him out and said, you're the reason there is this issue. If we control the gavels in Congress, the cap will expire in 2025. So doing nothing means it goes away and is restored. But Republicans I talk to say the fact that Trump came and publicly made that pledge is a huge help to them. Because they want to reassure voters in their districts who are seeing these tax bills that they are helping them out. You know, this is the most pure flip-flop that I've

ever seen a politician do. Remember, the idea in the Trump tax bill to not make blue state, high-tax blue state local taxes deductible was to own the libs, was to stick it to those high-taxing blue states. Right. That's what I was trying to remember. This was a thing that many Republicans owned at that point. Oh, it was more than just tax policy. It wasn't like an accidental thing. No, this was pure Trumpism. If blue states, you want to have high local and state taxes, well, we're not going to bail you out. We're not going to let you make those taxes deductible on the federal level. We're going to make it even more unpleasant to pay taxes if you're in a blue state. And of course, they were hoping that taxpayers would rise up and either insist that the blue states cut their taxes or elect Republicans. Now he's done a complete 180 and says, oops, never mind,

I'm going to reverse this. And it's not unlike other flip-flops he's made on legalizing marijuana, TikTok, vaping, a lot of things. But this one is the most pure. And House Republicans in those districts are thrilled that he made that pledge. That's right. Democrats are arguing they can't get away with the double talk on this issue. But there's no doubt, talking to strategists in both parties, that this is an issue in races that could determine the control of the House. I mean, when you look at these competitive House races, how much of this is actually going to come down to a specific issue like a tax policy question versus whether somebody

is just on Team Harris or Team Trump? Well, we're going to find that out. It's very, very rare that the House would go in one direction in a presidential year and the White House would go in another. In other words, for Donald Trump to win the White House and Democrats to take back the House, that will be a very, very unprecedented thing. What we do know is that ticket splitting is getting rarer and rarer, certainly on the Senate side. I think Susan Collins of Maine was the only senator in the last presidential election, a Republican elected in a state, Maine, that went for the Democratic presidential candidate. So we're going to find out if ticket splitting is still alive and well, and also how

important the presidential race is in blue states where the presidential candidates are not campaigning or spending any money. Yeah, I think a lot of strategists think that whoever wins the White House will bring the House of Representatives along with it, either keeping it for the Republicans if Trump wins or Vice President Harris helping Democrats flip it, elevating turnout in some of these closely watched races in the House. But there aren't that many House races that are competitive. We're really just talking about a couple of dozen districts around the country, a lot of them concentrated, as we've been talking about, in these blue states.

Never say never, right? Because we've witnessed a lot of rare things happen in the last few months. So Mara, I'm interested whether or not this ticket splitting dynamic does happen. I think another argument that a lot of Republican strategists are making about these races in New York is even though it's not a battleground state, that sort of helps these Republicans because they've been able to create sort of their own brand separate and apart. Right. They're like the John Testers and Sherrod Browns of the House. Exactly. And this is something that our listeners need to keep in mind.

The definition of a swing House district or a battleground House district is that it is held by a congressmember of the party that did not win that district in the last presidential race. In other words, there are about 18 or 20, I think, districts held by a Republican that went for Biden. And also there's a handful of Democrats in districts that went for Trump, fewer than the number of Republicans. Yeah, only about five. Only about five. But that is what defines the House battleground. Is it fair to say that Democrats see the House as a more, at this point, a higher probability win than the Senate? Oh, yeah, definitely. For sure. For sure. Yeah. Okay. Let's leave it there for now. A lot of stuff to watch as this election gets closer. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason,

senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.