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Tag: battleground

  • Debt ceiling fight heads to battleground NYC suburbs

    Debt ceiling fight heads to battleground NYC suburbs

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    As both parties gaze toward a tumultuous 2024 election cycle, the president’s visit is already putting the Hudson Valley’s moderate Republicans, who narrowly won a handful of toss-up seats six months ago, back on the defensive. The economic tremors associated with a busted debt ceiling could be felt quickly by their constituents.

    “It’s exactly the wrong message,” Rep. Marc Molinaro, a Republican who won New York’s 19th District, said in an interview.

    “I think most Americans see the highest rate of inflation in 40 years, the debt crisis, spending crisis and a border crisis. And the president’s hopping on Air Force One to go siphon campaign dollars out of New York City, and then deliver partisan speeches in the marginal congressional districts. Frankly, there’s plenty of time for that. Right now, he ought to be engaged in negotiation on any one of those fronts.”

    Biden and congressional leaders in both parties met late Tuesday to see if they could reach a compromise, but it appeared no progress was made.

    Both he and Republican Rep. Mike Lawler pointed to Biden’s focus on negotiations — rather than campaign rhetoric — for similar crises when he was senator and then vice president.

    “So it’s a little surprising to see the tact that he has taken, frankly, throughout this process,” Lawler, who flipped New York’s 17th District by fewer than 2,000 votes, said in an interview Tuesday.

    “My position is one that I think most Americans would agree with,” Lawler continued. “Americans elected a House Republican majority to serve as a check and balance on the Biden agenda. And so they expect that there’s going to be a give-and-take. We don’t live in a dictatorship or a monarchy. And, and there needs to be compromise. And both sides need to be willing to give.”

    But Biden’s visit is not surprising to New Yorkers watching the scramble that ensued after November’s bruising results, and it won’t be surprising to see the president and other top Democrats return to Hudson Valley again and again, said Democratic strategist Jon Reinish.

    “I think that both parties regard the Hudson Valley — of all places — as the sort of political epicenter,” Reinish said. “It’s where [House Speaker Kevin] McCarthy made his majority, with a series of unlikely wins, but it’s also where his majority is the most fragile, and if you’re the White House, and if you’re President Biden, you’re going to seek to exploit that.”

    The issue’s partisan nature may serve to push lawmakers like Molinaro and Lawler toward more centrist positions relatively early in the reelection campaign.

    “2024 is coming down the pike really, really fast,” Reinish said. “And Lawler certainly knows that whichever Democrat runs against him is going to be extremely well funded and is going to go after him for any out of the mainstream radicalization and try to tie the rest of a faraway Republican House around him. So if I’m Lawler, I’m going to try to disarm whoever is going to be my opponent from those talking points.”

    The two Hudson Valley Republicans will be targeted by Democrats next year, along with the four seats on Long Island that the GOP swept. Biden and his surrogates made a series of stops in the region last fall to help Democrats, including the then-troubled campaign of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was able to pull out a narrow win.

    Molinaro shrugged off the idea that the spotlight on the region would alter his or his colleagues’ positions in the near or distant future.

    “At the end of the day, the public — your voters — will reelect you, if you’ve done an earnest and honest job,” he said. “I would say the president of the United States owes my voters, my constituents and every American the same honest earnest job of delivering on the compromise that’s necessary to ensure we do not default and that we don’t continue to spend and mortgage away our kids’ futures.”

    Lawler said he welcomes Biden to his district and looks “forward to being there to hear his remarks.” Molinaro will not.

    “I will be working on Wednesday, in Washington, D.C.,” Molinaro said, pointedly.

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    #Debt #ceiling #fight #heads #battleground #NYC #suburbs
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Whitmania: Dems eye Michigan gov’s sister for battleground House race

    Whitmania: Dems eye Michigan gov’s sister for battleground House race

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    Reelected last year as a Board of Education trustee for the Katonah-Lewisboro school district, Gereghty graduated from Duke University’s business school and serves as a small-business consultant. She’s a neophyte to congressional politics, though. And she’s unlikely to have the field to herself.

    Democrats see the Hudson Valley seat as one of their best pickup opportunities in next year’s election, given that the district remains deeply blue — voters there favored President Joe Biden by 10 points in 2020 — despite the GOP’s gains during last year’s midterms. It’s still early in the cycle, but party strategists say recruitment here and in several other New York battlegrounds will be their top priority for 2024.

    The New York-based seats are of particular interest to House Democratic leaders, given their Biden-friendly lean and proximity to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ district.

    House Majority PAC has already signaled it’s willing to spend heavily in the state, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has singled out Lawler’s seat among several other New York districts that the party aims to flip next year to try to return to the majority. And Jeffries, along with Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), has called for an after-action report on the 2022 elections in New York and the party’s shortcomings.

    Republicans remain confident in Lawler, however, given his high name ID and lifelong roots in the community. They expect the first-term incumbent to attract plenty of party support — fundraising and otherwise — ahead of next November in light of his high-profile win last year.

    Asked about the potential challengers, a spokesperson for Lawler’s campaign said the New York Republican is focused on policy issues like reducing congestion pricing, lifting the SALT cap and bringing down energy prices. “His focus is, and will continue to be, serving the people of the Hudson Valley and getting things done that improve their quality of life,” said Chris Russell, Lawler’s chief strategist.

    On the Democratic side, some more familiar names could enter the mix against Lawler. Former Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) has publicly expressed interest in a run but is still undecided, according to two people familiar with his thinking.

    Jones is likely to make a decision in the next month or two, one of those people said. (Jones represented a large part of the district before it was redrawn in 2022, though he ultimately ran and lost for a New York City-based district instead.) He has stayed active in local politics and is set to headline a local party dinner later in April.

    “I’ve been encouraging him to run. I think he can win it and we can take that district back,” said Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), who is a friend of Jones. “I really, quite honestly, think he got the short end of the stick in 2022.”

    Former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the onetime DCCC chief who lost the seat by roughly 1,800 votes last November, also hasn’t ruled out a bid, according to a person close to him. Several Democratic members and strategists, though, were privately skeptical he would jump into the race.

    So far, Gereghty is generating perhaps the most buzz among New York political circles. While she has a limited public presence so far, her sister, Gretchen Whitmer, is one of the most popular figures in Democratic politics and won reelection in a swing state last year by 11 points.

    Since redistricting reforms gave Democrats control of both chambers of Michigan’s state legislature and the governorship for the time in 40 years, they have been on a legislative tear, enacting protections for LGBTQ residents and anti-gun violence laws as well as codifying abortion rights.

    And Gretchen Whitmer isn’t the family’s only political stalwart: Their father served in the administration of former Gov. William Milliken, a Republican, and her mother was a state assistant attorney general. Her family is also close to the Dingells, including Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), who has been helping Gereghty with the early stages of her New York run.

    The Detroit Free Press reported in 2020, as the governor’s star began to rise, that Gereghty saved Whitmer’s number in her phone as “The Woman from Michigan” — a reference to the derisive nickname that Gretchen Whitmer earned from then-President Donald Trump.

    Michigan, the Whitmers’ home state, is known for its political dynasties, such as the Levins, the Conyers, the Dingells and the Kildees. But the Mitten isn’t alone there: Indiana GOP Rep. Greg Pence captured an open congressional seat in 2018 while his brother Mike was serving as vice president. And Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) served in Congress with his brother, Lincoln. On top of that, countless children have replaced their parents in office.

    But famous relatives don’t always propel their families to electoral success. One recent example: Levi Sanders, the son of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), was trounced in a 2018 Democratic primary for a New Hampshire House seat.



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    #Whitmania #Dems #eye #Michigan #govs #sister #battleground #House #race
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )