As voters throughout New York prepared to cast ballots Tuesday morning, Republican congressional hopeful Marc Molinaro urged people to show up and “send a message” to Washington, D.C.
As it turns out, that’s precisely what happened — though it wasn’t the message Molinaro and his party wanted to hear. NBC News reported:
A victory in a bellwether House district in Hudson Valley gives fresh hope to Democrats ahead of a daunting 2022 midterm election and raises questions for Republicans who have been expecting a “red wave” this fall. Democrat Pat Ryan won the hotly contested special election Tuesday, defeating Republican Marc Molinaro, NBC News projected.
With just about all of the votes counted, Ryan appears to have prevailed by about 2 percentage points. The Democrat will now serve out the remainder of this Congress in the seat left vacant by Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, before running for a full term of his own in a newly redrawn neighboring district in the fall.
For those unfamiliar with New York’s 19th district, it’s widely seen as one of the nation’s most reliable bellwethers: To see which way the prevailing political winds are blowing, watch how voters in the Hudson Valley are casting their ballots. It is, after all, a district that supported George W. Bush, then Barack Obama, then Donald Trump, and then Joe Biden.
It’s also a district that flipped from “blue” to “red” in the Republicans’ 2010 wave election, only to flip back from “red” to “blue” in the Democrats’ 2018 wave election.
With this in mind, ahead of Tuesday’s special election, GOP leaders were quite optimistic that they would flip the seat back, sending an unmistakable signal about a Republican takeover in November. Indeed, in the spring, the National Republican Congressional Committee effectively guaranteed success.
They’d recruited a good candidate with high name recognition; they’d invested heavily in the race; and GOP voters turned out in large numbers, just as the party had hoped.
But it wasn’t enough — and it’s worth understanding why.








