Full Episode: The Election's Over. What happened, and What's Next?

DAN CLARK: Welcome to this week's edition of New York NOW. I'm Dan Clark. 

Tuesday is now behind us and it has been quite the election cycle. Just last summer, politics in New York looked different. Andrew Cuomo was governor and he was running to win a fourth term and the republicans were still settling on a nominee. But then Cuomo resigned and his lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul, took his place. 

A few months later, republicans would rally around congressman Lee Zeldin, the challenger. Now after a race that felt like it would not end, we now enter a new chapter in New York's history. 

Kathy Hochul became the first woman in state history to be elected governor. That was after weeks of suspense as polls showed the race between her and republican congressman Lee Zeldin tightening, but in the end, voters picked Hochul. 

GOV. KATHY HOCHUL IN HER VICTORY SPEECH: Tonight, you made your voices heard loud and clear. And, you made me the first woman ever elected to be the governor of the state of New York! But I'm not here to make history. I’m here to make a difference!

DAN CLARK: She rallied with other democrats Tuesday night in Manhattan as the results came in, and at the start of the night, no one really knew what was going to happen. It was the first time in more than a decade that democrats were truly worried they could lose statewide, and that showed in the results. Hochul won but by less than ten points, the tightest margin seen in a race for governor in New York since 1994. She framed her victory as a rejection of political extremism.

GOV. KATHY HOCHUL IN HER VICTORY SPEECH:The lessons of tonight's victory are that given the choice, New Yorkers refuse to go backwards on our long march toward progress and we embrace the torch that's been passed to us from all those who fought the good night years before we came here.

DAN CLARK: Republicans always knew that winning statewide was a long shot. Registered democrats outnumber republicans here 2 to 1. But Zeldin tried to combat that, campaigning for independence and moderate democrats on bipartisan issues, like crime and the economy. In the end, it wasn't enough, but on election night, Zeldin said he would not concede. 

LEE ZELDIN ON ELECTION NIGHT:So what's going to happen is that over the course of these next couple of hours, you're going to see the race continue to get closer and closer and closer.

DAN CLARK: And it did get closer, but Hochul still came out ahead. Zeldin conceded the race privately to Hochul the next day. He said the race was competitive because of a particularly strong campaign effort targeted at voters in the middle of the political spectrum. 

LEE ZELDIN ON ELECTION NIGHT: We had support coming in from republicans and democrats and independents. we all united as New Yorkers because we're committed to saving our state and you poured your heart and soul into this entire effort. 

DAN CLARK: Democrats running 4 statewide in New York for positions like governor, attorney general, comptroller and U.S. senate usually win by at least 15 points and a lot of the time, the gap is wider. But like in the race for governor, this year was different. Attorney General Letitia James, the incumbent, won four years ago by a gap of nearly 30 points. This year she won by less than 15 points. 

ATTORNEY GENERAL LETITIA JAMES ON ELECTION NIGHT:You see right now, my friends we are divided. We are polarized, and there are those on the left and those on the right and those who have taken themselves out of democratic process because they feel disregarded and forgotten about. We're at a crossroad, my friend, in the state and we must choose the path that takes us forward not backwards while extending a reach to every corner of this state. 

DAN CLARK: Her republican opponent, Michael Henry, did not give a concession speech on election night, and the race for state comptroller was also tighter than usual. Democrats have held that seat for 30 years. They first won it in the early '90s and even held it through all three terms of republican governor George Pataki. That streak will continue. incumbent comptroller Tom DiNapoli, a democrat, won re-election to a fourth full term but also less than 15 points.

COMPTROLLER TOM DINAPOLI ON ELECTION NIGHT:My friends, I know this wasn't the easiest year for our party, but I'm very proud of how hard we worked, how we kept our message out there. As I criss-crossed the state, I saw democrats engaged, motivated, working hard each and every day. It made me more proud than I've ever been to be a democrat in the year 2022. 

DAN CLARK: His republican opponent, Paul Rodriguez, didn't give a concession speech Tuesday night either and probably the most recognizable New York politician won his race as well, U.S. senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, a democrat from New York, won his race but by the closest margin since he was first elected to the senate in 1998. 

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER ON ELECTION NIGHT:And I vow to you and to all New Yorkers I will work just as hard to make this new term every bit as impactful as the four that came before it because you know why? New York is in my bones. 

DAN CLARK: Schumer's republican opponent, media personality Joe Pinion, also didn't give a concession speech on election night. As for the state legislature, democrats will remain in power there too. No surprise in the assembly where democrats have had a firm majority for decades, but in the state senate, democrats lost a few seats, mostly upstate and 6 on Long Island. They'll remain in the majority there but with fewer votes to count on. Whether that changes the dynamic in Albany will remain to be seen. lawmakers will return for the new legislative session in January. a lot more happened Tuesday as well with some surprises. 

Let's get into it with this week's panel. Karen DeWitt is with New York state public radio. Dave Lombardo is from the Capital Press Room, also on public radio. Thank you both. 

I want to start broad. This was a very interesting election cycle. As I mentioned before we came on the air, Andrew Cuomo was governor a year ago. Not a year ago today, but a year ago in 2021. Back then, the election was a very different looking beast than it was on Tuesday, but Karen what were your take-aways watching? 

KAREN DEWITT: I thought it was going to be pretty boring when it started, that Hochul would win, you know, it was kind of her race to lose, but it got very exciting in the final wait. she kind of banked on supporting abortion rights 7 and threats to democracy being the main issues, and then crime started creeping up sort of thanks to the support of her supporter-- I mean, her challenger Lee Zeldin, who was really bringing up the crime issues and it was really resonating, and she didn't really pivot all that quickly to address what were some real concerns that people had. I think it got really exciting in the final weeks when Zeldin was surging and I think democrats were kind of panicking about that. 

DAN CLARK: I think so, too. sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. I was just going to say I think the republicans really did a very good job campaigning in this cycle. I think they really hit on the issues that people seem to really care about in terms of crime and the economy. I don't honestly know if crime would have been that big of an issue if they didn't campaign on it. Because I don't think that people would see maybe the spike in crime in the data as we report it and think there's a crime wave happening.

DAVE LOMBARDO: But there's that cycle that kind of feeds upon itself. When politicians are talking about an issue, it might then get a lot more media coverage, like our friends in the New York Post when it comes to every single crime that's occurred over the last two plus years, and then you get politicians who are talking about it. So it becomes this sort of feedback. When you talk about those issues that people care about, polling has shown repeatedly leading up to this election that crime and inflation/the economy were what people were caring about in New York. Whereas, abortion was down about 6% in terms of the number of voters who said that was their top issue. We saw earlier in the summer that was something that really resonated with voters. I think Pat Ryan’s special election victory in congress might have been on the back of the abortion issue in August. But this election wasn't held in August. Kathy Hochul could have done anything, maybe move this election up three months would have really helped her with that abortion message. 

KAREN DEWITT: Right. If the Dobbs decision had come like in September, but I think the issue with crime, there's just a general sense of unease that people have and it's not just crime. It's the economy, it's inflation, Covid, the pandemic. I mean, let's face it: are any of our lives the same as they were before the pandemic? There's always kind of an unease about this isn't working right, this isn't quite right. Just a small example: the restaurants are always closed on Monday and Tuesday, just like a lot of aggravations. I think the unease about, you know, certainly there is a rise in violent crime really resonated with people. I think the democrats could have addressed that better and they didn't. they were-- certainly Kathy Hochul was slow to realize because she thought reasonably, it's not all about bail reform. It's much more complicated than that. 

DAVE LOMBARDO: But I also think she didn't want to talk about it. because I think the democratic position on criminal justice issues is complicated. It takes a nuanced conversation to explain. And they never had a good talking point on any of this stuff and so that's why I think we saw that they weren't willing to engage until they really had to in October. Like you said, that's not enough time to really hammer your message home to these swing flippity-floppity voters.

KAREN DEWITT: Right, I think she's also worried about the progressive wing of her party, too. She didn't want to offend them and have those people stay home because then she really wouldn't get elected. 

DAN CLARK: It also helps that republicans have been nailing this messaging around bail reform specifically since 2020. democrats passed it initially in 2019. It took effect in 2020 and since then, republicans have been out front on that issue trying to convince the public that it is the wrong thing. At the same time over the past few years, we've seen crime go up. We've seen this really kind of perfect storm for them in terms of things that have happened in the past two years, whereas, the data doesn't reflect that bail reform had anything to do with crime. Reporting from Yancy Roy and Newsday 11 show that the rearrest rate in 2019 is about the same as it was in 2021. It's that kind of interesting-- I think they played like a very smart long game. And I think there might have been some similarities and Karen, maybe you can help me out, between this election and the 1994 race which was between Pataki and Mario Cuomo. Did you see any similarities there? 

KAREN DEWITT: Well, the fear of crime. In fact, it was about the death penalty. I used to call it the race about death and taxes because Pataki wanted to cut taxes and, you know, reinstate the death penalty which Mario Cuomo was just against. He knew that was unpopular in those days, but he just stuck with that because he had this kind of moral backbone that doesn't always help you when avoiding elections unfortunately, and yeah. So the fear of crime is very similar to 1994. 

DAVE LOMBARDO: This shouldn't have been a surprise to democrats, because we had a warning of what was coming in 2021 on Long Island with the races in Nassau County, where Todd Kaminsky, a popular democratic state senator, lost the race for district attorney and even dragged down a popular democratic county executive, and so then fast forward to this election night, democrats went from five seats on the state senate on Long Island to now they're probably only gonna have two out of nine seats. So the writing was on the wall and the fact, again, that they didn't respond to it at least across the state until October shows a real failure by Kathy Hochul as well as the democratic party at large, which this whole election didn't have a coherent, concise campaign messaging, and it trickled down to, you know, the actual outreach they were doing. They had palm cards that didn't even match up with some of the candidates who were running in legislative races. They're handing out, here's my name recognition thing and here's my statewide ballot. So there could have been a lot more coordination and a lot more organization. 

KAREN DEWITT: They also didn't have lawn signs, which in this day and age seems crazy, like who needs a lawn sign? But like I drive a lot in upstate New York. It was amazing how many Zeldin signs I saw. Almost no Hochul signs ever, and I think that's just a little detail that you do need to reinforce. It's probably not enough to spend millions of dollars on TV campaign ads and social media. you still need the on-the-ground stuff, and they didn't really have that.

DAVE LOMBARDO: If you can't get right what people can actually see, it makes you wonder what are they getting wrong behind the scenes? And I think part of that is that outreach to traditional democratic voters. So we're thinking about black and brown people, especially in New York City and as a result, we saw the Bronx with extremely low turnout this year and this is an area where Kathy Hochul should do very well, and she did do very well, but she could have driven out even more votes, and we could have seen that in Brooklyn as well, but I think turnout was only about 33% and she got 70% of the vote. So if she gets that turnout up to, say, 50% like it was on Long Island, the strong vote for Lee Zeldin, her margin goes up and up and up, but they didn't do any of that. 

KAREN DEWITT: Yeah. I think they showed the weakness of the party, but maybe not to governor Hochul. But don't forget, she's only been in a year. She had to figure out the entire state government because Andrew Cuomo kept her out of everything. So she had to hit the ground running, run the state, raise all this money and run for re-election. So she's probably not going to be able to do everything well. I think what you're saying, Dave, brings out the party, Jay Jacobs could have been more helpful in all of those kinds of things. Because 14 they certainly, supposedly have had those skills for decades and have been in the business for decades. It does seem like they dropped the ball in a lot of those areas. 

DAVE LOMBARDO: What you say about Kathy Hochul in her relationship with Jay Jacobs is true in the sense that she's only been on the job for 15 months at this point, but now that she has settled down and won election in her own rite, it's going to be interesting to see, will she let Jay Jacobs remain as the party chair? Because while he is, not only is he representative of all these committee members, in reality she is the de facto head. And like Dan said, she's sort of given him a voice of support at this point is she going to feel more pressure from the left to move him out? Really remains to be seen. If I'm her, I think I'm happy. I won my election, so what problems do I have with Jay Jacobs? But there could be some backlash. 

KAREN DEWITT: Yeah. She couldn't really get rid of him after winning the election. She did. She was speaking in Puerto Rico where the democrats always go for the SOMOS conference to kind of de-stress after the elections. I need to de-stress. 

DAVE LOMBARDO: After this, we all need to go. 

KAREN DEWITT: Because we work for a public broadcast station, that's why. 

DAN CLARK: You do have to wonder what the state party is doing this election cycle. What we saw in 2021, for example with them not really doing a lot for the ballot proposals, you saw the redistricting proposal fail. So this year, I would have thought they would have kind of learned their lesson there. But still with the bond act, I didn't get any kind of mail on the bond act. I didn't get any information served to me as a voter on the bond act until the day of the election. Which I found extraordinary. I got another mailer from the state party in Neil Breslin's district, because that's where I live, and the mailer was about the race but the mailer didn't say anything about Breslin. It only said negative things about Rich Amedure and named him by name. And as people who run campaigns know, if you're just putting your opponent out there as a voter, I'm just looking at this piece of mail and I see a name. 

KAREN DEWITT: You might not have even heard-- if you’re average voter, you might not have even heard of Amedure except for his lawn signs. So maybe not mention his name. 

DAN CLARK: Right. It's just fascinating to me. I'm wondering if there will be a real genuine challenge for Jay Jacobs in power. Because I think it was either earlier this year or late last year after the 2021 elections where democrats did have major losses here that there was kind of like a timid challenge to his power, and we don't really see that. I wonder if maybe a new makeup of the state senate changes that. I don't know. Dave, what do you think? 

DAVE LOMBARDO: I think that Jay Jacobs is going to serve as long as Kathy Hochul wants him in that job. 

KAREN DEWITT: Yep. 

DAVE LOMBARDO: I think it doesn't matter if AOC wants him out. It doesn't matter if former democratic state senator Alessandra Biaggii wants him out. It doesn't matter if current democratic state senators want him out. Unless Kathy Hochul feels enough fire to oust him, then she's not gonna do it. That fire is gonna have to be op-eds in the Buffalo news, the Times Union, persistent coverage from the New York Times. This might all blow over a month from now. We already-- I mean, the democratic party already forgot the lessons of 2021 going into 2022. So there's a short memory here. So let's see if we're talking about this in a month. If we are, maybe then Kathy Hochul will want Jay Jacobs gone.

KAREN DEWITT: I think you're right. It's like whoever the governor is comfortable with, that's who's gonna be the party chair. That's, you know, what it comes down to. If she's comfortable with him, she's going to try to get the other people in line. Although you're right. She does have some arguments to make there, well, why did we lose the congressional seats? Why does the state senate no longer have the supermajority? There's certainly things that, you know, whether it's her fault or not, she's gonna have to answer for. She's the boss now. I mean, you know, because she got elected to this job. Before you could say, well, she's filling in. We'll see what happens, but yeah. Right, it's on her. 

DAN CLARK: It will be-- the thing about the parties, in general, and i think that-- I hope both of you would agree with this. It seems like the state republican party has a much more organized infrastructure to it. You have a very active chair, who is now elected to congress. Won't be the chair anymore. 

KAREN DEWITT: They need to get a new chair. 

DAN CLARK: They need a new chair. You have a spokesperson for that party, a full-time spokesperson for that party. They're just traveling the state all the time. Doing events. whereas, the democratic party you see the leadership, you really don't see Jay Jacobs out and about all that often. 

DAVE LOMBARDO: It might be the best for the dems.

DAN CLARK: Well, I have never seen him in Albany in person. 

KAREN DEWITT: You're right. He is kind of elusive.

DAN CLARK: Yeah, exactly. So you don't really see this like-- the public face of the party then is Kathy Hochul, and as we are looking at these races for congress and state senate, I don't know if that's a good thing, to be honest with you. 

KAREN DEWITT: Well, yeah. iImean, the congressional races are pretty complicated. It had a lot to do with redistricting and the democrats dropping the ball, overreaching on-- drawing maps that were very favorable to the democrats and then only to see it all get thrown out by the state's high court, and then having a special master and the races were competitive. Even some of them seem like they were almost leaning republican. So that was like a real debacle right there. Because other democratic-- other congressional races in other states did well. New York was the one that did poorly, which is really surprising and Sean Patrick Maloney, the democratic congressional campaign committee chair being thrown out.

DAN CLARK: By a first term assemblyman. 

KAREN DEWITT: And he's pretty bitter about it. And the races on Long Island may be more expected but that really shouldn't have happened, I don't think. 

DAVE LOMBARDO: The lines of the democrats in the legislature what drawn up, they were looking at potentially having a 21 or 22 of 26 seats. Instead they're looking at 15 of 26 seats, but even with the maps they were running out right now, these were congressional lines, these marginal purple areas that democrats, at least in presidential election years, are in pretty good shape to win. We think about the districts on Long Island that flipped from blue to red. The one in the Hudson Valley that went from blue to red. These are areas that Joe Biden won. so in 2024, it will be interesting to see how they go this time around. I also think that when we talk about Kathy Hochul and her down ballot effect, I think we also need to think about the overall national mood, but we did see congressional democrats and candidates for state senate and assembly outperform Kathy Hochul on the top of the ticket. So for instance, senator Elijah Melnick, a democrat in Hudson Valley, I think he beat Kathy Hochul in his Rockland County district by about five points, but that wasn't enough to overcome the republican advantage, and he's not going to be with us in January. Yeah, there were definitely some candidates down ballot that were outperforming. 

KAREN DEWITT: Also Zeldin brought out a lot of republican supporters in the suburbs. Not enough for him to win, but enough, I think to swing a lot of these-- the races that did end up being flipped. 

DAN CLARK: He's a very, very good campaigner. and I will be frank and I apologize to the congressman if he's watching. I did not think he was going to be. 

KAREN DEWITT: Nobody did. 

DAN CLARK: Yeah. In 2021 in April when they were first considering him, I really thought I-- he's not that well known, you know. I don't really know where he is on top issues, things like that. I don't know if he's going to get the name recognition needed. 

KAREN DEWITT: He doesn't need money either.

DAN CLARK: They had money by the end.

KAREN DEWITT: Yeah. because of the 22 super pacs. Back to Dave's point, I think that's why the democrats weren't that worried at first in 2021. Oh, it's just gonna be like the last couple elections, but I think for the republicans going forward, they have to think about separating themselves from former President Donald Trump, because I think if Zeldin wasn't so tied to Trump and hadn't voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election and also had been pro-choice, I think that he could have won this race. I think those are some items that they just-- they have to lose Trump if they want to win statewide in New York. It's just, you know, that's really I think in the end why democratic voters went over to Hochul, the ones that were maybe on the fence. 

DAN CLARK: Right. Exactly. We talk about the 1994 election briefly earlier. Lee Zeldin wasn't really a George Pataki in that sense, whereas, George Pataki is aligned with former President Trump. We can't forget that he was in a 23 presidential primary against President Trump in 2016. So he hasn't always been there. Whereas, Zeldin has always been on the Trump train, as people like to call it. Republicans blew their best chance to win the executive mansion by putting up a fringe candidate. You could have had a so-called moderate republican who's pro-choice, like Karen said, but also hammering home the crime issue, but Lee Zeldin, in both his rhetoric and his politics, a fringe republican candidate. 

KAREN DEWITT: Although he did try to downplay that. I think in some ways maybe he didn't beyond that.

DAVE LOMBARDO: But there was no messaging on education other than charter schools and critical race theory, there was no talk about child care from his campaign. There were none of the softer edges that he needs to show in New York, a deep, deep, deep blue state, if they want to get elected. We saw now the ceiling for a fringe candidate in a great year for republicans. 

DAN CLARK: And it seemed like Zeldin 24 was going for the issues they were not going to attract the middle of the road democrats. When you talk about crime in the way he talks about it I don't know if you're getting those swing voters. We have about 30 seconds left, Karen. 

KAREN DEWITT: Oh, okay. I'm not really sure. Maybe I've said everything at this point.

DAVE LOMBARDO: The pollsters did a pretty good job in actually calling this election. They had Kathy Hochul at about 52 to 54% range, and that's where she looks like she's going to land. Really happy to give a thumbs up to the institutional pollsters who take a lot of crap. 

KAREN DEWITT: All right. If I have two seconds, I want to say one thing: Here was somebody who wasn't mentioned but was hovering over a lot of it, former governor Andrew Cuomo. 

DAN CLARK: Yes. And actually, whole segment on that another time. 

KAREN DEWITT: Yes. 

DAN CLARK: Because you are so right. 

DAVE LOMBARDO: After Puerto Rico. 

DAN CLARK: Exactly. Karen DeWitt from New York public radio. Dave Lombardo from Capitol Pressroom, thank you both so much. 

And a lot more happened Tuesday as well. You can get all of it on our website at nynow.org anytime. Until then, thanks for watching this week's New York NOW. Have a great week and be well.

THE PRECEDING IS A TRANSCRIPTION FROM THE BROADCAST VERSION OF NEW YORK NOW AND HAS BEEN CONDENSED FOR CLARITY.

Catch this week's show on your local PBS station, or watch on YouTube, Facebook, or using the free PBS app anytime after Friday.

On this week's edition of New York NOW:

• Election Day has come and gone, and the results are in. We'll tell you what happened at the polls.
• Karen DeWitt from New York State Public Radio and David Lombardo from The Capitol Pressroom join us to break down the results, and what they mean moving forward.