From the Sun Belt to the industrial Midwest, Democrats, emboldened by the Great Harris Swap of 2024, are licking their chopssportsplus ph, sensing increased enthusiasm and bigger poll numbers for their cause.
But one of the biggest tests will be just east of New York City on Long Island, where Democrats are fighting to win three congressional races that could determine control of the House of Representatives in a suburban landscape where Trumpism has thrived.
In New York’s Third Congressional District, centered in northern Nassau County, Representative Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, is running for re-election. In the Fourth Congressional District, in southern Nassau County, Laura Gillen, a Democrat and former town supervisor, is hoping to unseat Anthony D’Esposito, a Republican. In the First Congressional District, farther east in Suffolk County, John Avlon, a journalist and Democrat, is challenging the incumbent Republican, Nick LaLota.
With Vice President Kamala Harris now leading the ticket, Democrats are sounding increasingly confident they can hold Mr. Suozzi’s seat, win back the Fourth District, and possibly even flip the First District.
Winning at least two of these seats is vital. In the 2022 midterms, losses in these suburban battlegrounds and elsewhere in New York helped to hand Republicans a thin majority in the House. The outcome was an alert for Democrats in New York, where the party is more practiced at fighting off primary challenges from progressives and party outsiders than winning competitive elections against Republicans.
“I will say to you I will admit some guilt,” Representative Gregory Meeks, a county Democratic Party chair in Queens, which overlaps with Mr. Suozzi’s district, told me. “I took it for granted that we were going to win. So I didn’t send anybody out there. I should have.”
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