The ‘Unusual’ Strategy That Might Help Democrats Win Back the House

From the Sun Belt to the industrial Midwest, Democrats, emboldened by the Great Harris Swap of 2024, are licking their chops, 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.”

To win, Democrats will have to engage in the kind of political organizing rarely seen in the state: phone-banking and get-out-the-vote rallies; door-knocking and canvassing and recruiting volunteers. And they will have to work harder to turn out Democratic-leaning minority voters on Long Island, especially in Nassau County, which is more racially diverse than Suffolk County.

The headwinds against Democrats on Long Island are intense.

Nassau and Suffolk Counties voted for Barack Obama twice. But in 2016 and again in 2020, Suffolk went for Donald Trump. In what Democrats fear may be a lasting realignment, Suffolk County is trending more like Florida than the rest of New York. Not helping matters any is the unpopularity of Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat.

Though New York is hardly a swing state, much of Long Island, once a Democratic stronghold, has become hostile territory for Democrats. Republicans have exploited alarm over the recent arrival of more than 200,000 migrants in New York City. They have used bail reform measures passed by Democrats in the statehouse to breathe new life into old fears over crime. They have seized on anger over other progressive measures attempted by the state, like congestion pricing and a modest initiative by Ms. Hochul to build badly needed housing by changing suburban zoning laws around mass transit stations. Ms. Hochul abandoned both initiatives when suburban voters balked.

Nassau, which borders New York City, is friendlier turf for Democrats. But an expertly organized Republican Party machine in the county makes winning there harder. “If you want to be a lifeguard in the town of Hempstead, your parents have to be Republican,” Ms. Gillen, the Democrat running in the Fourth Congressional District, said when I asked how the party machine worked.

Suffolk County, in the eastern portion of Long Island, is also politically divided but is farther from the city, less racially diverse and skews more Republican. Trumpism has gained a strong foothold there. In the picturesque town of Port Jefferson recently, a giant banner reading “In Trump We Trust” hung above the local ice cream shop in the town’s center, overlooking the sparkling waters of the Long Island Sound.

Mr. D’Esposito said Republicans have been winning bigger on Long Island over the past decade because New York Democrats have gone too far to the left, while Republicans like him continue to “represent Long Island values.” Asked what those were, Mr. D’Esposito, a former detective with the New York Police Department, listed: “fighting for law and order, standing up for our criminal justice system, putting more money in people’s pockets, supporting local business.” And, he said, “fighting against the policies imposed by the state, whether it’s bail, zoning.”

Long Island is distinct from other New York suburbs. The share of college-educated residents, a group that has voted for Democrats in higher numbers in recent years, is lower on Long Island than in Westchester County, the suburb directly north of the city. Nassau County is home to an unusually large number of law enforcement officers.

Though research shows that many suburbs in the United States, including Nassau County, have become far more racially diverse, Suffolk County is around 65 percent white, despite being connected by commuter rail to a city that is 23 percent Black, about 15 percent Asian and nearly 30 percent Hispanic. This is a direct legacy of the history of racial exclusion on Long Island, where large, whites-only suburbs, developed after World War II, shut out Black Americans and members of other minorities on an enormous scale.

“It’s clear that the movement after World War II to Long Island that led to the massive development of the Long Island suburbs was driven to a significant degree by people who were uncomfortable with aspects of city life, including racial diversity,” Stanley Feldman, a political scientist at Stony Brook University on Long Island, told me. “You still see the effects of that particular migration.” Acknowledging the region’s history is crucial to building successful political coalitions.

The Democrats running in these races are well suited to represent Long Island residents from many backgrounds. Ms. Gillen, running to unseat Mr. D’Esposito, may be especially appealing to voters. She is a moderate and a former town supervisor in Hempstead who promoted ethics legislation and focused on local issues like improving roads. She has said she wants to continue to focus on local issues if elected to Congress, but she has also vowed to support abortion rights and promote gun safety.

Mr. D’Esposito has leaned heavily on his biography as a former detective in the New York Police Department. New York City settled a civil suit for $250,000 — but admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement — after Mr. D’Esposito was accused of lying under oath to a Manhattan grand jury, according to The Daily News. Ms. Gillen has capitalized on that record to accuse him of “a pattern of corruption, dishonesty and incompetence.”

Mr. Avlon is a thoughtful, middle-of-the-road Democrat who once worked as a speechwriter for former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and until February was a political analyst for CNN. He is a supporter of abortion rights, wants to restore the assault weapons ban and has said he would fight for tax breaks to help the district become more resilient in the face of climate change. But flipping this Suffolk County seat, which is now Republican-leaning turf, will be harder.

Mr. LaLota, the incumbent, has touted his bipartisan credentials even while supporting Donald Trump. A closer look at his record shows that he has supported far-right measures that would hurt Suffolk County residents of all backgrounds. In one example, Mr. LaLota voted for legislation that would prevent noncitizens from being counted in the census, the kind of measure that could have led to less federal aid reaching his own district. In another example, he voted to block the Pentagon from carrying out a policy to help service members get access to abortion services and other forms of reproductive care. Support for abortion rights is strong on Long Island.

Democrats in New York and Washington are drawing hope — as well as lessons — from the win by Mr. Suozzi, a moderate Democrat, to replace the disgraced George Santos in a February special election. The race brought a flurry of the kind of campaigning usually reserved for swing states. Labor unions and environmental groups joined the effort. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent nearly $3.5 million on TV ads. A new political PAC known as Battleground New York, a consortium of labor unions, progressive groups and other political groups, said it knocked on 100,000 doors in just over a month. Mr. Suozzi, who won the race by eight points, said he benefited handsomely.

“It was unusual,” he told me. “And it was welcome.”

Democrats running for Congress in competitive seats on Long Island and in upstate New York will be able to tap in to many of the same sources of support. Importantly, Mr. Suozzi also went on the offensive on immigration issues in his last campaign, accusing Republicans of torpedoing the conservative compromise championed by the Republican senator James Lankford. The Democrats seeking to flip the Long Island seats this year have clearly taken note.

“We need to make sure we secure our border. We need to end the migrant crisis,” Ms. Gillen told me. “We need to make sure there is still a pathway to citizenship for those who come legally.”

Mr. Avlon said Mr. LaLota “took the knee” in deference to Mr. Trump by opposing the Lankford bill.

In this part of New York, that may be the kind of language it takes for Democrats to win.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.