New York Democrats were left reeling on Wednesday after startling electoral losses from the tip of Long Island to the shores of Lake Erie, as a re-energized Republican Party showed it could make deep inroads even in one of the country’s liberal strongholds.
In suburban Nassau County, where Democrats controlled every major office before Election Day, Republicans capitalized on anemic Democratic turnout to flip the county comptroller and district attorney offices for the first time in 15 years, while also defeating the incumbent county executive.
In Colonie, outside Albany, they handily won the town supervisor job for the first time in nearly two decades and were on track to wrest control of the town board from Democrats.
And in New York City, where Eric Adams and his fellow Democrats easily retained control of City Hall and the City Council, Republicans were nonetheless poised to expand their presence in city government after another low-turnout election — possibly to levels not seen since Rudolph W. Giuliani was mayor.


As ballot tallying continued Wednesday afternoon, an incumbent Democratic council member and likely candidate for council speaker remained improbably at risk of losing his Southern Brooklyn seat.
The results for Democrats were no better on statewide ballot measures, as voters soundly rejected two constitutional amendments meant to broaden ballot access — a major national priority for the party — that Democrats had believed would sail to approval.
“There’s no way to sugarcoat this: This was a shellacking on a thumping,” Steve Israel, a former New York congressman and onetime chair of the House Democratic campaign arm, said of Tuesday’s results for the party in New York and across the country.
Party strategists cautioned against reading too much into the results of off-year, low-turnout elections. It is impossible to predict what the political environment or issues will look like next year, they emphasized, or what role former President Donald J. Trump may play.
But the results across New York mirrored damaging outcomes for Democrats in governor’s races in Virginia, where Republicans won, and New Jersey, where they came close, and signaled that even traditional blue bastions and suburbs that leaned Democratic during Mr. Trump’s presidency were not immune to a punishing national environment. Indeed, that coalition appears to be harder to maintain without a polarizing Republican president in office.


For many people watching the results, Tuesday was reminiscent of 2009, when Republicans won the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey and triumphed in some local races on Long Island and even in the New York City Council contests. They took back the House in a wave election the next year.
The results left Democrats’ moderate and left-leaning factions once again pointing fingers at one another as they sought a rapid course correction.
“This is a nightmare,” said the left-leaning State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, warning fellow Democrats to focus on countering Republican attacks on a bail reform law her party had approved and actively selling their legislative accomplishments. “But it is also not a nightmare that does not have the ability to turn around.”
Both of the party’s factions were particularly embittered after a stinging intramural fight in the Buffalo’s mayor’s race. Left-wing leaders had hailed India Walton, a democratic socialist, as a future face of the party after she won the Democratic primary. On Wednesday afternoon, though, she conceded defeat to Byron Brown, the long-serving moderate Democratic mayor who ran as a write-in candidate with Republican support.
“Democrats who are running New York have done too much to just pander to the left, and we’re paying price for it,” said Representative Tom Suozzi, a Long Island moderate who vocally supported the write-in campaign and is considering a run for governor next year.
Mr. Suozzi suggested that approach had exacerbated the cyclical pendulum swing of party politics. “People don’t want that,” he said. “They want results that affect their everyday life.”
Updated Nov. 3, 2021, 9:40 p.m. ET



Democratic turnout appeared to be down significantly across the state.
Nowhere was the impact clearer than on Long Island, where early data in Nassau County suggested just over 260,000 total votes were cast this year, compared with the more than 700,000 cast in 2020, when Mr. Biden won a commanding 10-point victory there. Many Democrats appear to have simply stayed home: Despite the party having a nearly 90,000-person registration advantage, more registered Republicans cast ballots.


In the district attorney’s race, Anne Donnelly, the Republican, defeated State Senator Todd Kaminsky, the Democrat, by close to 20 points. Laura Curran, the Nassau County executive who had been seen as a strong incumbent, trailed her Republican opponent, Bruce Blakeman, by a narrower margin on Wednesday.
In neighboring Suffolk County, Timothy Sini, the Democratic district attorney, lost to Ray Tierney, a Republican.
“Long Island is very much like the rest of the country: There was a red wave,” said Jay Jacobs, New York’s state Democratic chairman and the leader of the Nassau County party. “Republicans were energized because they’re angry and they’re unhappy with the direction of the country. We saw that in polls. Democrats are disheartened and on the other hand, emerged buoyant on Wednesday, promising to compound their gains next year when New York will elect a governor, attorney general and State Legislature. All are currently within Democrats’ tight grip and not considered at serious risk of being flipped.
“We are going to take a common sense governing agenda to this state and build the best ticket our party has run since 1994,” said Nick Langworthy, the state Republican chairman, predicting that Democrats would ignore the warning sirens.
Takeaways From the 2021 Elections
Card 1 of 5Democratic panic is rising. Less than a year after taking power in Washington, the party faces a grim immediate future as it struggles to energize voters and continues to lose messaging wars to Republicans.




“They will not learn the lessons here because they are so petrified of the far extreme left of their primary base,” he said.


The flash points varied from race to race, but one through line was the matter of public safety, as debates — and, at times, mischaracterizations — about recent changes to the state’s bail laws defined races on Long Island, and confrontations over policing issues more broadly played out across the state.
“You can bet they are going to run against every senator on Long Island and up the Hudson Valley on bail reform in the next election,” said Bruce N. Gyory, a veteran Democratic political strategist.
In conservative corners of New York City, some voters were fueled by anger over municipal vaccine mandates as well, an issue that was at play in a number of City Council contests. As of early Wednesday, Republicans had expanded their presence on the Council to four seats from three, with another clearly tilting their way and several more contests remaining close.
Notably, Councilman Justin Brannan, a leading potential candidate to become the next council speaker, was still awaiting vote tallies in his too-close-to-call Brooklyn district, although he expressed optimism that absentee ballots would put him over the top.


Democrats were equally stung by the defeat of three ballot initiatives they had crafted and expected voters across the state to easily approve. One would have paved the way for no-excuse absentee voting and another for same-day voter registration — policies adopted in other states that Democrats have argued are necessary to help counter Republican attempts to restrict ballot access.
Voters also rejected a measure that would have revised the guidelines governing the once-in-a-decade legislative redistricting process to Democrats’ benefit. Voters did approve a fourth measure giving New Yorkers a constitutional right to clean air, water and a “healthful environment.”


New York Republicans had barnstormed the state in opposition to the election-related measures and spent heavily to advertise against them, warning, without basis, that the changes could lead to an increase in voter fraud.
Democrats, by contrast, made very little effort to promote the proposals.
“That is a betrayal of our value of vigilance,” Ms. Biaggi said, referring to the party’s failure to push the amendments more aggressively. “It’s pathetic.”
She reiterated a call for Mr. Jacobs to resign and said Gov. Kathy Hochul should move to oust him if he did not.
Peter King, a former longtime Republican congressman from Long Island, characterized the results overall as a “reaction against Biden and the progressive Democrats.” He warned that his party could still squander its good hand, particularly if it campaigned in what he cast as an overly ideological manner.
“We have to show we can govern, show we can make it work, and not get caught up in issues that are the right-wing equivalent of the progressives,” Mr. King said. “It has to be coordinated, it has to be coherent, it can’t go off the edges.”
Luis Ferré-Sadurní contributed reporting.

Source: New York Times

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