Big Blue Mess: Are Eric Adams, Kathy Hochul and NY Dems Setting the Stage for MAGA Wins?

Blue state. blue governor Abortion on the ballot. Loads of money for Democrats and tons of energy. From the outside, everything looks set for a Democratic major in New York. Internally, however, there are signs that the state’s flawed, often corrupt political machine is at some risk of breaking down — again. And if that crash is as catastrophic as some Democrats fear, it could produce a future president Donald Trump the most flexible of MAGA’s partners in the US Congress as they take on their enemies within.

After the 2022 mid-term, everyone from Nancy Pelosi on the floor has blamed sleepwalking New York Democrats (in general) and Governor Kathy Hochul (in particular) because they lost about half a dozen winnable congressional seats — and that the US House went to Republicans. Local Democrats and their allies vowed to get their shit together and take those seats back. All the pieces seemed to be in place to make it happen. Democrats had total control of state government, meaning they could redraw congressional district maps to their advantage. A vote for an equal rights amendment to the state constitution would enshrine reproductive rights and could increase voter turnout. And in the state’s dominant media market, there was a new, tough-as-nails Democratic mayor with the resume and megaphone to win back jittery suburban voters.

Then things got, um, complicated. I will explain how shortly. But the upshot is that many of the ten New York Democratic operatives, candidates and elected officials I spoke with are saluting each other just when you’d expect them to focus all their anger on Republicans. the direction.

No one thinks Trump will win New York — at least, no one outside of that fancy three-ring circus he brought to Madison Square Garden the other day. Who will lead the Congress, though? That is another matter. “I don’t think there’s been a time in decades when New York has played such a central role in a national election,” said the Manhattan Borough President. Mark Levine he tells me “Control of the House of Representatives will be decided here based on the outcome of half a dozen competitive districts. And in case you’re wondering if that factored into the Trump campaign’s decision to hold a rally at MSG, (Republican Majority Leader) Mike Johnson also came out he said it explicitly.”

In a normal political culture, the Democratic mayor of New York City would have pushed hard against a Republican rally that spews so much racist bile. But this is New York in 2024, where the mayor Eric Adams is currently under indictment on corruption charges (pleaded not guilty); anonymous sources with “direct knowledge of Adams’ legal strategy” told the Post that they hope a reinstated President Trump will “case of nonsense” Get out of here. Adams himself gently rebuked one of the rally’s most offensive jokes as he took a swipe at those who called Trump a fascist, which includes Kamala Harrishis campaign. “With everything that happens every day in New York, we ask questions (like) if someone is a fascist or if someone is Hitler. This is offensive to me. It’s offensive,” he said.

It’s part of an ongoing effort to lower the temperature of campaign rhetoric, the mayor’s team insists. And if it seems pretty pointless to Adams’ fellow Democratic politicians at the moment, some of those I spoke to saw it as a small improvement. “The only argument about Eric Adams’ accusations was that he stopped giving Republicans talking points and sound bites for their ads about what the hell New York is.” Alyssa Cass, a local Democratic strategist tells me.

For the better part of two and a half yearsAdams, a former police officer, warned that the city was teetering on chaos – even as the crime rate continued to fall. He criticized the influx of migrants and warned that the cost of caring for them would “destroy new york.” And when the Adams administration needed a migrant arrival center, it took over the Roosevelt Hotel, right next to the Grand Central Station commuter transit hub. Horrified suburbanites watched as migrants by the thousands were forced to wait on the streets for care, and Adams declared that New York was “past our breaking point.”

Republican candidates and the conservative media ecosystem have portrayed Adams’ New York as shorthand for out-of-control migration—and urban entropy. Candidates in both parties spent more than $10 million in local political TV ads which touch on the issue of migrants, accordingly New York Times. In the Hudson Valley, north of the city, Representative Mike Lawler slammed his Democratic opponent Mondaire Jones for “support Joe Biden and Eric Adams’ open border policy’. Never mind that Adams doesn’t control the border, and the mayor routinely bashed Biden on the subject. Lawler’s campaign gambled that Adams — and the Democrats — had become synonymous with migrant chaos in the minds of his voters. Adams himself helped make the connection. “Before anyone got on TV with these messages, Eric Adams told them for two years,” Cass tells me.