It’s time to adjust your expectations for November.
For weeks, pundits have homed in on the special election in New York’s 19th Congressional District as a national bellwether. The seat is a true toss-up — one of those rare districts won by Barack Obama in 2012, Donald Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 — and the national parties responded appropriately, sending in huge sums of money and organizational resources to win it.Â
The race would offer a trial run of the parties’ general election messages. Democrat Pat Ryan's “ads hammered on the need to elect a representative who would fight for abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June decision undoing Roe v. Wade,� writes Bill Mahoney, while Republican Marc Molinaro's campaign “centered on crime and inflation.�
Last night, Ryan defeated Molinaro.
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