Trump-owned-and-operated creepy, treacherous North Country MAGAt, Elise Stefanik, has finally abandoned George Santos, who she was key to helping get elected last year. She’s taking control of the multimilion dollar campaign to hold onto 5 purple Republican seats represented by Nick LaLota (R+3), Anthony D’Esposito (D+5), Mike Lawler (D+3), Brandon Williams (D+1) and Marc Molinaro (even PVI). She says she will let Long Island Republicans decide what they want to do about NY-03 (D+2), Santos’ district, and they already have. They plan to push Santos out and slip in state Sen. Jack Martins… although there are already 7 Republicans officially running against Santos and another 9 (including Martins) standing by.
Both party establishments are pressuring Santos to resign and trigger a special election, the GOP so they can name Martins without a messy primary and the Democrats so that they can recruit Tom Suozzi, again without a messy primary. There are 7 Dems officially in and another 4 (including Suozzi) standing by. We’ll come back to Hakeem Jeffries in a moment, but he’s been signaling that he wants Suozzi in the seat. Several people have floated the idea of a plea deal for Santos— with minimal or even no prison time— if he agrees to resign.
Stefanik says she is able to shift $100 million in Republican Party money into the New York races and has been— along with Kevin McCarthy— helping the freshmen in the 2022 districts to raise big money from wealth conservative donors. Nick Reisman reported yesterday that she “insists she has a plan that will allow the party to hold off a Democratic offensive. Control of Congress may depend on her success— not to mention her political future… Republican candidates in New York’s swing seats will likely need all the help they can get. The GOP is facing myriad challenges, including the potential for a new round of redistricting that could see Democrats in Albany drawing new congressional lines to their advantage. New York’s top court is set to hear a challenge to the existing districts in November.
Steven Holden, the progressive Democrat, running in the North Country for the seat Stefanik holds now, sees things very differently. He told me that whereas Stefanik “is the primary driver of the plans for the House GOP to remain in control, she has to be able to keep mainstream conservative Republicans in line while also keeping MAGA candidates like herself and Claudia Tenney, firmly in the Trump orbit. In fact, those two (+ Santos) have established a far-right voting bloc. She's between a rock and a hard place. Make no mistake— as New York goes in 2024, so goes the House. In the next eight months or so, we are likely to see new district lines again. If they come to fruition, they are not friendly to the GOP. Even NY-21, our race, moves as a much more competitive seat. Not only do we look to win NY-21, but we also are looking to bog her down so she cannot freelance in the other races or nationally.”
Meanwhile, Kadia Goba reported that Hakeem is taking over the New York Democratic Party, a “flailing” mess, “in the hopes that his home state can carry him to the Speakership. Jeffries’ former campaign manager, Lizzy Weiss, will head the battleground effort, and Jeffries’ longtime ally, André Richardson, is a senior advisor at a new arm of the state party. Jeffries, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and Gov. Kathy Hochul first announced the new initiative to donors they hope will underwrite the coordinated campaign in June over a Zoom call.”
Goba write that “The new effort is a muscle flex by one of the most powerful Democrats in the country to refocus his home state’s Democratic party on 2024 House races. They are, for now, retaining staffers close to Hochul, including New York Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs, whose performance in the midterms inspired a campaign calling for his removal, and Executive Director Alex Wang. Weiss and Richardson have met with and interviewed congressional candidates, and are present at some of the most sensitive meetings with Democratic leaders and members of the delegation. The campaign will be adding additional organizers between now and the 2023 elections, which, I’m told, should yield “younger, more dynamic candidates that are going to hustle.”
I don’t see the party being able to bring any “value added” as long as it’s aggressively anti-progressive as Jacobs, Hochul and Jeffries himself are. They’ll recruit a bunch of corporate conservatives pledged to the Likud and lose all their races unless there’s a national blue wave. (Also candidates not dependent on them or under their control— like Mondaire Jones, Nancy Goroff, Sarah Klee Hood— will be able to win despite Mondaire and his new political machine.
Kadia wrote that the “shakeup is the first clear sign that Jeffries is taking the woes in his home state dead seriously— and sees New York as a path to the speakership. His theory of the case: The youth vote could provide the margins. Democrats have an opportunity to motivate a new crop of voters driven by the Dobbs decision. Polling from Voters of Tomorrow and The Generation Lab show abortion as the second most influential issue motivating 18- to 29-year-old voters after jobs and the economy.”
Wait til young progressives find out how corrupt Hakeem is and how he refers to Jerusalem as NYC’s 6th borough! If people get to know what a turd Jeffries is, abortion won’t save his “machine.”
A total condemnation of the democrap party if I've ever read one. And, by logical extension, their voters. The donors we already know about.
"the new initiative to donors they hope will underwrite the coordinated campaign in June"
what does this mean to you? To me, it means they will make promises to big money donors in exchange for lots-o big money so they can:
1) "grayson" progressives as needed
2) shove corporate turds down the throats of voters
3) somehow keep those voters dumber than shit... after all, they already elected jeffrie$!!
"the first clear sign that Jeffries ... sees New York as a path to the speakership."
... um... DUH!?!? someone woke up from a coma just yesterday…