Speaking on the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, the Honorable Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), appeared to blame New York Governor Kathy Hockal’s 2022 reelection campaign for undermining support for Democratic House candidates statewide and contributing to Democrats losing their majority in Washington.
In the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans flipped four Democrat-held congressional seats in New York, again winning narrowly by less than one percentage point. All were in districts that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 but voted for Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin that year.
When asked at a Politico/CNN event why House Democrats lost their slim majority, Pelosi replied, “Five seats in New York.”
When asked by the conversation moderator what had happened, she responded: “I think it had something to do with the gubernatorial race.”
Pelosi has said as much in the past, telling freshman Republican Rep. Mike Lawler during Biden’s State of the Union address this year that he should thank Hockle for helping him win his 2022 race against House Democratic campaign chairman Sean Patrick Maloney. “The governor didn’t immediately understand where the problem was,” she told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd two months after the 2022 election.
When asked Thursday, Pelosi said she had not spoken to Hauckle about this year’s New York state elections, only with his successor, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who she said had not spoken to her about the New York state elections until “just this morning.”
“No, I’ve spoken with Speaker-elect Hakeem Jeffries about this,” Pelosi said. “We’re optimistic about the race. We’re going to mobilize to win on the ground. We’re going to send a message that’s progressive, bold but not coercive, that unites the country. And we’re going to have the funding. The three M’s: mobilization, messaging and funding.”
Hockle, who served one term in the House and two terms as lieutenant governor, ran for governor in 2022 as an incumbent to replace longtime Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned amid a series of sexual misconduct allegations. But 2022 was her first race as a top candidate, and she fell short to Zeldin in a race marked by controversy over how to address crime. Hockle won by about 6 percentage points, while Zeldin received 46.8 percent of the vote, the highest share of the Republican vote in the past two decades.
“That’s a convenient narrative for some people. It’s not accurate. Crime issues were already an issue from the year before,” Hockle told Spectrum News at the party’s convention on Wednesday, pointing to Democrats’ losses in local elections in 2021. “A narrative about crime was taking hold. It’s not our fault. We talked about public safety. We addressed those issues.”
She also pointed to “vetting issues” in the election won by now-disgraced former Rep. George Santos — “that have nothing to do with the governor” — and the “difficulties” Maloney faced when Republicans brought up his past support for bail reform.
“I lost my seat, but no one blamed the governor at the time,” she added.
Spectrum News’ Kevin Frey contributed to this report.
