In true New York fashion, scandals have dominated the headlines surrounding some of the country’s most competitive House races. Will any of it matter on Election Day? Sources are leaning toward no.
Mike Lawler became the first Republican to represent New York’s 17th Congressional District in 30 years in 2022. He won that race by just 1,800 votes. At the beginning of this month, a photo of Lawler in blackface was published by The New York Times. Despite the criticism he faced at the time, sources expect Lawler to face very little backlash for that photo at the voting booths.
“The Lawler question is moot. That’s over,” Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political strategist, said. “The population in that district is not focused on that.”
On Long Island, the story is a little bit different. Rep. Anthony D’Esposito has faced a flurry of allegations over the last few months about his conduct at various stages in his career, first as a police officer with the NYPD and, more recently, as a congressman. In September, The New York Times reported that he may have violated House ethics rules when he put his fiancée’s daughter and a woman he was having an affair with on his office’s payroll. D’Esposito denies that any ethics rules were violated.
But in both cases, Democrats aren’t dwelling on the scandals. According to multiple strategists and campaign officials, this is just the latest iteration of a trend in American politics wherein scandals just don’t move the polls as they used to.
Battleground New York has mounted a historic ground game, making over half a million voter contact attempts this election cycle, with the goal of putting the House back in Democratic control. Since the beginning of October, the group has put out roughly 30 Facebook ads focused on the New York House races — it hasn’t mentioned the controversies associated with D’Esposito or Lawler in any of them.
Instead, ads that mention D’Esposito criticize his record on key issues like abortion access, prescription drug costs and social security. These issues are what’s more likely to resonate with voters, said Andy Grossman, Battleground New York co-founder.
“We’ve heard a little bit about D’Esposito at the doors, we’ve heard a little bit about Lawler at the doors. We’ve heard about each of their individual scandals at the doors,” he said.
But most of the voters who engage with Battle Ground New York canvassers want to talk about one thing: the economy.
“We want to remain focused on the bread and butter, meat-and-potatoes issues this election. That is the economy, corporate power in our society, the attack on abortion rights and women’s health care and women’s autonomy — we’ve maintained our focus there,” Grossman said, which is why the scandals aren’t a part of their targeted messaging strategy.
The campaigns say they believe voters are going to the polls with the issues on their mind — crime, immigration, the economy — and the party that they think will get them somewhere on those issues. Less so, are the transgressions of their candidates.
Lawler’s campaign has actually fared better recently, even after The New York Times published the photo: The race has shifted from toss-up to lean Republican, according to the Cook Political Report. In a statement, Lawler’s campaign pointed to independent polling from Emerson College that has Lawler up 4 points from where he was at the beginning of the month.
D’Esposito’s rematch with Democratic challenger Laura Gillen remains a toss-up: The candidates are consistently polling within 1 percentage point of each other.
The Gillen campaign’s paid media strategy has highlighted D’Esposito’s conduct as a police officer in one ad, saying that D’Esposito abused his power and disgraced his uniform. The campaign has also put out mailers focused on D’Esposito’s alleged misuse of congressional office funds.
The congressional funds scandal may have more life for a reason. “There is evidence to suggest that politicians caught in scandals, especially more recent scandals, and scandals of a financial nature, are more likely to be hurt in the near term,” said Brandon J. Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston where he has researched the declining impact of political scandals.
A source familiar with the campaign believes that this and “the facts” about what set Gillen and D’Esposito apart will be enough to tide them over on Election Day.
The D’Esposito scandals have given the Gillen campaign fodder to draw an even sharper contrast between the two in a Nassau County weary of corruption and political scandals thanks to former Rep. George Santos.
“What we’ve seen is that there’s just a lot of fatigue with people being, rightfully, over the corruption,” said the source close to Gillen’s campaign, adding later, “I just think that you couldn’t create a more perfect contrast here.”
This strategy has worked before: Earlier this year, Rep. Tom Suozzi pitched himself as the commonsense alternative to Santos, who was expelled from Congress and went on to be convicted for crimes like identity theft and wire fraud.
A GOP strategist familiar with internal polling said the allegations surrounding D’Esposito haven’t impacted his campaign.
“Voters are seeing and paying attention to issues that are top of mind to them, which are the border and the economy. Whatever underlying things [Gillen] tries to build beyond that, aren’t top of mind to voters,” the source said.
As far as the Lawler campaign goes, the source said that if the photo was something that would move voters, it would be highlighted in Democrat Mondaire Jones’ campaign ads — so far, that hasn’t been the case.
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Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Battleground New York’s affiliations.
Violet Jira is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.