New York’s Democrats have finally made a comeback, two years after their disastrous performances in the 2022 midterm elections that helped cost their party the House of Representatives.
Democrats flipped three Republican seats, and no Democrats lost their seats, leaving the split at 19 Democrats and seven Republicans.
Democrat Josh Riley beat Republican Representative Marc Molinaro, who recently pivoted from a pragmatic brand of conservatism to full-on MAGA, with 51.8 percent of the vote at 96 percent reporting in a rematch from the 2022 midterms.
Democratic State Senator John Mannion beat Representative Brandon Williams with 53.9 percent of the vote at 84 percent reporting, flipping New York’s 22nd congressional district from red to blue. Williams took the seat in 2022, after after former Representative John Katko, a more moderate Republican, announced his retirement.
Laura Gillen beat Representative Anthony D’Esposito Thursday, with 50.9 percent of the vote at 98 percent reporting. D’Esposito’s campaign was marred by a damning report that he gave jobs in his office to his former lover and his fiancée’s daughter.
Cook Political Report had updated its rating of D’Esposito’s race just four days ahead of the election, shifting its prediction from “toss up” to “lean Democrat,” signaling that D’Esposito would likely lose his seat.
At the same time, Democratic lawmakers were able to defend their House seats in races against strong Republican challengers. Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi held his ground against GOP challenger Mike LiPetri, leading him by 51.3 percent to 48.7 percent with 97 percent reporting. Suozzi won the special House election in New York’s 3rd congressional district after the ouster of George Santos, flipping the Long Island and Queens–based district from red to blue.
Still, many Republicans were able to fend off challenges from Democrats.
In New York’s 17th congressional district, Representative Mike Lawler crushed a challenge from former Representative Mondaire Jones, earning a whopping 57 percent of the vote with 94 percent reporting. Jones’s already struggling campaign was further weakened by a spoiler candidate that left the Working Families Party campaigning against itself.
In Long Island, Republican Representative Nick LaLota defeated former CNN commentator John Avalon with 55.7 percent of the vote with 88 percent reporting.
Republican Representatives Nicole Malliotakis, Elise Stefanik, Andrew Garabino, Nicholas Langworthy, and Claudia Tenney were also able to maintain their seats.
With Republicans winning both the presidency and the Senate, it’s become clear that every Democratic House seat matters. Even with many House races yet to be called, it currently looks like there will be a Republican majority in the House.
In 2022, the ascension of Molinaro and Lawler in the Hudson Valley, D’Esposito and LaLota on Long Island, and Williams in central New York are credited with losing the Democratic Party’s slim majority in the House.
That widespread failure came as an unhappy surprise for Democrats, especially considering that in New York state, there are nearly twice as many active registered Democrats than Republicans, indicating a significantly depressed turnout among Democratic voters for the 2022 midterm elections. In 2023, there were roughly 5.9 million active Democrats and only 2.7 million Republicans.
The rich are already adding to their wealth after Donald Trump’s election.
According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, the world’s 10 richest people got even richer on Wednesday, collectively adding $64 billion to their coffers on the day Trump captured the presidency for the second time. It’s the biggest one-day increase since Bloomberg set up the index in 2012.
The increase came from a big day on the stock market, which rallied in the hopes that Trump will decrease regulations and lower taxes. The S&P 500 had a 2.5 percent increase, the best-ever performance following an election, and the U.S. dollar also went up. The world’s richest man, Trump supporter Elon Musk, saw his net worth go up by a whopping $26.5 billion, helped by a big jump in Tesla’s stock price.
Behind Musk, Jeff Bezos’s net worth went up by $7.14 billion. Bezos infamously decided that his newspaper, The Washington Post, should refrain from making a presidential endorsement this election, and he congratulated Trump on his “extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory” in an X post soon after the news of Trump’s win broke.
The Republican Party has always counted business leaders and executives among its main backers, and that hasn’t changed with the rise of Trump. Trump, as a business executive himself, shares their aims of fewer taxes and regulations. Naturally, this means that these executives and their companies see a chance for more profits with a new Trump administration.
Many of these plutocrats made their money from tech companies and Silicon Valley, where executives like Musk think of themselves as exceptional and see Trump as someone who will protect their wealth and status. They’ll see their gains from the past day as proof that they made the right decision, even if they foresee a future financial crisis from Trump’s agenda.
Trump’s flawed plans to institute tariffs also promise to make the rich even richer, despite the fact that prices will go up for many goods and........