Josh Riley speaks to supporters in Binghamton in 2022.

The race for New York’s 19th Congressional District is one of the most watched in the country, and for good reason: The outcome may figure heavily in which party controls the House of Representatives for the next two years.

That’s no small consideration in an election in which former President Donald Trump is running at the top of the Republican ticket. He has threatened quite openly to test even more of the guardrails of democracy, which he left pretty battered in his first term, if he’s reelected.

With the U.S. Supreme Court giving presidents extraordinarily broad immunity from prosecution for criminal acts, it will be Congress, with its power of the purse and impeachment, that Americans would rely on to hold in check a potential president who muses about filling government with cronies, using the Justice Department to go after political enemies, deploying the military to stifle protests, wantonly rounding up and deporting millions of immigrants, and enacting tariff policies that could crush American consumers and upend the global economy. Not to mention a president whose speeches have, of late, grown less and less coherent.

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If Mr. Trump wins what’s now an exceedingly tight race against Vice President Kamala Harris, we will need strong watchdogs in Congress more than........

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