Cover photo: Chariman Jesse Garcia addresses attendees at the 2024 election night watch party (Credit – Matt Meduri)
The 2024 presidential election has the signals of a realigning election, one that seems to have received its core support from an unlikely locale: New York.
The Empire State hasn’t backed a Republican presidential nominee since 1984, with no Republican exceeding 40% of the vote since George W. Bush (R-TX) in 2004. This year, however, while the state was not technically considered “in play,” – Trump did visit the state three times – it still offered what seems to be the greatest rightward shift of any state in the country.
In 2020, Joe Biden (D-DE) won New York with 60% of the vote to Donald Trump’s (R-FL) 37%. This year, Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA) only took in 55% of the vote to Trump’s 44% – about a twelve-point swing to the right. Kamala Harris delivered the worst performance for a Democrat in the Empire State since 1988, when Michael Dukakis (D-MA) won New York by just 250,000 votes, and she is the first Democratic nominee since that election to win New York by a margin of less than one million votes. Additionally, 2024 is the first election in which New York voted to the right of Washington state since 1956, Connecticut since 1960, and Delaware since 1980.
To better understand the swing as it pertains to New York’s possible playing power in 2028, as well as what it means Suffolk-side, The Messenger sat down with the brains behind the local Republican Party: Chairman Jesse Garcia (R-Ridge)
“This was a race where a very simple question was asked by Trump: ‘are you better off now than you were four years ago?’” Garcia told The Messenger. “We can compare two records, one of historically low inflation, unemployment, energy independence, our country respected around the world, and a secure border that made our communities safer. Under Harris and Biden, we’ve had record high inflation, wages at their all-time low, an unsecure border that allowed sex traffickers, human traffickers, and cartels to poison our children with fentanyl and take over our communities, and the foreign policy of appeasement, which made America less safe because our enemies became emboldened. The voters are very, very astute. They do their own research, they know what works and what doesn’t work, and this was a complete rejection of Democratic policies that have come down from Albany and Washington, with the ‘woke” policies that have truly divided America.”
At Donald Trump’s September rally at Nassau Coliseum, The Messenger spoke with Garcia, who called Long Island the “tip of the spear” in making New York competitive. Last Tuesday’s election results certainly seem to have vindicated that analysis.
“We are the engine that drives Republican victories locally and statewide. We have seen Donald Trump, in the ultimate rejection of the progressive agenda, come within eleven points of capturing this state,” said Garcia. “He gained almost thirteen points in four years and had historic numbers across the state. I’m proud that as the Chairman from Suffolk, we delivered 400,000 votes for Trump, a record number of votes any presidential nominee has ever received from this county.”
Donald Trump also managed to follow the path chartered by former Congressman and 2022 gubernatorial nominee Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) by either meeting or exceeding Zeldin’s margins in the four solidly-blue boroughs of New York. Trump has received almost 40% of the vote in Queens, 30% each in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and 20% in Manhattan. In the last three presidential elections, New York City, overall, has moved almost thirty points to the right.
Harris’ performance in New York now begs the question: was the swing self-contained and will New York drift leftward in 2028, or is New York shaping up to be the next big battleground for – at least – the 2030s?
The answer might be found within our own county, and Democrats’ twenty-year dominance in local politics in Suffolk County might have offered a bit of a mirage over our true political ancestry.
Going back to the birth of the GOP in 1856, Suffolk County has only backed Democratic presidential candidates in just nine elections, with the stretch from 1996 to 2012 being its longest Democratic voting streak. Al Gore’s (D-TN) eleven-point win in Suffolk in 2000 is the best performance for a Democrat going back to 1964, and the second-best overall.
Trump flipped Suffolk in 2016, winning it by almost 50,000 votes and seven points. In 2020, Suffolk held the title of the largest suburban county in the nation to back Trump, but Trump only held Suffolk by the narrowest of margins: just 200 votes out of nearly 750,000 ballots cast.
This year, however, Suffolk delivered the best margin for a Republican since 1988: Trump took 55.01% of the vote to Harris’ 44.16%, with just 0.83% going for third parties. Trump’s near-eleven-point win translates to a margin of almost 80,000 raw votes.
“That’s why we’ve coined the phrase ‘Suffolk is Trump Country.’ We’ve demonstrated through local governance a collaborative operation to run campaigns on the path to victory in different races,” said Garcia, adding that Suffolk posted the largest number of votes for Trump of any New York county, and it was the most populous county nationwide to go for Trump in three consecutive elections.
The swing wasn’t just confined to Suffolk, however, as neighboring Nassau County broke an even longer voting streak to hand Trump back the White House keys. Ancestrally, Nassau is about as red as Suffolk, backing Democrats only ten times going back to 1900, the year Nassau and Queens split to form their own counties. Its Democratic voting streak from 1992 to 2020 is its longest on record, with Gore’s nineteen-point win in 2000 being the second-best on record, just behind 1964.
Nassau County broke for Trump by about three points, or a margin of 30,000 votes.
Also on the national level, Garcia also shared his optimism and approval of President-elect Trump’s choice in Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“I’m very proud that Suffolk’s favorite son will be joining the Trump Cabinet. He has an exceptional environmental record as a former State Senator and former Congressman. He knows the importance of balance of preservation of the environment, quality of life, and economic growth, and that view is shared by millions of Americans,” said Garcia.
Garcia, who was unanimously elected as GOP Chairman in 2019 and became the first Hispanic chair of any party in New York, outlined just how much the local party has gained in just the last few years.
In 2021, for the first time in twenty years, Suffolk elected a Republican District Attorney in Ray Tierney (R). That same election, Republicans took a majority in the County Legislature for the first time in sixteen years. Suffolk followed up the 2021 local red wave election by coming out hard for Lee Zeldin during his 2022 gubernatorial campaign, where he received almost 60% of the votes and almost 300,000 raw votes. Finally, the local party’s success met them a third consecutive time in 2023, as Ed Romaine (R-Center Moriches) became the first Republican elected County Executive since 1999, and with him, Republicans formed their first supermajority in the County Legislature since 1996.
“What we are demonstrating here at the local level, I believe, is being witnessed by statewide and national candidates. Trump talked about making America more affordable, secure, and safe, and we’ve heard those terms in our local elections in 2023,” said Garcia. “You can see that the ability of Republicans to govern locally and connect with voters is being noticed in statewide races.”
Garcia also notes Long Island’s red hue in the Senate race, which saw Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) beat first-time candidate Mike Sapraicone (R-Floral Park) by seventeen points. While it’s still a large win, it’s noticeably decreased from Gillibrand’s previous three margins. Her first election was a 2010 special to fill the seat of Hillary Clinton (D). Gillibrand won with 63% of the vote and carried only eight of New York’s sixty-two counties, Suffolk not included. Gillibrand would trounce Wendy Long (R) in 2012, taking 72% of the vote and winning all but two counties. Gillibrand took a third landslide for a second full term over Chele Farley (R) in 2018, winning with 67% of the vote, but losing twenty-six counties she had carried before.
Sapraicone might have lost by seventeen points statewide, but he carried Suffolk County by six points – a margin of about 45,000 votes – and he even won Nassau County by just 0.1% – or about 800 votes out of almost 800,000 cast. Along with denying Gillibrand cultural Long Island’s two counties, Sapraicone is also on track to flip eleven other counties that backed her six years ago.
“I’m proud that even against an absentee Senator in Gillibrand, this is the second consecutive Senate cycle that our Democratic Senators, including Chuck Schumer (D), lost Long Island. And now, his junior partner lost Long Island. That says a lot.”
Indeed, New York’s U.S. Senate races have become more interesting, with the universally-known – and Senate Majority Leader – Chuck Schumer (D) winning by just fourteen points in 2022, losing both Suffolk and Nassau decisively to Joe Pinion (R). His only close election in his Senate career was in 1998, when he unseated New York’s most recent Republican Senator, Al D’Amato (R-Lido Beach).
“We have a lot of talented and successful Republican chairs across the state, and they see what we’re doing in Suffolk. We share the same tactics and tools,” shared Garcia. Given the quick and tectonic shift in Suffolk’s politics, and how such a swing certainly contributed to the dramatic statewide swing, party leaders from around the state should be consulting with Garcia on how to keep pushing the Empire State, especially its valuable basket of twenty-eight electoral votes, into more purple territory.
Garcia is also optimistic about the Republican energy in Suffolk County. All Republican State Senators and Assemblymembers were re-elected this year, while the race in the Fourth Assembly District has not yet been called. One-term Assemblyman Ed Flood (R-Port Jefferson) narrowly trails former Port Jefferson Village Trustee and Deputy Mayor Rebecca Kassay (D-Port Jefferson) by less than half of a percentage point. The Fourth District includes the heavily-Democratic Three Village area. In 2022, Flood unseated a thirty-year incumbent in then-Assemblyman, now-County Legislator Steve Englebright (D-Setauket). The historic upset was quickly downplayed by some that Flood had only ridden Zeldin’s coattails into office. The extraordinary close result this year proves that the Suffolk GOP can continue to play in areas like Three Village.
Likewise, Republicans came extraordinarily close to flipping an Assembly district that has been a Democratic bastion for years. Retired NYPD police officer Joe Cardinale (R-Amityville) trails Kwani O’Pharrow (D-West Babylon) by just a single vote out of nearly 25,000 cast in the Suffolk portion of the district, which includes most of the traditionally Democratic Town of Babylon.
“For us to force Democrats to defend an open seat that weighs in as eleven points more Democratic than the nation overall, a seat they’ve had in their column since the 1980s, that’s a triumph in itself,” said Garcia. “Joe Cardinale is an outstanding candidate, and this will not be the last we’ve heard of him. He’s demonstrated a path for success, and we’re moving forward with that mandate. While the two races might result in losses for the county GOP, the tightness of the races ensures a solid floor of support has been established.
But Garcia says that, ultimately, it all comes down to the communities that make the changes happen.
“This is the result of the work of my committee members and volunteers, the thousands of them who live and work in the communities, members of local chambers of commerce, the PTAs, the rotary clubs. They are the ones who truly make this happen. With their dedication, the sky’s the limit,” says Garcia.
All eyes now turn to perhaps one of the unlikeliest ground-zeroes for a national campaign. Confidence in a shifting New York was vindicated in Tuesday’s election results, and national Republicans must now keep their newfound coalition together to fully push the state into more competitive waters.
