Hudson Valley Primary Election Highlights

Rare August primary after redistricting scramble sets stage for contentious midterms

New Yorkers vote in second primary election this year, with key races for the U.S. house indicating party strength and the potency of abortion rights ahead of November midterms. Source: "U.S. Capitol building" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Voters in the Hudson Valley cast their ballots in New York’s second primary Election Day of the summer last Tuesday, August 23 after a redistricting scramble, with the state’s reconfigured district maps placing many in new districts for the rare August primary.

In the redrawn 18th Congressional District, which takes in much of Dutchess County — including Poughkeepsie, all of Orange County and part of Ulster — voters in the Democratic Party overwhelmingly elected Pat Ryan, the current Ulster County Executive, with 84.1% of the vote. Ryan beat out Aisha Mills, a political strategist and CNN contributor who lives in Newburgh, and Moses Mugulusi, a state financial examiner from the village of Florida. 

Ryan will face Colin Schmitt, a Republican state assemblyman from New Windsor, in the Nov. 8 general election. According to the Cook Political Report, the new 18th District is a “Democratic Toss-up,” with Democratic voters outnumbering Republicans by 46,000 in the district. President Joe Biden won the area by eight percentage points in 2020.

In a separate race that earned national attention as a bellwether ahead of the fall midterm elections, Ryan fended off his Republican opponent, Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, in a special election for the 19th Congressional District seat that expires at the end of the year. The 19th District covers much of the Hudson Valley and the Catskills.

Ryan will represent the district previously represented by Antonio Delgado, N.Y.’s current Lieutenant Governor who vacated the seat in May to join Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration. Ryan’s victory over his Republican competitor — earning 51.1% of the vote to Molinaro’s 48.8%—marks a major win for Democrats as they aim to retain control of the House ahead of a potential “red wave” this November. Molinaro sought to paint the race a referendum on inflation and crime, while Ryan’s campaign primarily focused on defending abortion rights and safeguarding American democracy. The contest was largely seen as a test of the potency of abortion rights to voters following the Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade earlier this summer.

"Choice was on the ballot. Freedom was on the ballot, and tonight choice and freedom won," Ryan posted on Facebook after the race was called. "We voted like our democracy was on the line because it is. We upended everything we thought we knew about politics and did it together. NY-19, it will be my honor to serve you in Congress."

The special election took place in the old 19th District — using the district lines from before this summer’s redistricting — while another election was simultaneously held for the newly-drawn 19th District. Molinaro will be the Republican nominee for the new 19th Congressional District and faces a general election against Democrat Josh Riley in November.

A 40-year-old Iraq war veteran and West Point graduate, Ryan has led Ulster County for three years and previously ran for Congress in 2018 — when he finished second behind Delgado in a seven-way primary. The new district lines adopted in May put Ryan’s Gardiner home in the redrawn 18th District.

In one of the more contentious primaries of this election cycle, Poughkeepsie’s former Congressman and prominent moderate Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney fielded a challenge from the left flank of his party and won handedly with 66.7% of the vote. Maloney had represented Poughkeepsie, other parts of Dutchess County, Orange County, Putnam and part of Westchester for the last decade, until this cycle’s redistricting put his Putnam home in the newly drawn 17th District. Choosing to run for re-election in the new 17th — where he faced a primary challenge from progressive State Senator Alessandra Biaggi — Maloney left a late opening for other Democrats in the new 18th.  

Maloney, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, earned notable endorsements from Bill Clinton and the New York Times editorial board, while Biaggi was endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Working Families Party. Maloney will face a competitive race against Republican assemblymember Michael Lawler in November, given the district’s only slight Democratic advantage.

New York’s congressional races were jumbled in May when state courts ruled that Democrat-created district maps were improperly gerrymandered and had to be redrawn. A court-appointed mapmaker dramatically reconfigured district lines, forcing incumbents to run against each other and creating notable pickup opportunities for Republicans. 

The need for more time to draw a new map necessitated the postponement of the state’s Congressional and State Senate primaries to late August, a change that some experts expect may have diminished voter turnout.