Le'Hodia; All Happy Joyful News Links & Opinions!

Tomorrow I’ll be in the @fox5ny studio for most of the afternoon and evening, breaking down a mix of New York and national races (and I’ll be analyzing/calling races on here in between on-camera appearances). The most watched race in New York tomorrow night will be in NY-17 in the lower Hudson Valley — including part of Westchester County, Rockland County, Putnam County & part of Dutchess County. Two-term Republican incumbent Mike Lawler will be taking on Democrat Cait Conley (an Army veteran and former national security official). Then-Assemblyman Lawler defeated then-DCCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney by 1,820 votes (0.6 points) in 2022, which featured a local red wave in New York and an incumbent that quite frankly didn’t take the race seriously (for example, he was in DC, not his district, on election night). His Wins-Above-Replacement (WAR) score was R+1.7 that year. Lawler went on to win re-election by 6.3 points in 2024 (one of two Republicans who did so in a district that Kamala Harris won) over Democrat Mondaire Jones — who moved back to the district after running in NYC-based NY-10 in 2022 (losing to Dan Goldman), and was not a great ideological fit for the moderate district. His WAR score was R+3.8 that year. So, he’s a solid (but not extraordinary) overperformer. Conley is likely the strongest candidate Lawler has ever faced (at least for Congress). She has a compelling background, has raised a ton of money (keeping pace with Lawler through October 14, but trailing in cash on hand), and has a more moderate and pro-Israel profile (opposes additional conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel & rejects accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza) that better fits the district. It is one of the most Jewish districts in the country, with Jews make up ~19% of the district. Lawler has a strong relationship with local Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish communities, who often bloc vote for a candidate. They almost certainly put him over the top in 2022. Lawler predicted that he would win 30,000 Orthodox votes, and polls that show a close race or Conley narrowly ahead — including a recent Emerson poll that was conducted during Sukkot — are not adequately capturing this hard-to-reach group of voters. In order for Conley to win, she’ll need to approach 60% in Westchester (Ossining, Peekskill & Cortlandt are particularly important for her math to work) and keep Lawler’s margin in Rockland (which is where most of the Orthodox/Hasidic Jews live) to about 10 points, and his margin to around 20 points in Duchess and Putnam. Lawler likely need to outperform his 2022 showing in Rockland, and squeeze as many votes out of heavily Orthodox/Hasidic Ramapo as he can, while hoping he can avoid the bleeding that other Republicans across the country are seeing in rural and exurban areas.