Fight for House raging in districts ringing NYC where Trump struggled but other Republicans thrived

NELSONVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — Voters in a ring of congressional districts encircling New York City where Republican candidates often do well but Donald Trump struggled in 2020 could decide which party controls the U.S. House for the next two years.

Eleven districts within a 90-mile drive of Manhattan are expected to be among the country's most closely contested House races on Election Day.

Republicans hold a slim 6-5 edge now in the nearly contiguous circle that starts in the Long Island suburbs, cuts through western Connecticut and New York's Hudson River Valley and Catskills regions, then carves through northeast Pennsylvania before curling back into New Jersey.

Both parties have a shot at picking up seats across the broad territory of dense suburbs, leafy exurbs and former mill towns. Democrats have made the region an important part of their strategy to reclaim a House majority, but voters in the districts have been far from uniform in their thinking in recent elections.

They have been united in two key ways: Most have been open to Republican candidates, but they also have shown an aversion to Trump. That means having the former president at the top of the GOP ballot this year could be decisive in congressional races unless opposition to him has softened or voters in the region are willing to split their tickets.

Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in all but two of the 11 districts in 2020. Two years later, voters in seven of them sent Republicans to Congress. In three of those districts where Republicans won in 2022, and two more where Democrats prevailed by razor-thin margins, Trump lost to Biden by at least 10 percentage points, according to voting data tabulated by The Associated Press.

It isn’t clear whether the political dynamics that helped Republicans do well outside New York City in the 2022 midterms exist today. In that election, many suburban voters were worried about a spike in violent crime after the COVID-19 pandemic. But crime rates since then have dropped.

“The message environment in 2022 made the battlefields very uphill for Democrats,” said former U.S. Rep. Steve Israel, a Long Island Democrat who once served as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But in a presidential election year, with Trump in a fierce campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, “the message environment is defined by the top of the ticket.” Israel said. “In these districts, this tends to become a referendum on Donald.”

The ability of Republican candidates to outperform Trump two years ago was illustrated in New York's 17th Congressional District, a suburban area north of the city that is home to the Village of Sleepy Hollow, Sing Sing Prison and such luminaries as Bill and Hillary Clinton and the billionaire George Soros.

Trump owns a golf club and a private estate in the district, but still lost to Biden there by 10 percentage points. In 2022, Republican Mike Lawler narrowly defeated U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat who had been in office for a decade.

Now, Lawler is in a tough campaign against Mondaire Jones, a former Democratic congressman who was one of the first two openly gay Black men to serve in the House when he was elected in 2020. Jones lost his seat when the boundaries of his district were redrawn.

Both candidates have geared their strategies toward attracting moderate voters, while criticizing each other as being in league with radicals.

“People are waking up to the fact that even if they don’t believe Mike Lawler is as bad as Marjorie Taylor Greene, they can’t afford to vote for him because he empowers the chaos and the extremism that we are seeing down in Washington,” Jones told The Associated Press, referring to the far-right congresswoman from Georgia.

Democrats have also claimed that Lawler wants to ban abortion, which the Republican denies. Lawler said Democrats are trying to mislead voters on an issue that has proved to be a winner for many Democrats since the Supreme Court in 2022 ended constitutional protections for abortion rights.

“It speaks to the fact that they have nothing else to discuss or talk about, from the economy to the border to the international crises around the globe,” Lawler told the AP.

Lawler's approach has worked with constituents such as Michelle Patterson, 71, who lives in a small home adorned with Trump flags and Republican lawn signs in the village of Nelsonville.

She described Lawler as “common sense” and Jones as a “radical” and said Democrats are trying to distract voters with their warnings about abortion access.

“He’s not advocating to ban abortion!” she said of Lawler.

For other voters, it’s a harder sell.

“I don’t believe him,” said Jill Ferson, 77, a social worker who lives in the village of Croton-on-Hudson, when asked about Lawler saying he will not support a federal abortion ban.

Ferson said her biggest concerns this election were keeping Trump out of office and preserving abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

Similar dynamics surface in the other ring districts.

On Long Island, Republican Rep. Anthony D'Esposito is trying to hold onto a congressional district right outside New York City that Biden won by 15 percentage points. D'Esposito is trying to cast Democrat Laura Gillen as soft on crime while criticizing Democrats over immigration policies he blames for an influx of migrants.

Gillen, a former town supervisor, has rejected those criticisms and said that if elected, she would push for more law enforcement and border security.

Northwest of the city, Democrat Josh Riley is trying to unseat U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro, a Republican, in a rematch of their close contest in 2022. The district runs from the Hudson River Valley to the Finger Lakes.

In some New York districts, Democrats could face questions about the indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he accepted bribes and illegal campaign contributions. But Adams is not on the ballot, so that may not matter to voters. While some Republicans have used the scandal to assert that there's rampant corruption in the Democratic Party, Trump has spoken sympathetically about Adams, portraying his prosecution as politically motivated.

In northeast Pennsylvania, a presidential battleground, three perennially contested congressional districts feature incumbents with a knack for survival. They include Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who is chasing a fifth term in a district that favored Biden by 5 percentage points in 2020. His opponent is Ashley Ehasz, a former Army helicopter pilot whom he two years ago by almost 10 percentage points.

Solidly blue New Jersey and Connecticut also have at least one competitive race apiece.

In a New Jersey district that includes Trump's Bedminster golf club, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. is seeking a second term against Democrat Sue Altman, a former leader of the state’s progressive Working Families Alliance.

In Connecticut, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes is matched up again with former Republican state Sen. George Logan, whom she defeated by less than 1 percent two years ago in a district Biden won by 11 percentage points.

At a recent debate, Hayes accused Logan of hiding his support for Trump. Logan denied that, but did not say Trump's name once.

This combination photos shows Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-N.Y., left, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 23, 2023, and Josh Riley in Binghamton, N.Y., Nov. 8, 2022. (AP Photo)

This combination of photos taken Oct. 18, 2022, in Waterbury, Conn. before a debate shows Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., left, and Republican House candidate George Logan. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

In this combination photo, Sue Altman speaks at a public forum, Aug. 23, 2016, in Bordentown, N.J., left, and Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., speaks during a news conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo)

This combination photo shows Ashley Ehasz at her campaign headquarters, June 4, 2024, in Bristol, Pa., left, and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., at an event in Washington Crossing, Pa., Nov. 6, 2022 (AP Photo)

FILE — Mike Lawler, Republican candidate in New York's 17th Congressional District, greets supporters as he arrives to attend his election-night party, Nov. 8, 2022, in Pearl River, N.Y. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — With the presidency on the line in battlegrounds like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, why would Donald Trump venture into California, one of the most solidly Democratic states, just weeks before Election Day?

Trump is almost certain to lose California, and that won't change after his scheduled Saturday stop in Coachella, a desert city east of Los Angeles best known for the annual music festival bearing its name. Still, there are practical reasons for him to visit, despite the Republican nominee's prospects Nov. 5 in the most populous state.

The former president lost California in a landslide in 2020. He did get 6 million-plus votes, more than any GOP presidential candidate before, and his margins topped 70% in some rural counties that typically favor conservatives on the ballot.

That’s an enormous pool of potential volunteers to work on state races and participate in phone banks into the most contested states. And Trump is likely to draw extensive media coverage in the Los Angeles market, the second-largest in the country.

Trump is visiting Coachella in between stops in Nevada, at a roundtable outside Las Vegas for Latinos earlier Saturday, and Arizona, for a rally Sunday in Prescott Valley. He narrowly lost those two swing states to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

Going to California gives Trump the “ability to swoop in and leverage this big population of Trump supporters,” said Tim Lineberger, who was communications director for Trump’s 2016 campaign in Michigan and also worked in the former president’s administration. He’s “coming here and activating that.”

Lineberger recalled Californians making calls to Michigan voters in 2016 on Trump's behalf and said the campaign's decision to go into safe, Democratic turf at this point was “an aggressive, offensive play.”

California is also a fountain of campaign cash for both parties, and Trump will be fundraising. Photos with the former president in Coachella were priced at $25,000, which comes with special seating for two. A “VIP Experience” was priced at $5,000.

With congressional races in California in play that could determine which party controls the House, the Coachella rally “is a get-out-the-vote type of thing that motivates and energizes Republicans in California, when they are not as close to what is going on in the national campaign,” Republican consultant Tim Rosales said.

Rosales also said to look for Trump to continue his long-running spat with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

For Republicans, “It’s motivating when you can pick at California a little bit and the governor … will take the bait,” Rosales said.

Newsom on Wednesday predicted Trump would be denigrating the state at the rally, overlooking its strengths as the world’s fifth-largest economy. The governor said that for the first time in a decade, California has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state.

“You know, that’s not what Trump is going to say,” he predicted.

Jim Brulte, a former chairman of the California Republican Party, said he thinks Trump is angling for something that has eluded him in previous campaigns: winning more total votes than his Democratic opponent.

“I believe Donald Trump is coming to California because he wants to win not only in the Electoral College, but he wants to win the popular vote. There are more registered voters in California than there are residents in 46 of the other 49 states,” Brulte said.

The Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles sits on the Pacific Coast, south of the city. But Trump has long had a conflicted relationship with California, where a Republican has not carried the state since 1988 and Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by about 2-to-1.

California was home to the so-called Trump resistance during his time in office, and Trump often depicts California as representing all he sees wrong in America. As president, he called the homeless crises in Los Angeles and San Francisco disgraceful and threatened to intercede.

He is likely to spend time on Saturday linking California's problems to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee and a San Francisco Bay Area native who was California's attorney general and represented the state in the Senate.

His campaign issued a statement alleging that under Harris, “the notorious ‘California Dream’ has turned into a nightmare for everyday Americans.”

Jessica Millan Patterson, chairwoman of the state GOP, said she looked forward to hearing Trump contrast his agenda with a Democratic White House that “has left Californians less safe and with less money in their pockets.”

Republicans, she promised, “will do our part to secure a House majority.”

FILE - California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a news conference Thursday, March 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, Friday, Oct. 11, 2024, in Reno, Nev. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)