New York Democrats need
real leadership.
After years of mismanagement and a red wave in the midterms, it’s time for a change in the New York Democratic Party. That starts with replacing its chair, Jay Jacobs.
Jacobs led the New York Democratic party to historic losses in 2022.
While Democratic candidates around the country celebrated unprecedented wins this Tuesday, flipping seats in red states like Ohio and Texas, Governor Kathy Hochul won by less than 6% in a state that Joe Biden won by more than 23 points just two years ago. Hochul won with the narrowest margin of any Democratic gubernatorial candidate this century.
In this year’s midterms, Republicans have taken at least 10 of New York’s 26 congressional districts, flipping four seats from blue to red and winning a blue-leaning open seat — in an election in which Republicans needed to flip only five seats nationwide in order to control the House.
By the numbers:
U.S. Congress
NY-03: Biden won by 8.5% in 2020, but the 2022 nominee for Congress lost by 8.2%.
NY-04: Biden won by 14.8% in 2020, but the 2022 nominee for Congress lost by 3.7%.
NY-17: Biden won by 10.1% in 2020, but the 2022 nominee for Congress lost by 0.8%.
NY-19: Biden won by 4.7% in 2022, but the 2022 nominee for Congress lost by 2.2%.
NY-22: Biden won by 7.6% in 2022, but the 2022 nominee for Congress lost by 1%.
South Brooklyn
Kathy Hochul lost in Bensonhurst, which Andrew Cuomo won by 32 points four years ago, where there was a 54-point swing from Democrat to Republican votes.
Hochul also lost in Homecrest, where Cuomo lost by only 5 points, by 57 points.
Democratic State Assemblymembers from South Brooklyn (Steve Cymbrowitz, Peter Abbate Jr., and Mathylde Frontus) have all lost to their Republican challengers. Abbate’s Republican challenger, Lester Chang, doesn’t even live in Brooklyn — but that was unknown until after November 8th, as Jay Jacobs didn’t do any opposition research before the election.
Nassau County
Joe Biden won Nassau, where Jacobs is chair of the County Democratic party, by 10% in 2020. In 2021, Republicans flipped the Nassau County Executive and District Attorney positions, as well as county legislature seats. In 2022, Republicans flipped both of the two U.S. House seats and three State Senate seats in Nassau.
Source: New York Times
Source: The City
Source: The City
Jacobs spends more time fighting progressives in his own party than fighting Republicans.
Jay Jacobs blames progressive voters and elected officials for Democratic losses in the general election, telling City & State, “New York did underperform, but so did California. What do those two states have in common? Well, governmentally, we’re among the two most progressive states in the country.”
This summer, he spent $15,000 attempting to unseat incumbent Democratic State Senators Jabari Brisport and Gustavo Rivera in their primaries, and another $5,000 on moderate candidates in primaries against Senator-elect Kristen Gonzalez and Assemblymember-elect Sarahana Shrestha. As Senator Brisport said, “Candidates in South Brooklyn could've used that help against Republicans.”
In April, Jacobs looked to create a new third party catering to conservatives who don’t identify as democrats. A move that prominent Democrats called “shenanigans,” “peculiar,” and “an excuse to spend hundreds of thousands (of dollars) to create a party that won’t mobilize voters, but only function to pull Democrats further to the right and alienate the growing bloc of progressive voters.”
Not only did Jay Jacobs refuse to endorse the 2021 Democratic nominee for Buffalo Mayor, India Walton, but he compared an endorsement of Walton to an endorsement of KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.
As Nassau County Democratic Chair, Jacobs ran a Republican as a “Democratic” candidate for the then-deadlocked Nassau County Legislature. That candidate, Joanne Maglione described herself as “a lifelong Republican,” whose top priorities were decreasing taxes and limiting government. After pushback, Jacobs said he still felt “comfortable” running Maglione, ultimately giving $90,000 from the Nassau Democratic treasury directly to a Republican.
Source: The City
Source: The City
Jacobs refuses to take responsibility for his mistakes.
Jacobs refuses to take responsibility for Governor Kathy Hochul’s lackluster performance or for New York’s losses at the congressional level, saying, “I'm not going to take responsibility for or blame, if you will, for losses that we had here. I think that it's more the Democratic brand in New York that had difficulty in some of these tough, tougher districts, more competitive districts.”
When The City asked Jacobs about criticisms that he didn’t devote enough resources to battleground races in South Brooklyn, he responded, “I can’t remember south Brooklyn as opposed to other parts of Brooklyn…And I don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t think they know what they’re talking about.” When asked specifically about investing in south Brooklyn’s Chinese American and Russian neighborhoods, Jacobs said, “I don’t know specific to the Russians and the Asians in south Brooklyn, what we’ve been lacking in giving them.”
Jay Jacobs defends not spending money to support voting rights ballot initiatives in 2021, saying, “the state party is not the entity that is involved in advancing ballot initiatives or candidacies.”
Jacobs pushing blame onto others isn’t new. In 2021 Propositions 1, 3 and 4, related to redistricting, same-day voter registration and no-excuse absentee ballots, respectively, all failed. Jacobs claimed that if his party chairs had told him the ballot initiatives were under threat, he would have taken action. He said, “No one called me, no one called the state party and said we have a problem.”
Jacobs also defended his failure to connect with Democratic electeds: “The phone rings in two directions. It’s not my role to call all 63 senators and 108 Assembly people and converse with them.” Leaving out the Republicans, isn’t it, though?
Source: The City