A surprise win for Democrats hints at a big shift for 2022 [View all]
“I honestly can’t believe it,” Pat Ryan told a crowd after his unexpected victory in a closely watched special election for a House seat in New York’s Hudson Valley. “I cannot believe it.”
And it’s true: Ryan’s razor-thin victory surprised his own advisers, because they did not expect quite the turnout he ended up generating. It helped enable him to eke out a win in a true swing district that went for President Biden by only 1.5 points in 2020 and was expected to swing to Republicans in keeping with historical midterm patterns.
That turnout, it appears, was driven in part by the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. After that ruling, Democrats looked to this race to gauge whether campaigning hard on abortion rights could shift the political environment and blunt GOP advantages.
In this district, it did. Ryan ran ads highlighting his military service and linking it to the fight to defend our freedoms, stating unambiguously that those freedoms include “a woman’s right to choose” and that he’ll defend it in Congress.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/24/pat-ryan-new-york-special-election-2022-democrats/
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