Inside the Democratic Campaign That Won Long Island’s ‘Unflippable’ Red District

Craig G. Herskowitz is not a socialist, but don’t count on the assemblyman-elect — the first Democrat to win his Long Island district since its creation — to vote against his hard-left colleagues, his campaign strategist tells The New York Sun.“I’m not saying they’ll agree on every last issue, but at this juncture, the vibe is pure excitement,” Mr. Herskowitz’s campaign strategist, Chris Sosa, said of the legislature’s incoming bloc of Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed politicians. Come January, Mr. Herskowitz, an immigration attorney with prior jobs in the FBI and Justice Department, will represent Assembly District 12, a seat held by a Republican since its creation in 1966, and whose center, the town of Huntington, has been represented by the GOP as far back as 1920. His district was one of five on Long Island alone that flipped as part of the “blue tsunami” that carried Democrats to upset wins across the country, a feat Mr. Sosa attributes to years of quiet momentum building and a recent surge in voter discontent.“As a strategist, I almost don’t believe in unflippable seats,” Mr. Sosa told the Sun on Friday. “Some just require more investment. Craig worked over multiple years to build power in Suffolk County. We took on multiple races during that period as the community got to know him.”Mr. Herskowitz’s slow-burn victory offers a case study in opposites, as the state’s Republican party publicly melted down this week. Candidates, party officials, and even one of its few winners traded barbs as to whose campaign was a “grift” and which incumbents did the least this cycle. “Republicans ran on scaremongering while their party drove the economy into a ditch,” Mr. Sosa said, citing nationwide inflation as a key pain point. In the current national economic landscape, Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature policies have offered New Yorkers some relief, Mr. Sosa said citing declining unemployment, the minimum wage increase, and child tax credits. The district also stands to benefit from having a man on the inside, according to Mr. Sosa.“The district was being underserved due to having a legislator from the minority conference. Suffolk voters who saw their district flip blue should expect to see their economic reality improve,” he said.Mr. Herskowitz’s top campaign priorities also offered cunning mash-ups of progressive and conservative talking points. On his website, a promise to make his district affordable again envisioned reducing taxes while somehow still securing “additional state funding for schools and infrastructure.”“Raising quality of life” included “clean water, safe streets and quality healthcare,” combining the left’s Medicare-for-all push with rising concern over public safety. His commitment to “protecting Long Islanders” invoked his prior roles in the FBI and current work as an immigration attorney “to ensure the rights of every Long Islander against federal intrusion.”“Contrary to popular belief about politics, he didn’t have to cosplay as Republican-light,” Mr. Sosa told The Sun. “He’s an immigration attorney who called for abolishing ICE, accepted an endorsement from the WFP, and explicitly brought Muslim voters into the coalition as a Jewish candidate,” he continued, referencing Mr. Herskowitz’s ties to the Working Families Party. The Working Families Party is a registered political party — unlike the DSA — that describes itself as a “multiracial party that fights for workers over bosses and people over the powerful.” While the DSA made headlines for grabbing a record number of wins nationally and upping its seats in New York’s legislature from 9 to 16 on Tuesday, the center of gravity for the state’s progressive movement may truly lie with the Working Families Party, whose candidates will hold 33 out of 63 state Senate seats and 60 out of 150 Assembly seats come January.The DSA holds stringent requirements for endorsed candidates, who must be “socialist organizers first, and legislators second,” staunch Anti-Zionists, and embrace a national policy platform that calls for ultimately nationalizing healthcare, housing, education and more, per its endorsement guidelines. The Working Families Party candidates, on the other hand, “usually represent the most progressive serious candidate in their races,” according to Mr. Sosa.“In certain conservative districts, Democratic candidates do not request WFP endorsement in the primary. But as our politics evolve, their endorsement is often even sought in conservative districts,” Mr. Sosa said, including his client’s newly blue one.

Inside the Democratic Campaign That Won Long Island’s ‘Unflippable’ Red District

Inside the Democratic Campaign That Won Long Island’s ‘Unflippable’ Red District

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