NY Primary Results, Beyond NYC

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**Brian Lehrer** (0:40)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. So on yesterday's show, we discussed the results of the congressional primaries, primarily in New York City, right? The focus of most media has been that Mayor Mamdani's three endorsed candidates all won. But those were all in safe Democratic districts in the city. So the race was between progressive versus more progressive Democrats, more or less. Now, that's an important conversation within the Democratic Party, no doubt, but those seats won't determine who controls Congress.
Next year, after the mid-term, this year, some other races in New York, however, will.
The other two consequential primaries in the greater New York City area were among Democrats hoping to run against Republican Mike Lawler in New York 17, north of the city, and among Republicans wanting to challenge Tom Swazee in that swing district in northern Nassau County and Northeast Queens. Now, we'll focus on those results and those campaigns. In a little while, we'll have a short few-minute visit from Democrat Kate Connolly, who won that north of the city primary in the 17th Congressional District to run against Lawler. First, let's discuss the Queens and Long Island race. Now, between Swazee and Republican primary winner, Michael Petrie. Joining me for this is Larry Levy, Executive Dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University on the island. Hey, Larry, welcome back to WNYC.

**Larry Levy** (2:10)
Thanks for having me back. I always love it.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:13)
Before we even get into the Petrie and Swazee race, any big takeaways from primary day on Long Island in general? Because I think what a lot of our listeners on the island or even elsewhere in the region know, is that there's been a Republican trend in Nassau and Suffolk County in recent elections.

**Larry Levy** (2:40)
You remember the ad, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? Well, the takeaway question for this is, what happened in New York City? Does it stay in New York City? Democrats in suburban and some of the upstate swing areas are concerned about having to distance themselves perhaps from Democratic socialists in the city.
Clearly, and it's already happened and it happened even before the primaries, Republicans are trying to tie Mamdani around the necks of potential Democratic opponents, in the same way that Democrats are trying to tie President Trump around the Republicans. So, what comes out of the primary is whether the Democrats who are trying to flip the house, and as you indicated, need to do this by winning in the competitive districts, primarily in suburbs, whether they were hurt enough by this to make their job harder.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:49)
Turnout was way down in the city, but not evenly. The data shows the left's voters showed up in pockets where they had organized the hardest, and that was key to some of the results. What it turned out looked like on Long Island, it seems to me, I mean, just to be really direct about it, that there were no competitive congressional primaries. The Democrats, Swazi, and Gillen who we might say are in swing districts, they didn't really have challengers.
The Republican incumbents didn't really have challengers, and the Lepetri was a runaway in the Swazi district.

**Larry Levy** (4:33)
The Lepetri race was considered competitive. There were some more than average resources thrown at that, but the Nassau County Republican Organization, which is still one of the most powerful and effective really in the country, was able to get out enough of a vote to blow away Lepetri's challenger. This was a sleepy primary season out on a crabgrass frontier out here. The real concern is, again, as I said earlier, what happens moving forward?
Are Gillen and Swazi hurt? Will the effort to tie Mamdani around their necks make their re-election bids harder? Will it make it impossible in some of the Republican-leaning, in the two Republican-leaning districts out east? Those are big questions and they're not just local yokel questions, they're national questions because arguably New York and its suburbs alone could flip control of the House or other things being equal.

**Brian Lehrer** (5:46)
So we should say about the third New York congressional district, the one that Democrat Tom Swasey holds now, and people may remember this was the George Santos district. That now disgraced and out of Congress fabricator, fabulist I think is the word that got attached to him a lot.