Democrats proved successful on Election Day in NYS with one glaring exception: Nassau County

Democrats had a banner day around New York State on Election Day. Well, mostly.

They flipped control of Albany suburbs they hadn’t won in decades. They won the Syracuse mayoral race and seized a majority of the Onondaga County board for the first time in decades. They won two supervisor races in suburban Rochester that had been Republican-led for a century. Top Democrats cruised to wins in Buffalo and Westchester County.

The noticeable Republican outlier? Nassau County.

It was the biggest bright spot for the GOP last week, one place the mini "blue wave" couldn’t penetrate.

County Executive Bruce Blakeman coasted to a 12-point victory over Democrat Seth Koslow. District Attorney Anne Donnelly was reelected by around the same margin despite the loss of support of key unions. Republicans swept the Long Beach City Council, though Democrats did gain a seat in the county legislature, preventing a GOP supermajority.

Unique dynamics

Analysts and officials said the GOP posted big wins because of factors present in Nassau contests and not elsewhere. Some also say the strong night boosts the assertion of Blakeman, who is considering a run for governor, that he is the one Republican who has shown he can attract support from independents and Democrats.

"There was a small blue wave upstate, which is remarkable, and a larger one in other parts of the country," Lawrence Levy, dean of suburban studies at Hofstra University, said, referring to Democratic victories. "It’s sort of ironic that Nassau County, which is one of the major suburban communities in the country, is not following the trends" elsewhere.

He called Nassau an "outlier."

The reasons? Levy and others cited some big ones: Republicans had way more campaign money than Democrats. The power of incumbency (and jobs tied to the county) helped Blakeman. Democrats still struggle with turnout in local elections. And the Nassau GOP committee is very good at turning out its voters.

And a new factor this year: the election of Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, as mayor of neighboring New York. Republicans used him effectively as a boogeyman to help attract voters.

"Republicans in Nassau still have an old-fashioned political organization that remains one of the best in the country," Levy said. "At a time when political organizations have been fading in terms of power and influence," he said, the Nassau GOP remains effective.

The GOP flooded homes with more than 20 mailings on the county executive race, as well as on the district attorney and county legislature races, Joe Cairo, Nassau Republican chairman, told Newsday. They courted independent voters. They worked to get Republicans to the polls during the early voting period — something the party in New York is doing more of after initially discouraging and criticizing early voting when it was launched.

"I think people were waiting to vote. We got out early. We went after independent voters," Cairo said. "In addition to that, we spent a phenomenal amount of money this year. We spent almost $2 million [just] on postage."

Cairo estimated the GOP spent $12 million "easily" on the races. His counterpart, Jay Jacobs, put it closer to $13 million. Democrats spent about $3.5 million, "which is about what we usually do," Jacobs, the state and Nassau County Dem chairman, said.

He said turnout numbers weren’t out of the ordinary for what is called an off-year election — no governor or presidential race on the line.

Jacobs said one important difference is that independent voters — those not affiliated in any party — have been going with Republicans the last few cycles, a change from just a few years ago.

Mamdani's impact

Another factor was the Republicans’ use of the New York mayoral contest to influence voters. Not that the GOP hasn’t used that race in the past, but Jacobs said this time they were using "photoshopped pictures of our candidates, arms wrapped around, smiling with Zohran Mamdani."

The message was "protect Nassau from radical, socialist Mamdani," Jacobs said. Further, the New York media market was "saturated" with anti-Mamdani ads.

"Fair or unfair, it certainly saturated TV in Nassau County," Jacobs said. "We were kind of in a unique position. None of these upstate [Democratic] wins were in the New York City media market. Nassau County, being an attached, next-door neighbor, is far more sensitive to what’s going on in the city."

The ads flooded mailboxes and spammed screens. The GOP even distributed hundreds of bright orange T-shirts that read, "Keep the Mamdani Madness Out of Nassau!"

"I had to run two campaigns," Koslow told Newsday days after the election. "One against Bruce Blakeman, and one to differentiate myself from Mamdani."

Mamdani won fairly comfortably over former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the mayoral contest. But he helped Republicans in Nassau — while not doing the same in Westchester County or New Jersey, Levy noted, where Democrats posted comfortable wins.

Right after his win, Blakeman said he was exploring a run for governor in 2026. Though a number of GOP leaders have already backed Rep. Elise Stefanik of Saratoga County, Blakeman said he is the candidate who has a broad base and has won support from independents and Democrats.

"He can say: ‘I won big in a county that was, until recently, light blue,'" Levy said. "He can say: ‘I have a base in the two biggest Republican counties in the state, in terms of population. I did well in a year when other Republicans didn’t and why would you want to risk a congressional seat when it’s a free run for me?’"

Newsday's Bahar Ostadan contributed to this story.

By Yancey Roy

yancey.roy@newsday.com@yanceyroy