Election to usher in a new phase

The Democrats’ dominating win of Congress, propelled by younger voters, is bound to usher in a new chapter for American politics.

New Yorkers returned Gov. Kathy Hochul to Albany in a landslide and sent the loser, Bruce Blakeman, back to Long Island, ostensibly to finish out his term as Nassau County executive.

Democrats won Senate seats in Texas and South Carolina, primarily because President Donald Trump intervened in those races to support the weaker of Republican candidates, and in other politically unfathomable spots such as Kansas which had not elected a Democrat to the chamber since 1932. As the president enters the lame duck phase of his presidency, he faces an elected resistance to his agenda that he has not seen before.

And it means the leaders of both congressional chambers will be New Yorkers — who hail from one New York City borough at the western end of geographical Long Island and who must deal with a president from another one.

In a message that resonated most in the shape-shifting national election, Trump was the one who told voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” The electorate seems to have taken him at his word.

The anti-Trump headwinds defeated Blakeman, with the GOP state standard-bearer losing in Nassau and Suffolk counties. The backlash also robbed the GOP of its control of the Town of Hempstead, its power base in the county. The Island’s two incumbent GOP House members hung on in races that the Democrats never thought winnable. Meanwhile, the Island’s two Democratic Congress members based in Nassau, who were expected to face close races, won by double digits.

The question now is how Trump will react to such a humiliating defeat. Will he use the power of his administration to interfere with state certifications, or will the breadth of his damage to the Republican Party undermine any claims of fraud? Any action now to destabilize the outcomes would comprise a risk of democratic processes. But since Trump has been stripped of his superpowers to control the GOP, it’s unlikely that he will put up a fight.

It’s also important to recognize that New York is not blue because most of its citizens love Democrats, but because many voters disliked the alternatives and came out in record numbers to say so. The fastest growing political group in the state are those who belong to no party. These unaffiliated voters, who number about 3.45 million, are now a larger group than registered Republicans, especially on Long Island where these “blanks” total 394,159 versus 380,472 Republicans, according to the most recent state enrollments.

Hochul, a moderate, will have to work to validate her victory to those who did not vote for Democrats but against Trump and those Republicans who did not stand up to him. Her hardest job will be managing the strong Democratic majority in both chambers of the State Legislature in order to balance the demands of New York City against suburban interests. Rebelling against incumbents is one thing; governing another. That’s a message for both the New York governor and the soon-to-be leaders of Congress.