SUBURBAN SIGNS — Both parties are already looking to next month’s gubernatorial elections in Kentucky and Mississippi and Virginia’s state legislative races for clues about the 2024 presidential election landscape. But some of the most revealing contests are taking place off the national radar on New York’s suburban Long Island. Local races across Long Island will serve as key tests heading into 2024 after Democrats took an especially severe drubbing there last year — the party lost each of the island’s four congressional districts. “There is a sense that this really can be that canary in a coal mine kind of race as to whether or not the tide is shifting back,†said Jon Kaiman, a Democrat who was the North Hempstead supervisor until 2013 and is now trying to bring the seat back into the party’s column Nov. 7. The municipal races will test whether suburban frustration over Democrats’ handling of issues such as public safety has begun to ebb after two years of dominating elections. They will also provide Democrats with a chance to test the messages they’ll deliver in 2024 — including just how much of a political liability Rep. George Santos, the notorious fabulist who represents northwestern Long Island, might be for the Republicans who stood with him in 2022. The races will give a sense of "whether the local winds, which have been more for the Republicans, are still at the same intensity,†said Larry Levy, executive dean at Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies. “Since Long Island is a typical, almost a quintessential swing suburb, it could be a bellwether for the nation.†Historically, there hasn’t been a better testing ground for the potency of political messaging in New York than Long Island with its nearly 3 million people. Nearly every major shift in the state’s electorate in even-year elections in recent decades has been prefigured by swings in populous Nassau or Suffolk counties the year prior. Candidates of both parties say this year will be no less of a bellwether. “What we do in one election cycle echoes into the next election cycle,†said Suffolk GOP chairperson Jesse Garcia. “We took a huge step in ’21, and it was a record-breaking performance in ’22. I’m cautiously optimistic that the continuation of that building and energy is going to capture the county executive’s office for the first time in 20 years for Republicans.†Suffolk County will have its first open race for executive in 12 years as Democratic incumbent Steve Bellone hits his three-term limit. The recent Republican strength in the county of 1.5 million residents has led to a sense that the GOP is poised to continue their gains, but Levy said the county executive contest is “a closer race than you would expect.†If Republican Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine pulls off a win over Democratic former prosecutor Dave Calone and Republicans hold the line elsewhere, Democrats would be seated in just three of the top 28 executive and legislative offices on the island. They held 18 of the jobs just two years ago. Democrats see the best opportunity to make up lost ground in Kaiman’s race against Republican Supervisor Jennifer DeSena in North Hempstead. DeSena won her first term in 2021 when she helped flip control of a town that Democrats had dominated since the 1980s. There are also 37 county legislative seats on the ballot on Long Island that can help measure the political tides. In 2021, Democrats held 10 of the 18 legislative seats in Suffolk County; now Republicans hold 11. In Nassau County, Republicans also increased their county legislative majority. Republicans are using some of the same messaging that has worked effectively for them in recent elections — a focus on crime and the economy in one of the most heavily taxed and expensive places to live in the country. State Democratic Committee chair Jay Jacobs, who is also the Nassau County chairperson, was optimistic that “crime and bail reform†are not “weighing down the Democratic brand the way they did in ’21 and ’22.†Democrats are also stressing their tough-on-crime bona fides. In his first ad, Calone, a former federal prosecutor, highlights that he “helped prosecute an Al-Qaeda terrorist†while at the Department of Justice and notes his willingness to criticize fellow Democrats “when they haven’t kept us safe.†There are also new issues that should play a big role in 2024 that have begun to emerge in this year’s campaigns. For Democrats, that includes Santos, who was viewed favorably by only 7 percent of his constituents. Much as Democrats tied every Republican to Trump in 2018 and Republicans tethered New York City socialists to Long Island moderates in 2022, Democrats will make sure that voters know the names of every Republican who stood with Santos in his campaign last year. The long list of the Republican’s scandals is guaranteed to be fresh in voters’ minds this election season. Santos is due to make his next court appearance on Oct. 27, all but guaranteeing he will be the top story in the area when early voting polls open a day later. But the GOP has also been given a political gift from a higher level of government, thanks to Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s unsuccessful plan to force higher-density zoning into suburbs. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at [email protected]. Or contact tonight’s author at [email protected] or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @Mahoneyw.
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