NY-SEN: Gillibrand +36

[Anna Komnene]

I wouldn't read too much into national politics from the NY Republican party. They are a poorly funded and poorly organized disaster of a party. They are the circus of the magical mysterious nobodies, loony toons, and whackjobs. In the last two Senate races, they put up Whacky Wendy Long and got like 27% of the vote each time vs both Schumer and Gillibrand. She was mostly unfunded and ran around the state taking pics of women wearing hijab because it was scary or something. Her claim to fame (other than being a Muslim voyeur) is being a random Clarence Thomas fangirl, and this is the person the NY GOP chose to put up in a Senate race, not once but twice. I don't know much about Chiavacci Farley (and neither do most New Yorkers - she has a 5/9 approval ratio), and I doubt that will increase much during the course of the campaign. Her best chance (and probably the only reason Gillibrand is only at 60 right now) is to ride the coattails of whoever the NY GOP nominates for Governor, but even that won't help her much. At least they haven't nominated Carl Paladino.

The NY GOP is better at localized races like upstate congressional districts, gerrymandered state legislature campaigns, and ya know, making deals with Cuomo so they can control the State Senate in a state that elects its US senators by 50 point margins. Those districts have been relatively impervious to statewide coattails. For example, it's going to be extremely hard to unseat John Katko regardless of what happens in the Senate or Governors race. He is very popular in that district and Syracuse literally just elected a Republican mayor pretending to be independent and ran on a campaign of making sleds great again. The Democrats are running nobodies to challenge him. I'm more hopeful about some of the other districts like NY-19 (battle royale of heavyweights in the Dem primary) and NY-22 (strong recruit with unanimous support of the party), but it's not going to be easy. We'll see.