ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2014 The Democratic Party pulled off several wins in Tuesday night\u2019s elections in New York state.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was clearly a Democratic upset last night. I think Republicans were surprised by the number of victories,” said Tim Kneeland, political expert and professor at Nazareth University.<\/p>\n
Those victories include Democrats controlling the Onondaga County Legislature for the first time in 50 years, the town of Greece electing its first Democratic supervisor in over 100 years and both Albany and Syracuse electing their first woman of color as mayor.<\/p>\n
Kneeland says the Democratic wins across the state reflect a shift in the national mood.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public is not happy with the Trump administration and the government shutdown,” he said. “I think this got them out in what we consider an off-year election.”<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a shift local Republican leaders noticed as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s some trickle down to the county level,” said Peter Elder with the Monroe County Republican Committee. \u201cOur job at the county level is to work with the voters to understand the good government that works for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kneeland says another key factor in these wins was the types of campaigns the Democrats ran. He calls them savvy and ones that were able to reach voters of all ages.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Greece, one of the biggest victories, [Jeffery] McCann ran a great campaign. He ever really said, ‘I\u2019m a Democrat.’ He talked about roots in the town, showed up on social media and TV ad [and] handed out flyers,” said Kneeland.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump addressed the sweep of Democratic wins across the country at the White House on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it was good for Republicans. I\u2019m not sure it was good for anybody,” Trump said. “But we had an interesting evening, and we learned a lot.”<\/p>\n
What do these results say about next year\u2019s midterm elections? Kneeland says it will be a challenge for Republicans to reclaim power across the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce these Democratic supervisors take over, it\u2019s going to be harder to oust them. Especially, if they deliver on their promises,” said Kneeland. “This might not bode well for the Republican Party in New York at all.”<\/p>\n
“It was hard to predict,” Elder said. “Elections are always hard to predict, and that’s why you fight as hard as you can every moment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2014 The Democratic Party pulled off several wins in Tuesday night\u2019s elections in New York state.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[116,25,111,9,13304,11,10,49,51,50,12,112,108,18479,115,27],"class_list":{"0":"post-30042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-decision-2025","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-elections","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-new-york-state","16":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-state-news","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-ny-state-of-politics","20":"tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","21":"tag-rachel-niemi","22":"tag-rochester","23":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}