Dem
47
GOP
53
Probably the most interesting House race in the country that doesn't really matter is in NY-12, a D+33 district that covers Midtown Manhattan and the Upper West Side and Upper East side. Kamala Harris carried the district by a margin of 64 points. This is the district from which Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) is retiring. Whoever is the Democratic nominee will win in a landslide, so all that matters is who that nominee is.
It is interesting because there are four main candidates (and a bunch of minor ones). Here they are alphabetically:
Bores isn't well known and Conway is a one-trick pony. Just hating Trump won't do the trick because the other three also hate Trump. This makes it Lasher, the highly experienced and very qualified candidate, against the guy who is carrying the Kennedy mantle forward. Politico has an interesting story about the race and whether experience matters any more. If it does, Lasher should win because he has over two decades of it, working for Nadler, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg, and former NY AG Eric Schneiderman. He knows how all the nuts and bolts of politics work in great detail. He has helped draft legislation to aid consumers, toughen gun laws, protect access to abortion, and raise the minimum wage. Schlossberg has done none of this and isn't pretending he has. He is running on the vision of restoring the Kennedy dynasty.
Because Lasher has been around so long in politics, he has also made some enemies in Democratland. He spent a year as executive director of StudentsFirstNY, which advocated for charter schools, something the teachers' union despises. In this role, he also sent $50,000 to the NY state Senate Republican Campaign Committee. He also worked with former governor Andrew Cuomo on a pension reform plan that the unions hated. Since then, he has become more union friendly. Nevertheless, Bores has been the one racking up union endorsements. Here are Bores, Conway, Lasher, and Schlossberg (L to R) at a candidate forum in April:
At the forum pictured above, Lasher argued that impeaching Trump is unlikely, which gave Schlossberg the chance to pounce. He said: "Maybe if you have a super PAC funded by a billionaire [Ed note: Bloomberg], you don't understand how people feel around this district about President Trump." In practice, experience doesn't really matter that much for most first-term representatives, as they have no power and they normally get no attention. A very few have star power on their own—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) comes to mind here—and use that to have far more influence than their background would justify. Lasher is highly competent but has no star power. Schlossberg has zero experience in politics but has tons of star power, inherited from his beloved grandfather. Many people would instantly see him as a future senator (maybe even in 2028) and a future president beyond that. Maybe that is not fair, but since when is politics fair?
There have been five polls so far, none of them recent. Schlossberg has led in four of them, by margins of 3-10 points. Bores led in one February poll by 1 point.
A study by the AARP sheds a different light on the race. It shows that voters 50 and older will likely make up 65-75% of the primary electorate in NY-12. The district is one of the wealthiest in the country, with a median household income of $153,000. Only 10% of active Democratic voters 18-29 have ever voted in a Democratic congressional primary, vs. 64% of voters 65 and older. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's youth-based coalition isn't going to play much of a role here because they don't live in the district. It is too expensive. A voter who is 70 is probably going to have some memory of how traumatized his parents were by the assassination of President Kennedy and a voter who is 75 will remember it personally. The people who look back fondly on JFK could well be inclined to want a Kennedy restoration. That could play a role here.
The prediction markets are telling a very different story. Kalshi has Bores at 51% chance, Lasher at 37%, Schlossberg at 17%. This adds up to 105%, but that is due to the vig. The primary is June 23 and is first past the post. (V)