Democrat Tim Kennedy’s Victory Shrinks House GOP Majority

Democratic state Sen. Tim Kennedy won the New York special election in the state’s 26th Congressional District to replace former Democratic Rep. Brian Higgins, narrowing the House Republican majority even further ahead of the 2024 election.

Kennedy defeated Republican Gary Dickson, a West Seneca supervisor who is an Army and FBI veteran, on Tuesday night. Kennedy has been a member of the New York state Senate since January 2011 and has said he considered Higgins a mentor.

The state senator ran on a Democrat platform of protecting Social Security and Medicare, as well as reproductive rights, in a “solid Democratic” seat ranked D+10 by Cook Political Report. Despite the similar last names, he is not related to former President John F. Kennedy. However, with his win, he will become the sole Democratic Kennedy in Congress since the exit of former Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy, who served from 2013 to 2021 and now serves as the United States’s special envoy for Northern Ireland.

Kennedy held a significant advantage regarding fundraising and exposure in the special election. As a state official, he relied on name recognition, boosted by TV ads circulating throughout the blue district. Kennedy also spent years becoming one of the top New York political fundraisers, raising $745,000 in the first six weeks after entering the special election race in November.

The Associated Press called the race for Kennedy shortly after polls closed. With 26% of the vote tallied, Kennedy had 72%.

The newly elected congressman will now finish out Higgins’s term in the 118th Congress through Jan. 3, 2025, narrowing Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) GOP majority to 217-213, meaning he can only afford to lose one vote on any given measure to pass along party lines.

The election for the full term for New York’s 26th District is June 25. Former Democratic congressional candidate Nate McMurray, who ran for the House on two occasions in the past 10 years, will challenge Kennedy for the full-term primary election.

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Kennedy filed a lawsuit ahead of the special election, claiming that the signatures McMurray gathered to fulfill the petition requirement to be on the June ballot were fraudulent. McMurray submitted over 1,400 petitions, but the lawsuit claims only 382 are valid, per Spectrum News 1. The lawsuit also alleged Desmond Abrams, whom McMurray recruited to gather signatures, committed fraud.

Other special elections in Colorado and New Jersey are on the horizon to replace Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), who resigned in March, and New Jersey Democratic Rep. Donald Payne Jr., who died last week at 65. The special election for Buck’s seat is set for June 25, with Republican Greg Lopez likely to win the solid red seat. It is unclear when the election to finish Payne’s term will be.