New York Special House Election a High-Profile Clash of Rising Stars

Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, New York’s Republican 2018 gubernatorial nominee, is unopposed in the upper Hudson Valley’s Congressional District 19 (CD 19) Aug. 23 GOP primary.

Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan, meanwhile, is projected to handedly win his three-candidate race in the Democrat’s CD 18 primary and move onto November’s general election for the “tossup” congressional seat representing the lower Hudson Valley district.

But first things first: the county executives from opposite sides of the river are also squaring off in an Aug. 23 special election for “old” CD 19’s vacant U.S. House seat.

New York Congressional District 19 Democratic special election candidate Pat Ryan tells voters on Aug. 22, 2022, that he “grew up in Hurley, next to the old Gill farm corn fields” in a scene familiar to this gathering in Gardiner. (Courtesy of Pat Ryan for Congress)

The winner of the Molinaro-Ryan CD 19 special election will serve out Rep. Antonio Delgado’s (D-N.Y.) remaining term, about four months, as the “old” district’s representative in Congress. 

Delgado resigned in May to become lieutenant governor. His seat has been empty since. It will no longer exist when the next Congress convenes in January 2023. 

CD 19 is one of two New York congressional seats that have idled empty since the state’s congressional district map had to be drawn by a judge-appointed special master last spring.

Democrats now control 18 of New York’s 27 congressional seats. But the state lost its 27th congressional seat in post-2020 Census reapportionment. 

A constricted 26-district map adopted for the 2022 midterms by the state’s Democrat-controlled General Assembly was rejected as gerrymandering in court rulings. A special master was tabbed to re-craft them.

Because the map wasn’t approved until May, New York’s 2022 primaries were split. Party contests for statewide positions, such as governor,

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