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NELSONVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — Voters in a ring of congressional districts encircling New York City where Republican candidates often do well but Donald Trump struggled in 2020 could decide which party controls the U.S. House for the next two years.
Eleven districts within a 90-mile drive of Manhattan are expected to be among the country's most closely contested House races on Election Day.
Republicans hold a slim 6-5 edge now in the nearly contiguous circle that starts in the Long Island suburbs, cuts through western Connecticut and New York's Hudson River Valley and Catskills regions, then carves through eastern Pennsylvania before curling back into New Jersey.
Both parties have a shot at picking up seats across the broad territory of dense suburbs, leafy exurbs and former mill towns. Democrats have made the region an important part of their strategy to reclaim a House majority, but voters in the districts have been far from uniform in their thinking in recent elections.
They have been united in two key ways: Most have been open to Republican candidates, but they also have shown an aversion to Trump. That means having the former president at the top of the GOP ballot this year could be decisive in congressional races unless opposition to him has softened or voters in the region are willing to split their tickets.
Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in all but two of the 11 districts in 2020. Two years later, voters in seven of them sent Republicans to Congress. In three of those districts where Republicans won in 2022, and two more where Democrats prevailed by razor-thin margins, Trump lost to Biden by at least 10 percentage points, according to voting data tabulated by The Associated Press.
It isn’t clear whether the political dynamics that helped Republicans do well outside New York City in the 2022 midterms exist today. In that election, many suburban voters were worried about a spike in violent crime after the COVID-19 pandemic. But crime rates since then have dropped.
“The message environment in 2022 made the battlefields very uphill for Democrats,” said former U.S. Rep. Steve Israel, a Long Island Democrat who once served as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
But in a presidential election year, with Trump in a fierce campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, “the message environment is defined by the top of the ticket.” Israel said. “In these districts, this tends to become a referendum on Donald.”
The ability of Republican candidates to outperform Trump two years ago was illustrated in New York's 17th Congressional District, a suburban area north of the city that is home to the Village of Sleepy Hollow, Sing Sing Prison and such luminaries as Bill and Hillary Clinton and the billionaire George Soros.
Trump owns a golf club and a private estate in the district, but still lost to Biden there by 10 percentage points. In 2022, Republican Mike Lawler narrowly defeated U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat who had been in office for a decade.
Now, Lawler is in a tough campaign against Mondaire Jones, a former Democratic congressman who was one of the first two openly gay Black men to serve in the House when he was elected in 2020. Jones lost his seat when the boundaries of his district were redrawn.
Both candidates have geared their strategies toward attracting moderate voters, while criticizing each other as being in league with radicals.
“People are waking up to the fact that even if they don’t believe Mike Lawler is as bad as Marjorie Taylor Greene, they can’t afford to vote for him because he empowers the chaos and the extremism that we are seeing down in Washington,” Jones told The Associated Press, referring to the far-right congresswoman from Georgia.
Democrats have also claimed that Lawler wants to ban abortion, which the Republican denies. Lawler said Democrats are trying to mislead voters on an issue that has proved to be a winner for many Democrats since the Supreme Court in 2022 ended constitutional protections for abortion rights.
“It speaks to the fact that they have nothing else to discuss or talk about, from the economy to the border to the international crises around the globe,” Lawler told the AP.
Lawler's approach has worked with constituents such as Michelle Patterson, 71, who lives in a small home adorned with Trump flags and Republican lawn signs in the village of Nelsonville.
She described Lawler as “common sense” and Jones as a “radical” and said Democrats are trying to distract voters with their warnings about abortion access.
“He’s not advocating to ban abortion!” she said of Lawler.
For other voters, it’s a harder sell.
“I don’t believe him,” said Jill Ferson, 77, a social worker who lives in the village of Croton-on-Hudson, when asked about Lawler saying he will not support a federal abortion ban.
Ferson said her biggest concerns this election were keeping Trump out of office and preserving abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
Similar dynamics surface in the other ring districts.
On Long Island, Republican Rep. Anthony D'Esposito is trying to hold onto a congressional district right outside New York City that Biden won by 15 percentage points. D'Esposito is trying to cast Democrat Laura Gillen as soft on crime while criticizing Democrats over immigration policies he blames for an influx of migrants.
Gillen, a former town supervisor, has rejected those criticisms and said that if elected, she would push for more law enforcement and border security.
Northwest of the city, Democrat Josh Riley is trying to unseat U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro, a Republican, in a rematch of their close contest in 2022. The district runs from the Hudson River Valley to the Finger Lakes.
In some New York districts, Democrats could face questions about the indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he accepted bribes and illegal campaign contributions. But Adams is not on the ballot, so that may not matter to voters. While some Republicans have used the scandal to assert that there's rampant corruption in the Democratic Party, Trump has spoken sympathetically about Adams, portraying his prosecution as politically motivated.
In eastern Pennsylvania, a presidential battleground, three perennially contested congressional districts feature incumbents with a knack for survival. They include Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who is chasing a fifth term in a district that favored Biden by 5 percentage points in 2020. His opponent is Ashley Ehasz, a former Army helicopter pilot whom he beat two years ago by almost 10 percentage points.
Solidly blue New Jersey and Connecticut also have at least one competitive race apiece.
In a New Jersey district that includes Trump's Bedminster golf club, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. is seeking a second term against Democrat Sue Altman, a former leader of the state’s progressive Working Families Alliance.
In Connecticut, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes is matched up again with former Republican state Sen. George Logan, whom she defeated by less than 1 percent two years ago in a district Biden won by 11 percentage points.
At a recent debate, Hayes accused Logan of hiding his support for Trump. Logan denied that, but did not say Trump's name once.