I have to be honest, I felt on edge going into Election Day. Of course, I wondered who would win certain contests. My bigger concern was whether people would accept the results. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul declared victory around 11:30 p.m.
"And yes, the glass ceiling like the one that's above us here today has finally been shattered in the state of New York, and you made it happen," Hochul said.
Usually the challenger has already conceded. But some results were delayed for technical reasons. So Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin came out and told his supporters this instead.
"So what's going to happen is that over the course of these next couple of hours, you're going to see the race continue to get closer and closer and closer and closer," he said. "This includes — by the way, on Long Island, you're going to see a massive victory coming out of Long Island.”
Uncertainty is easy to exploit, especially when you hope to win. Since Zeldin refused to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, that wait-and-see comment was a little more loaded. When the numbers did come in, he conceded the next day.
And Zeldin wasn't the only one.
"A short while ago, I spoke to my opponent, Michael Lawler and congratulated him on a good win," said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
He was supposed to be helping other Democrats win their races.
"But my opponent won this race and he won it fair and square, and that means something. And so I'm gonna step aside and I had a good run,” Maloney continued. “And so I'm deeply grateful to the people of the Hudson Valley for giving me their voice and their vote in Washington for 10 years. Not gonna whine about it."
Critics are probably glad he's not whining, since they say he pulled a fast one when he ran for the seat in the first place.
It goes back to redistricting — the power of the maps. After the new lines were drawn, Maloney ditched his old district and ran for a neighboring seat instead. He bigfooted a one-term incumbent, fellow Democrat Rep. Mondaire Jones, the first openly gay African American congressman. So Jones ran here in the city and lost a primary this summer.
After Maloney conceded, Jones tweeted one word: "yikes."
The good news in both races is that there were winners and losers. No one tried to undermine the system. Yes, there are still races to be called. Georgia takes center stage with yet another runoff. But I think the midterms were like a booster shot for democracy, inoculating us — at least for now — against those who seek to undermine it.
President Joe Biden put it like this: "it was a good day, I think, for democracy, and I think it was a good day for America."
In our final installment of WNYC’s live, 10-week pop-up election show, "The People's Guide to Power," guest Dr. Christina Greer, a political scientist at Fordham University, author of the book "Black Ethnics," co-host of the podcast FAQNYC, and host of the podcast “The Blackest Questions” for the Grio, offered her analysis of what happened in this general election.
Also joining us was my colleague Kai Wright, host of "Notes from America" from WNYC Studios, which airs across the country at 6:00 p.m. Eastern time on Sundays.
The interview has been edited for clarity.
Brigid Bergin: I want to start by zooming out of our region. I was going to start with Georgia, which we will get to, but can we take a moment to process Nevada? Dr. Greer, were you surprised to see Catherine Cortez Masto hold onto her seat?
Dr. Christina Greer: Just a touch. I mean obviously there was a lot of confusing polling and I think pollsters are doing the best they can, but we knew it would be a close race. I think the spirit of Harry Reid is obviously alive and well in Nevada, but I think the Democratic Party needs to think about some of the issues that matter to Nevada voters. And I think the Republican Party needs to do some soul searching as well. You can't just run election deniers and people who are a party of "no." So I think it is important that Nevada was able to stay blue, but I do hope that it doesn't decrease the excitement for Democratic voters in Georgia who now say, "oh, we've got 50 seats and we can rest" because we've seen the senator from Arizona and the senator from West Virginia and how fickle they can be when it comes to building coalitions. It is very important that the Democrats also hold onto the seat in Georgia, in conjunction and in coalition with the seat in Nevada.
Kai, I'm wondering what it makes you think of in terms of the power dynamics in Washington now that the Democrats are actually poised to possibly gain that seat. I think Dr. Greer was hitting on that, the Democrats have been held in the clutches of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin and others. Do you think they're going to go back in January with sort of a different kind of modus operandi?
Kai Wright: Yeah, it's funny. The race now is really about: does the Democratic Party control the Senate or does Joe Manchin control the Senate? And so we shall see. I think what's actually most interesting to me is — in whatever the outcome it's going to, of course, remain deeply close both in the House and the Senate. So we are going to be, I think, fairly status quo in terms of Joe Biden's ability to govern one way or the other. But I think the Georgia race now as it was in 2020 is much more about whether our democracy and whether or not there are enough Republicans in the state of Georgia who say, 'I cannot support an authoritarian regime that I do support democracy.'
We've seen in this election, across the country, we've seen what feels like — I loved your metaphor about how it's a booster shot for our democracy, but we will have a hyperfocused version of that for the Georgia race. It's a state where Democrats do still need Republican votes to win and will enough Republicans vote for Sen. Raphael Warnock because they are voting against the insanity of their party right now around democracy and I think it'll be stark to see.
I'm curious what you both think about New York's senior senator in all of this. Chuck Schumer, still the majority leader. Where does he fit? I wanna play a little clip of him. Just from last night:
SCHUMER: "The American people rejected, soundly rejected the antidemocratic, authoritarian, nasty and divisive direction the MAGA Republicans wanted to take our country in. From the days of the Big Lie, which was pushed by so many to the threats of violence and even violence itself against poll workers, election officials and electoral processes."
Kai, I feel like that echoes some of themes that you were saying there. But what kind of credit does Majority Leader Schumer get? Does he get any credit for the fact that they've held on to his chamber?
Wright: Well, this is the thing. I don't know whether I'm an outlier here, and I'll be interested to see what Chrissy thinks about this, but I don't think the Democratic Party should do too much patting itself on its back about this election and get too far ahead of itself in thinking about how this was a resounding vote on the behalf of the Democratic Party in any of these races really.
What seems very clear is that Democrats came out, Democratic voters came out strong largely because of the Dobbs decision — really motivated a lot of Democratic voters and those Trump-to-Biden voters in 2020 despite the fact that they are unhappy with Joe Biden, could not bring themselves to vote for the extremist candidates that the Republican Party fielded. It does not feel to me like those were votes for the Democratic agenda as much as they were votes against where the Republican Party stands.
Dr. Greer, where do you weigh in on this?
Greer: I agree with Kai completely. I don't think that Chuck Schumer or Jamie Harrison (Chairman of the Democratic National Committee) can take credit, honestly. I think when we look at the numbers of young people who came out because they care about a woman's right to choose, and that's women and men, I think we think about young people [who] came out because they care about canceling student debt or the environment or guns or jobs. They came out because they were mobilized within their own social networks. To Kai's really important point, when we look at some of the margins by which Democrats won or either held onto their seats, we should be frightened. There's still millions upon millions of Americans who are voting for authoritarian regimes, who are voting for election deniers, who are voting for Jan. 6 supporters of an insurrection.
I mean, look at Kathy Hochul, she won by 5%. That means millions of New Yorkers thought that Lee Zeldin, who's an anti-choice, Trump-supporting, Jan. 6 supporting election-denying Republican, came really close in the state of New York. And so we have to be cognizant of the fact that it's across all 50 states that this type of faction within the Republican Party has really taken root.
They weren't successful on Nov. 8 but that doesn't mean that they'll necessarily go quiet into the night.
Kai, we've been talking a little bit about Sen. Cortez Masto out of Nevada, but another big race out of Nevada was Cisco Aguilar, the Democrat running for secretary of state, who defeated the guy who was behind the national "American First" slate of candidates, all election deniers. They all lost. Is that an example of people looking for stability, pushing back against people who are sowing doubt in our elections?
Wright: There is just no debating again the extremism of the Republican Party right now. And up and down the ballot and in the Republican primaries, there was a meaningful and real effort to field candidates that were more like, whatever I think of Republican Party in general, were more like Republicans of old. Those people lost and this became an election from the secretary of state level on up of mostly Trump candidates. And so yes, that extremism continues. What is very clear is that there is a multiracial, multi-ideological coalition in this country that says we do not want that.
Let's talk now about Georgia and that runoff coming in December between Republican Herschel Walker, the former pro-football player turned candidate and incumbent Democrat the Rev. Raphael Warnock. Warnock finished just ahead of Walker, but missed that 50%-plus threshold to win outright. Here's about 40 seconds of Warnock speaking to his supporters earlier this week.
WARNOCK: "Herschel Walker has no vision for our state or for our country. Think about it. We've been running now for a little while. And he has yet to tell us what he actually wants to do Think about that. He's running for Senate and he has, he has not even told us what he wants to do. Nothing. And he claims that he has solutions, but he says he won't share them because someone else might think they came up with it. I'd explain that if I could."
Kai, Dr. Greer, I know you've both been paying a lot of attention to the contest in Georgia. Kai, you talked with youth voters there. How do you see them engaging around this runoff?
Wright: So Stacey Abrams continues to deserve credit for having wildly expanded the electorate in the state of Georgia that very much includes the youth vote that very much includes Black youth, who were really pivotal and arguably decisive in 2020 in making Georgia a vote for Joe Biden and were once again pivotal in this election. And so I think that the state continues to be a place where you see two visions of the country play out politically. This idea of a wild expansion of democracy in order to embrace the entirety of the New America versus an idea that says, "can we shrink?" And Brian Kemp has done a great job of making himself look not Trumpian, but nonetheless has been about how can you shrink the electorate in a way that preserves a previous version of power in the state. And so that is the battle in Georgia and will continue to be.
Dr. Greer, we know that there's mobilization around this race, but you raise that question, now that the Democrats are in control of the Senate, will people pay attention to it? I had a listener tweet at me that he's received more texts from the Warnock campaign than he ever did from the Hochul campaign here in New York. That's something we'll talk about in just a bit, but what do you think needs to happen to keep this race on people's radar now that the Democrats are in control?
Greer: To that listener I agree. I still get Warnock texts. I think hopefully the folks in Georgia will let all their networks know not just in the state of Georgia, but across the country to keep donating money.
I mean, there are a few things that bode well for Sen. Warnock, which is he's not new to this. He's had to do a runoff before. A few things could happen though, Brigid, some Republicans were just really invested in making sure they had the majority in the Senate, and now that that's not the case they may lose interest in their candidate.
I mean, it is apparent that Herschel Walker cannot hold a candle to Sen. Warnock intellectually or otherwise. I think a lot of Republicans in the state of Georgia were just very excited about the prospect of having a rubber stamp if Herschel Walker became senator. And so I don't know if that fervor will still be there but it is imperative that Democrats across the country still maintain their excitement to try and make sure they have more than just this 50-50 win because as we've seen with Sinema and Manchin, they can definitely present great gridlock and sometimes deadlock when it comes to a Democratic agenda.
Dr. Greer when I was listening to Kai, it made me think of your conversation, your recent episode of FAQ NYC with none other than our former governor, Andrew Cuomo. I think he said something very similar in terms of, if your perception is that you're not safe then that is your reality. I'm wondering if you want to chime in there on that sort of idea of what Democrats need to be talking about when they talk about crime.
Greer: I agree with Kai and the former governor, I guess, that perception is always reality. I want to kind of weave in some of the callers though, Brigid, because I always implore my students and people who are asking, 'should I vote? New York is so blue, why should I even bother?' Sometimes we devote outside of ourselves, maybe you don't have any issues in particular that are on the table that are motivating you to go out and vote, but maybe you need to think about the trans community, or you need to think about people who need a social safety net or you need to think about women who need to make sure that New York state remains a pro-choice state.
So when I hear the last caller saying well I might leave. It's like okay, well people always come to New York, like, we'll be okay with our tax base to be quite honest. But if crime is real, then fine. If you wanna feel safe, then go to Florida and feel safe and be in a red state with COVID and good luck.
But I don't know if I buy that argument to be quite honest, you know? I don't know what Lee Zeldin's real plan was for crime. He just kept screaming crime, crime, crime. He had lots of people heckling the governor to do so. But he didn't have a plan for guns. He didn't have a plan for the social safety net. He didn't have a plan to really reduce crime. So I think when I hear that type of statement, I wanna validate the fact that some people do feel nervous and unsafe and feel the subways are changing. We're nowhere near the '70s and '80s, but it doesn't matter. It does feel a little different than say five or 10 years ago. But sometimes we have to actually work with someone who can get us to a destination that's closer without sort of throwing so many other people overboard.
And I think the vision that Kathy Hochul put forward that luckily a lot of New Yorkers were willing to invest in was like, listen, she came in midstream trying to undo certain things that Cuomo had done and sort of plot her own vision, but she needs more time to figure out how she's gonna work with, I think her relationship with the mayor of New York City is gonna change ever so slightly and how to work with a very varying shades of blue Democratic Party in Albany.
I really want to implore New Yorkers to think about when you have a candidate like Lee Zeldin, whose main premise was that he was going to take things away from voters and that he was going to double down with the most extreme faction of his party I think that we have to be really careful when we have like one issue that is our only issue because we really need to vote sometimes as a collective. We see Black women do this consistently every time they go to the polls, sometimes we have to vote for other people, first and foremost, in conjunction with how we feel about our vote.
