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Leading up to Tuesday’s election, Francis Conole and Brandon Williams, candidates in New York’s 22nd district, have collectively raised over $3 million for their respective campaigns.

According to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit studying money in politics, Conole has outraised Williams by $2.6 million to $750,000 as of Oct. 19. Despite the gap, recent polling shows that the race is extremely tight. Syracuse University professors said the discrepancy between funding and outcomes may have to do with the race’s nationalization.

Grant Reeher, the director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute and a professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said unlike a “normal midterm,” voters are thinking about Democrats and Republican candidates in terms of their national party’s positions.

People vote based on their opinions of the candidates’ national parties, Reeher said. But local fundraising and advertising efforts may be what gets people to vote, he said.

“Sometimes knowing who the candidates are gets them over the hurdle (to vote),” he said.

Groups across the country have also poured money into the race. The Congressional Leadership Fund — a super PAC “exclusively dedicated to winning a Republican Majority in the House of Representatives,” according to its website — spent nearly $4 million on the race partially through advertising campaigns against Conole.

Throughout the country, The Congressional Leadership Fund has spent a total of $201 million both in advertising and research regarding Democrats like Sean Patrick Maloney, who represents New York’s 18th district.

The House Majority PAC, a super PAC aimed at electing Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives, has spent $2.4 million against Williams.

Steven White, an assistant professor in Maxwell and a senior research associate in the Campbell Public Affairs Institute, said the nationalization of local races had led funding to consolidate around groups like WinRED and ActBlue, which facilitate individual donations to Republicans and Democrats respectively.

“Races in New York matter to people in D.C. as much as any other race,” White said.

The race’s nationalization also plays a part in where funding is coming from for both candidates. Just under half of Conole’s funding and 72.8% of Williams’ funding has come from outside New York state, according to OpenSecrets. When divided by metropolitan area, Williams’ largest sector is Dallas, Texas.

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Reeher said the race has been “state-ized” as well as nationalized.

“There are some big issues in the state of New York that intersect with and overlap with some of the national issues,” Reeher said. “This is helping Williams because if you look at, for example, how the governor’s race has tightened, on paper it should not even be anywhere near this close.”

New York state’s last Republican governor was George Pataki, who served from 1995 to 2006. Democrats currently have a supermajority in both the state senate and assembly. But Gov. Kathy Hochul’s lead over Republican challenger Lee Zeldin had dropped from 18 points in July to 7.4 points as recently as Saturday, according to FiveThirtyEight.

With Hochul’s struggles, Republicans throughout this election cycle have aimed their messaging at tying Conole to Albany, Reeher said.

“Francis Conole would make Washington worse by making it just like Albany,” one political ad created by the Congressional Leadership Fund opens. “We can’t afford Albany’s man Francis Conole.”

While it may not make sense to tie Conole, a federal candidate, to the state’s capital in Albany, Reeher said it taps into frustration with Democratic policies.

“(Voters are) concerned about the economy and inflation, but in the state of New York that takes on a particular flavor because there’s an ongoing concern that the economic climate in the state of New York is not very conducive to either businesses or either people staying in the state,” he said.

With the focus of the election reaching outside of local politics, the vote may be a referendum on the current state of the Republican and Democratic parties, Reeher and White said.

“Things are very nationalized, and so, ultimately, I think for many people, just how they feel about Biden and Trump … may be a key factor in how (people) vote,” White said.

Published on November 7, 2022 at 1:15 am

Contact Kyle: kschouin@syr.edu | @Kyle_Chouinard