With less than 50 days to go until the midterm elections, New York’s 17th Congressional District, situated in the Hudson Valley north of New York City, is the only district that Kamala Harris won in 2024 where Republican PACs have been vastly outspending their Democratic counterparts.
The congressional race pits two-term incumbent Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) against Democratic challenger Cait Conley, a U.S. Army veteran who has emphasized her service record and working-class roots. Conley secured her party’s endorsement with the backing of The Bench, which boosted corporate-friendly moderates in this year’s Democratic primaries. Similarly, the veterans-focused political network VoteVets spent millions to help moderate candidates like Conley defeat more-progressive primary opponents.
But so far, this spending surge has not carried over to the general election.
Lawler is perhaps one of the most vulnerable Republican members of Congress heading into the general election, but he is once again seeking to defy the odds in a Democratic-leaning district. Kamala Harris won the district 50-49 in 2024.
With the House majority on the line, Democratic leadership has plenty of motivation for wanting Lawler to lose his re-election bid, and Democratic leadership–aligned PACs do too. So why have Republican PACs been able to solidify such a significant spending advantage in New York’s 17th District?
Republicans can afford to play in the New York City market and still have enough left over to cover their other districts.
One factor might be the sheer costliness of the media market in the New York City area. Ad reservation rates tend to fluctuate in the run-up to an election. In major media markets like New York, however, these rates can appear more predictable, as television ad space is both highly saturated and expensive year-round.
Republicans have a massive cash advantage in the major committees that run outside ads in House elections. They can afford to play in the New York City market and still have enough left over to cover their other districts. Democrats don’t have that luxury.
The more ominous possibility is that any tolerance some establishment Democrats have for Lawler may have something to do with their existing relationships with him. Lawler has joined forces with Democrats on a handful of bills this year, including a measure making it easier to sign union contracts that passed the House.
In August, Axios reported that unnamed Democratic sources were reluctant to take on Lawler, citing the high cost of campaigning in the New York City area and that he is “the kind of Republican we want in the Congress.” Others doubted that he could be beat.
Whichever factors, or a combination thereof, are to blame for this party-to-party spending asymmetry, it begs the question of whether the national Democratic Party’s political apparatus has been reluctant to spend in what is clearly a winnable district.
As of September 16, Republicans had a spending advantage of $573,730 in New York’s 17th District, with a total of $825,272 spent thus far. Of that total, spending by the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) super PAC came in at $463,000. As Axios reported, CLF has dumped $6.7 million into ad reservations in the district, while Lawler’s campaign and the GOP dark-money group Americans for Open Government have spent $2.8 million and $2.1 million on ads, respectively.
For their part, Democrats have spent at least $251,543 in the district. That total is separate from the $270,000 in ad reservations made by House Majority Forward, a Democratic leadership–aligned nonprofit, which itself is affiliated with the House Majority PAC (HMP) super PAC.
“HMP is going to do whatever it takes to ensure Mike Lawler, who voted with Trump’s economic agenda 100 percent of the time, is defeated in November,” HMP communications director CJ Warnke told the Prospect in an email.
HMP announced a series of ads this week across 15 districts, including two digital ads in New York’s 17th District. Digital ads inside YouTube or on websites are lower-cost than advertising on television. HMP also placed digital ads in four other districts, as well as television ads in ten additional districts.
According to consumer research from iHeartMedia on political advertising, digital ads may excel at efficiency, but television ads deliver broad awareness, meaning digital political advertising on its own “reinforces beliefs well but rarely changes them by itself.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has placed numerous digital ads, as well as a combination of traditional and mobile billboards, targeting Lawler. The PAC has also added Conley to its “highly competitive ‘Red to Blue’ program,” which according to the DCCC, “arms top-tier candidates with organizational and fundraising support to help them continue building winning campaigns.”
In coordination with key battleground campaigns nationwide, the DCCC has announced more than a dozen television ads in districts that could determine control of the House. It has yet to place such ads in New York’s 17th District.
“Shady political operative Mike Lawler has spent his entire career turning public office into a personal payday while selling out his constituents again and again—and Democrats are going to make sure voters hear about his self-dealing and corruption from now until election day,” DCCC spokesperson Riya Vashi said in a statement.
The DCCC will be announcing additional television ads every week until Election Day.
HMP’s most recent poll, which was conducted by FM3 Research between June 27 and July 1, showed Conley leading Lawler 51 percent to 45 percent. That’s a durable lead, but it could evaporate amid a barrage of Republican spending. The two-term incumbent recently launched a television ad attacking Conley over her past consulting work for AI firms. Conley’s campaign has maintained that she supports a data center moratorium, and pointed to Lawler’s hypocrisy. Still, her single-digit lead over an incumbent who has managed to hold out in a Democratic-leaning district is a sign that this race remains a toss-up.
The message from the Democratic establishment about Lawler has been clear, but when residents of the district turn on their television, it seems as though they’re more likely to see their current representative dragging his challenger through the mud.
