Bloomberg adviser angered that Dem arrogance, ignorance of crime cost them critical New York seats

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New York Times guest essayist and adviser to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Howard Wolfson, argued that Democrats lost the House because of the "arrogance and incompetence" of the Democratic Party in New York.

According to the author, Democrats in the state lost crucial House seats due to their "greedy" gerrymandering and complacency on crime.

Wolfson noted that even Democrats voted Republican to break up this incompetent one-party rule, thereby swinging the House majority to Republicans.

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK - AUGUST 24: New York Governor Kathy Hochul speaks, joined by New York City Mayor Eric Adams (R) and the newly appointed ATF Director Steve Dettelbah, as she delivers remarks about their joint effort to combat gun violence at the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) office on August 24, 2022 in New York City. They outlined steps needed to stem gun violence in the city, citing that the problem is a nationwide issue. The plan is to work with neighboring states with lax gun laws to stem the interstate gun trafficking while employing the latest technological resources.  ((Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images))

Wolfson began his piece by attributing the Democratic Party’s loss of the House to their behavior in New York.

He wrote, "The party just came up agonizingly short in its attempt to buck history and retain a majority in the House of Representatives — a failure that is directly attributable to decisions New York Democrats made this year." 

The writer claimed these decisions "cost four House seats and wasted tens of millions of dollars in national party resources that could have been deployed to win seats in other states."

Wolfson claimed that Democrats’ mistakes in the race weren’t made at the final stretch of the contest but had occurred months before the elections were decided. He wrote, "In New York, the Democratic supermajority in control of the legislature made two fatal mistakes driven by arrogance and incompetence that sealed the fate of its congressional candidates many months ago."

Before getting into the specific blunders, the author noted that they exemplified the "dangers of one-party rule, especially when it becomes so entrenched and beholden to its most activist wing — and in this case causes some Democrats to vote Republican just to break that stranglehold."

He claimed that the first big mistake was that New York Democrats became "greedy" with their gerrymandering. Wolfson wrote, "After an independent commission created by voters failed to agree on a new map of House districts in New York, Democrats got greedy. Instead of drawing maps that were modestly advantageous, they went whole hog — producing an extremely gerrymandered map that invited a successful legal challenge."

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The Empire State Building towers above other largely empty office buildings on March 4, 2021, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The second mistake – which is what critics predicted Democrats in the state would get hammered over – is that they ignored the state’s rising crime. He wrote, "the legislature apparently decided that voter concerns about crime and disorder were nothing to worry about."

He added that "After three decades of falling crime, Democrats had gotten complacent and disconnected, and failed to recognize that the bail reforms they passed in 2019, eliminating cash bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, were deeply unpopular."

Condemning Democrats even further, Wolfson said, "in the face of crime rates rising some 30 percent in New York City, Democrats mostly denied that there was a crime problem on the scale that Republicans portrayed in frequent campaign ads."

Lee Zeldin and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul at a debate. Zeldin has made New York state's crime rate a key part of his campaign against Hochul. (Screenshot/Spectrum News)

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He continued: "To the extent that Democrats acknowledged the growing disorder at all, they argued that there was no data showing that bail reforms affected crime – a claim at odds with the desire of many voters for stronger public safety."

With Republicans in the state hammering Democrats on this point, "Democrats lost six congressional districts won by Joe Biden in 2020 — more than in any other state in the nation."