Ryan acknowledged that the issues are top priorities for his constituents, according to his own internal polling.
In 2022, New York Republican candidates helped the House GOP win the majority thanks to a favorable new map and a relentless focus on voters’ concerns with crime, public safety, and immigration. One Democrat who successfully navigated that midterm environment was Hudson Valley Representative Pat Ryan.
A West Point graduate who won an August 2022 special congressional election in part by focusing on abortion access after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, this former Ulster County executive narrowly carried New York’s 18th district in the 2022 general election by leaning into voters’ kitchen table concerns. As his reelection race heats up, he has continued campaigning on protecting abortion access and tacking to the center on immigration in his 2024 bid against GOP challenger Alison Esposito, a New York City Police Department veteran who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2022. The race is seen as very competitive.
It’s curious, then, the terms Ryan uses to characterize the border and public safety when speaking with Democratic supporters in private. During a virtual campaign event with supporters last month Ryan dismissed voters’ concerns about immigration and crime as the product of Republican “fear mongering,” according to a recording of the event reviewed by National Review. The comment came after Ryan acknowledged that those issues rank among his constituents’ highest priorities this cycle, according to his own internal polling.
The New York political environment “is still really tough,” for Democrats, Ryan told supporters. “Border, and crime, and the economy are still the top of mind issues for voters in New York, especially in the New York media market from Hudson Valley to Long Island, we have to do the work to earn trust there, because right now, on several of those issues, folks trust — especially independent voters — trust Republicans more than us, even though that’s total BS.”
Democrats must “earn” voters’ trust on those issues across the state, he said, namechecking Long Island and Queens-area Representative Tom Suozzi, former Represenative Mondaire Jones in the 17th District, Democratic candidate Laura Gillen in the 4th, Josh Riley in the 19th, and John Mannion in the 22nd.
This prompted a follow-up question from someone on the call. “And now, is crime still a big issue that you are fighting there? You said it was crime, economy, and border. So, the crime issue is B.S. too,” an attendee named Jane asked on the Zoom call, prompting Ryan to smile and nod along in agreement. “So is that, but is that still strong?”
“Yeah, I’d say that, you know, in our polling the, ‘the border’ and immigration, which I think is a broad category for this kind of like public safety, fear mongering,” Ryan said. “The impacts of the fear mongering that Republicans have been doing, that is number one.”
Fox News first reported the details of the Zoom call.
In a statement to National Review, Ryan campaign spokesman Sam Silverman highlighted his combat experience and said his boss “has the strongest record on border security” in this general election race.
“Pat led a bipartisan effort with Congressmen Lawler and Molinaro calling on President Biden to declare a state of emergency in New York in response to the migrant crisis, was one of only 15 Democrats to demand President Biden take executive action to restore order at the border, and has gotten multiple pieces of border legislation signed into law, including the “Securing America’s Borders Against Fentanyl Act” and the “Stop Chinese Fentanyl Act.”
He called Ryan’s support for these legislative measures an “uncomfortable reality” for his GOP opponent, “who opposed the strongest border security legislation in decades,” a reference to the bipartisan immigration bill that failed earlier this year. “There’s a massive difference between working in good-faith for a bipartisan solution to secure our border and bizarre far-right fearmongering like lying about migrants eating people’s pets.”
Republican spending groups working to elect Esposito have run ads in the district hammering Ryan for his record and rhetoric on immigration and public safety.
Also during last month’s virtual campaign call, Ryan spoke about how the tightness of his own race prompted his decision to call on President Joe Biden to step aside after the June debate, and how he believes enthusiasm is on his side now that Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the party’s new nominee.
Asking attendees to keep his remarks “in the circle of trust,” Ryan said that “two months ago, we were on a really concerning path where we were — very difficult to see us flipping any of these New York House seats, and I was deeply worried about holding mine as well as Tom Suozzi’s,” a reference to the Long Island and Queens-area Democrat who won a special election for expelled Representative George Santos’s (R., N.Y.) seat back in February.
“We won my last race in 2022 with a lot of your all’s help by 1.3 percent, and so that’s part of why I did end up publicly calling on President Biden to step aside,” Ryan said. He believes Harris’s ascension to the top of the ticket has created a “night and day change” that’s boosted New York House Democratic chances across the state and could help him win by “three, four, maybe five percent” this November.
Ryan was the eighth House Democrat to call on Biden to suspend his presidential campaign, penning an op-ed expressing concerns about his ability to defeat Trump.
This post has been updated