Less than a week out from her high-stakes primary election, progressive New York state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi is tripling down on her assertion that members of Congress “past child-bearing age” are too old to effectively fight for abortion rights.
The comment, on Twitter in July, gained minimal traction at the time.
“At the risk of sounding ageist, it’s still important to ask: when a majority of Congress is past child-bearing age, how fierce can we expect their fight to be?” Biaggi, who is challenging Democratic incumbent Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney wrote on July 5, explaining in a successive tweet that it’s not that “elders” aren’t needed, but that they needed to “make space” for younger leaders.
ADVERTISEMENT
But then Hudson PAC, a pro-Maloney group, began circulating copies of the post in campaign materials this week, and Biaggi dug in, calling it one of her “finest tweets.”
“When a generation of elected leaders fail to protect our rights, and respond by sending fundraising emails, it merits asking whether we need new diverse leaders,” she tweeted in response to criticism of her original comment. “Having a blind spot to such a pervasive frustration is not workable.”
The average age in the House is 57 and in the Senate it’s 62.
Her explanation did little to quell the backlash, particularly among lawmakers “past child-bearing age.”
“It’s kind of a slap at older women in office… I can’t figure out why she would say that,” New York Assemblywoman Sandy Galef (D) told The Daily Beast.
Galef, 82, said she fought her way into politics at a time where being a woman in office was more of an anomaly—and that she thinks effective policy making benefits from “people of all ages” being in office.
“It was all about men before… we all fought very very hard to be elected,” Galef added.
Westchester County Democratic Party Chairwoman Suzanne Berger said she knows “many people—men and women—who are offended by it,” but added that she simply doesn’t understand the strategy.
Berger said she thought Biaggi’s initial “child-bearing age” comment was just a political misstep. But as Biaggi continued to double down, the intention became clear.
“Any time you try to exclude a significant portion of the electorate, meaning women over 40, that’s not a winning formula in politics,” Berger said.
New York political strategist Jennifer Cunningham, who started a public Twitter feud with Biaggi over the tweets, also posted that if Biaggi “had any respect for me - or women over child bearing age - you wouldn’t say it in the first place. Politically, [it’s] also one of the dumbest moves I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe when you’re older you’ll understand.”
Biaggi’s campaign was undeterred.
"Alessandra Biaggi believes our government should be as diverse as our country — including racial, economic, gender and age diversity — which is why we need more young people in Congress, just as we need more women, working people and people of color,” Biaggi campaign spokesperson Monica Klein said in a statement.
Some of the head scratching over Biaggi’s strategy was due to the fact that the primary is just days away—and though Biaggi has defeated an incumbent before, it’s no small task.
“As someone who is new to the district and being outspent in all forms here… she really needed or needs all the cards to kinda break her way,” New York Democratic strategist Chris Coffey told The Daily Beast, noting Biaggi is facing an uphill battle in the moderate-leaning district.
Biaggi’s progressive supporters feel differently. Sochie Nnaemeka with the New York Working Families Party, told The Daily Beast she believes Biaggi’s built a strong ground game, and that she’s mobilizing voters around the idea of change.
“The establishment benefits from a demobilized, demoralized electorate,” said, later adding that Biaggi is waging an “uphill battle against the current to give people something to turn out for and to say that, you know, ‘We might vote with hope. We also vote with righteous indignation. We also vote for an agenda.”
The NY-17 congressional race was contentious from the start. After redistricting jumbled up members’ pre-existing territories, Maloney announced he would be running in the district where he lived even though it is currently represented by progressive Rep. Mondaire Jones (D). Jones was left with two options: run against Maloney, or run somewhere else.
Jones chose the latter—opting to run in NY-10’s crowded but open primary. That prompted some immediate backlash to Maloney, the chair of congressional Democrats’ national campaign arm in charge of protecting incumbents, for potentially edging out a young, Black Democrat from a safer path toward re-election.
His sharp elbows are hardly the only criticism Maloney has faced during his tenure at the DCCC. Just this week, he was called out for using his perch at the DCCC to fundraise for his own campaign. His decision to meddle in GOP primaries this cycle has also attracted the ire of his fellow House Democrats who slammed the tactic of spending money to prop up GOP primary candidates who are further right—but potentially easier to beat—as an objectively risky strategy for the party.
But Coffey doubts the DCCC-related criticism would penetrate the conversation among voters in the district. The DCCC is hardly a household name and party primary strategies are often a muddy amalgamation of insider baseball.
“Too in the weeds,” Coffey called it.
Maloney’s campaign is remaining optimistic. Spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg told The Daily Beast in a statement that the campaign is confident Maloney “will win this election because of his record of results and strong relationships across the Hudson Valley.”
Coffey, though doubtful about Biaggi’s prospects, conceded that the race is still up in the air. There’s been minimal public polling—and New York City politics has seen a number of surprising upsets in the past few years.
“It’s not over,” he said. And you never know.”
