It was a good night for Democrats, but for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the DCCC lost its most important race: his own.
Maloney, the New York Democrat charged with leading the House Democrats’ re-election efforts, lost his seat in an upset on Tuesday night. He called his Republican opponent, Mike Lawler, Wednesday morning to concede.
Maloney is the first sitting chairman of the DCCC to lose reelection in more than 40 years. He now joins the ranks of former Rep. Jim Corman of California, who lost in 1980 as former President Ronald Reagan swept the nation.
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Despite Maloney trying to brand his opponent as “MAGA Mike Lawler,” and former President Bill Clinton calling an influential rabbi in the Hudson Valley to switch his endorsement, the incumbent failed to defeat Lawler, a GOP state assemblyman.
Maloney maneuvered to run in a different district after the Empire State’s congressional map was redrawn, forcing fellow Democratic incumbent Rep. Mondaire Jones to run for a brand new district in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where he lost in the primary.
As The Daily Beast reported in October, the DCCC chairman’s messy reelection fight—which included a primary challenge to his left from state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi—was the result of a series of repercussions from Maloney’s decision to switch seats, sparking gripes within Democratic campaign circles.
And as Maloney was fighting Democratic battles—as well as helping and raising money for campaigns across the country—Lawler was recruiting big GOP names to campaign for him.
Both former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) came to support Lawler. And the campaigning worked. An internal poll from the Lawler camp had them up by six points by the end of October.
In response to criticism surrounding Maloney’s decision to bump Jones out of his seat, his campaign would often cite data on his new district being more competitive than the new iteration of his old one.
It turns out they were right.
