Representative Pat Ryan of New York is locked in one of the country’s toughest races. So it was especially noteworthy when the Democrat recently traveled hours outside his upstate district to visit an unusual set of influencers, Hasidic rabbis.
Then the next night, an embattled Republican in a nearby district, Representative Marc Molinaro, went out of his way to name check the Orthodox community on the debate stage.
And the following Sunday, Representative Mike Lawler, yet another Republican on the front lines, took advantage of a break in the Jewish high holidays to tour a kosher shopping center here in Monsey, trying on yarmulkes and posing for selfies.
Where candidates spend precious campaign hours says a lot about who they believe may decide a race. And in the final weeks before Election Day, three of the most endangered congressmen keep showing up at the same places: the rapidly expanding ultra-Orthodox Jewish enclaves of New York’s Hudson Valley.
The investment reflects just how important Jewish voters across the religious spectrum have become in races around New York this year, as war rages in the Middle East and rising antisemitism scrambles political alliances at home.
But in a hyper-polarized nation, ultra-Orthodox voters in particular have emerged as the rarest of swing voters. Not particularly partisan, they have fervently supported both former President Donald J. Trump and Democratic politicians, often acting as a bloc.
How they vote in November could tip several of the nation’s marquee House races — possibly in opposite directions.
“Here you have three congressional seats within miles of each other that could essentially decide the chamber, and the Orthodox Jewish community could play a pivotal role in each,” said Simcha Eichenstein, a state assemblyman and Democratic power broker involved in the races.
The Jewish community is so critical to the outcome that both major party leaders, Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Hakeem Jeffries of New York, have paid recent visits to its leaders. And both parties have weighed calling in 11th-hour assists from former presidents.
Because Orthodox Jewish voters are notoriously difficult to poll, their influence is unlikely to show up in pre-election surveys, which show the races neck and neck. In many sects, they tend to wait for the endorsements of grand rebbes just days before an election. (None of the candidates in the three races are Jewish.)
The sizable Orthodox Jewish vote has long been a coveted constituency in New York City politics. But while important leaders like the ones Mr. Ryan met remain anchored in Brooklyn, they hold sway over increasingly influential upstate outposts where cheaper land has led to a population boom and new sets of challenges for governments to untangle.
Their impact could be the most significant in Mr. Lawler’s 17th District, home to roughly 30,000 Orthodox voters.
Mr. Lawler won the balance of support there two years ago when he eked out victory over former Representative Sean Patrick Maloney. But his backing was far from unanimous: For example, after former President Bill Clinton helped secure a key local endorsement, Mr. Maloney won 94 percent of the votes in New Square, an insular Hasidic area that Mr. Trump had carried by 99 percent two years earlier.
This time, after securing millions of dollars in federal infrastructure grants and positioning himself as a strong pro-Israel voice in Congress, Mr. Lawler is expected to sweep the Orthodox vote. Political strategists and community leaders in both parties predicted he could win as much as 90 percent of the community, margins so large that they could offset a surge of support his opponent, Mondaire Jones, is counting on from Democratic strongholds.
A couple of dozen miles north in the 18th District, Mr. Ryan has just as aggressively courted voters in Kiryas Joel, home to offshoots of Brooklyn’s Satmar Jewish communities that tend to vote in similarly large numbers.
Mr. Trump won 98 percent of the vote there in 2020 and could clean up again this year. But in 2022, Mr. Ryan, a Democrat, carried about 60 percent of the vote.
Orthodox strategists expect that margin will only grow this year after Mr. Ryan helped secure a $2 million federal grant for a drinking water facility, prioritized securing the community after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and, according to The Times-Union, tried to push for changes to the way the state accredits private religious schools, known as yeshivas, a top local priority.
Republicans are not conceding. Mr. Johnson is said to be in talks to meet with one of the community’s top leaders before Election Day, and Mr. Ryan’s opponent, Alison Esposito, has questioned his commitment to Israeli defense. But a member of the community with knowledge of the matter said that Mr. Ryan had already been assured that both Kiryas Joel’s competing Satmar factions would back him.
“To go against the incumbent is like giving the guy a pink slip,” said Rabbi Moishe Indig, a Satmar leader based in Brooklyn. “In order to fire somebody, you’ve got to be bad.”
The same principle could help Mr. Molinaro, whose 19th District includes Hasidic outposts in Sullivan County that could deliver a couple thousand votes. His Democratic opponent, Josh Riley, is being backed by the Jewish Democratic Council of America but has concluded he is better off courting other swing constituencies.
It remains unclear if Mr. Jones has adopted a similar view to Mr. Riley’s, or whether he will try to cut into Mr. Lawler’s apparent advantage.
A former Democratic congressman, Mr. Jones represented much of the district before, and has taken steps to burnish his reputation with Jewish voters. He broke with a former ally earlier this year in an effort to separate himself from his party’s left flank on Israel. He has attacked Mr. Lawler for not condemning Mr. Trump’s comments that “the Jewish people” would be partly to blame if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidency.
Yet Mr. Jones has yet to actively campaign here, and there are signs Orthodox voters are still sour over his decision to prematurely stop taking non-emergency constituent casework after losing his seat last time.
“People were upset that he gave up on the community at the end,” said David Lobl, a Democratic strategist who worked on Mr. Maloney’s campaign. “And while he’s trying to make inroads, the Hasidic community has a long memory.”
Mr. Lawler, on the other hand, has been ubiquitous. He visited New Square in June with Speaker Johnson, who called the cause of the yeshivas “an essential fight.” Residents said he has also shown up for ribbon cuttings, bar mitzvahs and home-cooked meals.
“I’ve seen Lawler more times than I’ve seen my rabbi,” said Yossi Gestetner, a public relations executive and a registered Democrat in the district.
Those connections have already paid dividends. Earlier this year, Mr. Lawler’s district director, Rafi Silberberg, relied on Orthodox voters to help nab a progressive ballot line for a candidate whom Republicans planted in a ploy to siphon away votes from Mr. Jones.
Mr. Lawler’s own popularity was obvious last week when he was greeted by Jewish voters shopping for Sukkot in Monsey.
Shoppers pressed in to thank him for helping secure a passport or visa. At least two approached to say that their son had just registered to vote to cast a ballot for him.
One of them, Shmuly Deutsch, said he was used to politicians who only show up around election time. Mr. Lawler had impressed him so much, he said, that he had changed his registration from Democrat to Republican.
“He was the first politician from the Republican Party who actually reached out to the Jewish community,” Mr. Deutsch said. “This time around, I think he’s switched a lot of minds in the community.”
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