On Nov. 4, voters in the 24th Congressional District sent a resounding message: they no longer wanted Dan Maffei to represent them.
Maffei, a Democrat, lost to Republican challenger John Katko, a former U.S. Attorney, by a margin of 73,317 votes to 55,268. Katko said he wasn’t necessarily surprised by the victory.
“We were going door-to-door for the last couple of weeks of the campaign … and we were getting a pretty good response,” he said. “I just felt the momentum, so I wasn’t surprised that we won.”
But he was taken aback by the margin of victory.
“That was kind of like, whoa,” he said. “That was larger than we thought.”
So what accounts for that 18,000-plus-vote margin? A number of factors, according to Dr. Grant Reeher, director of the Alan K. Campbell Public Affairs Institute and a professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School.
“I think it was a combination of five things,” Reeher said. “Each one contributes a few percentage points, and there is synergy in how they work together, so that when you add them all up, the margin begins to make sense. Add all those up, and you have the recipe for a landslide, which this election was.”
Reeher pointed to Maffei’s trouble connecting with constituents and the media, versus Katko’s ease and charisma in the public eye. He also noted Katko’s more moderate political stance, which played well in the district. In addition, the 24th District was swept into the nationwide trend against Democrats.
“President Obama’s approval rating is low, and more importantly, by a wide margin people think the country is not on the right track,” Reeher said. “That works against those, perceived to be ‘incumbents, and in this cycle, that was the Democratic Party.”
Maffei was also hurt by state races, particularly the governor’s race.
“He got hit two ways,” Reeher said. “First, the election was not competitive, so people inclined to vote for Democrats were not drawn to the polls to insure that the incumbent governor was re-elected. Second, even though the election was not close, people were at the same time not terribly enthusiastic about the governor — he has taken many hits and is less popular upstate. So people were not drawn to the polls to register their approval and enthusiasm for the governor by voting for him.”
Moreover, Maffei’s advertising strategy didn’t sit well with a number of voters.
“You had a backlash against a very negative, at times character-attack approach taken by the incumbent. It turned a lot of people off, including, I think, many of the moderate women that were targeted,” Reeher said. “Usually the public doesn’t distinguish between the two campaigns once a campaign turns generally nasty, but in this case, I think many voters perceived a difference between the two campaigns on this score, and held one campaign more accountable for it.”
Katko echoed those thoughts.
“I think people were really disgusted with the way he ran his campaign,” he said. “I think at first, when they were doing the negative stuff, it was like, ‘Wow, Katko hates women.’ But after a while, they were like, ‘Wait a minute, this doesn’t really make sense.’ And as they focused on the race and kept getting bombarded with the garbage, they really got [angry].”
The new Congressman
So what will Katko do with that mandate?
“[We have to] get things done,” he said. “We have no excuse now. Before it was a divided house — the House was Republican and the Senate was Democrat. We have no excuse now. I don’t make any bones about that.”
Katko said he will honor his campaign promises to reach across the aisle and work with the other party, even if it makes him unpopular with his fellow Republicans.
“I’m never going to vote for a shutdown of the government,” he said. “I’m very much against a shutdown. I can’t envision a situation where I’d vote for it.”
Katko also said he won’t vote for a full repeal of Obamacare without something already in place to replace it. And if that makes other Republicans upset, so be it.
“[I won’t be in trouble] with my constituents, though, and that’s what’s important,” he said. “I got the message when I was out there. People are so sick of the partisan bickering. They just want you to go to Washington to get something done. If the party gets mad at me, they’ve got to understand, I’m in a district that’s very centrist. It’s not like I’m in a district that’s 35 percent dominated by Republicans. I’ve got a different agenda here. I have to be moderate. That’s the way it’s going to be.”
Katko said he believes there are numerous issues on which the two parties can find common ground, including tax reform, a central plank of his seven-point economic plan, and tweaking Obamacare.
“I think [repealing] the medical device tax has a good chance of at least going to the president’s desk. Whether he signs it or not, I don’t know,” he said. “I think the health insurance tax — the HIT tax, they call it. It’s a big cost for private sector businesses. It’s a tax on insurance companies and insurance companies pass it on to the businesses. Something’s got to be done with that.”
Katko emphasized that he doesn’t think repeated votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act are productive or necessary.
“I think the broader scale, if you have this narrative of ‘We’re going to get rid of it’ without a replacement, I think is really irresponsible. I would never support that,” he said. “But I think now is a really good time to try to find some bipartisan support for a solution to the systemic problems to it — which should have been done at the beginning but wasn’t, and both sides are to blame for that — and come up with something better.”
Katko also hopes to implement his economic plan, which he said will benefit the region he represents as well as the nation as a whole. Part of that plan includes repealing the Affordable Care Act’s medical device tax. He also wants to implement overall corporate tax reform.
“There are some very good factories up here, Hutuamaki in Fulton, Novelis in Oswego, Welch Allyn,” he said. “All of them could be assisted by federal intervention. All of them compete in the world market. They have the highest corporate tax rate in the industrial world, 38 percent. If you level the playing field but at the same time close the loopholes, everybody should be paying their fair share, but you lower the corporate tax rate. Then the trillions of dollars that are overseas now, incentivize that to get them to come back on our tax rolls. I think we’d probably have a net gain, and we would certainly allow these guys to compete more. So tax reform is big.”
Other planks of his plan include providing additional incentives for high-tech job training and retraining, as well as addressing the student loan crisis.
“Students are leaving this area so they can find better jobs so they can pay back their loans. We’ve got to do something about that,” he said. “You can buy a house on a 30-year mortgage on half the interest rate of student loans. There’s something wrong with that. That’s nuts. We should incentivize the private sector as well as the government to provide forgiveness programs.”
Starting a new dialogue
Most of all, Katko said he wants to create a different kind of discourse in the House.
“I think there’s a lot of people like me in Congress that are more forward-thinking,” he said. “I hope we can change the dialogue.”
Katko pointed to some specific bills he’d like to pass, including something to increase economic development at the Port of Oswego and the Harriet Tubman bill, which would create a national historical park in Auburn, as well as another in Maryland to honor her Underground Railroad activities. Maffei sponsored the original bill when it came to the house during the summer session.
Katko also hopes to have a say in the reconstruction of Route 81.
“You know, it’s funny, but politicians don’t want to weigh in on that. It’s like a hot potato,” he said. “This is going to be the biggest civic project in our district’s history, and people are like, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ What kind of leadership is that? It’s going to be decided in the next year or so, so I definitely want to be in on that. I think we have a golden opportunity now to get it right, so let’s get it right.”
How much can he accomplish as a freshman representative? It’s debatable, Reeher said.
“He’s a freshman, and one among 435, in a Congress that does not currently function well,” Reeher said. “But on the other hand, he may be a privileged freshman, because he retook a seat for the Republicans, and they will want to keep it, so he may get relatively greater attention from leadership. The place moves slow, but it does reward effective entrepreneurs within the chamber.”
Reeher said Katko can definitely establish his stated goal of starting a new dialogue in Congress.
“He has the opportunity to be a voice, or one of the newer voices, for more moderation and cooperation,” Reeher said. “That might be where his most significant accomplishment beyond the district could lie.”
Whatever he manages to do, Katko hopes he can help get things done for the district.
“We’ve got to do what we can to be productive,” he said. “The bottom line is, we’ve got no more excuses. We’ve got to get some stuff done. If we don’t get anything done, shame on us.”
