New York to have a stronger hand in the new, divided Congress

Yet it’s a Congress where New York will have a stronger hand – partly because the top Democrats on both sides of Capitol Hill will likely be New Yorkers, and partly because the House Republican leadership will have every reason to listen to the 11 GOP House members from New York.

That being the case, New York lawmakers interviewed last week were surprisingly optimistic about what they could accomplish in the new, divided Congress that will take office in January. No one is expecting the vast amount of sweeping legislation that resulted from the past two years of one-party Democratic control – but must-pass spending bills and other, lesser measures will very well have a New York stamp on them.

That’s partly because Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, a Brooklyn Democrat, will continue in that role and may well have a slightly larger majority to work with in the Senate. Meantime, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries – who is also from Brooklyn – is expected to take over as the top Democrat in the House, where Republican leaders will no doubt remember that the GOP’s unexpected victories in New York are the only reason the party is in the majority.

“Anytime you have New Yorkers in a position of influence, I think it’s good for the state,” said Rep.-elect Nicholas A. Langworthy, a Republican who led the state GOP while it picked up all of those seats. “And, you know, we’re going to have state priorities, regional priorities that we need collaboration on. There’s certain things where, as New Yorkers, we are all in this together.” 

Here’s a look at what Western New York’s lawmakers have to say about the next two years in Congress – as well as a look at Jeffries, who is in line to replace Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the most powerful Democrat in the House:

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer just won his fifth term in the Senate, which is something no other New Yorker has done. And his place as majority leader was sealed when Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat, eked out a second term.

Now the biggest question facing Schumer is whether Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, will have to continue to break ties in a 50-50 Senate, or whether Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, will survive a Dec. 6 runoff against his Republican opponent, former football star Herschel Walker, and produce a 51-49 Senate. An additional Senate vote would strengthen Schumer’s leverage against his most recalcitrant, most conservative Democratic colleague, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

No matter what happens, Schumer – ever the optimist – said he has already talked to Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell about working together more in the next Congress. Schumer noted that Republican votes helped pass several important measures in the past two years, including a huge infrastructure bill, a NATO expansion, a veterans bill, a gun safety measure and the CHIPS Act, which aims to bring microchip makers back to the U.S. from overseas. 

All of that happened with Democrats in control of the House, but Schumer doesn’t seem all that worried about the fact that Republicans took control of that chamber.

“A good number of the Republicans in House are MAGA,” Schumer said in reference to “Make America Great Again” supporters of former President Donald Trump. “They’re going to be hard to work with. But given that there’s such a small margin, if a group of the more mainstream Republicans say we’re not going to go along with this MAGA right-wing extremist radical stuff, we’re going try to to work in a bipartisan consensus way in the middle, we can work with them, too. And that’s what I hope to do.”

Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, a Democrat who’s expected to run for a third full term in 2024, thinks that in Congress, the past is prologue – and that that’s a good thing for her.

“I’m optimistic that we’ll get a lot done because I’ve passed six laws in the last six months and all of them were bipartisan,” Gillibrand said. “And so I do not have trouble finding strong Republican leads to help me get things done. And I will do that in the new Congress as well.”

Indeed, Gillibrand saw a lot of her proposals make their way into law last year. Her measure to crack down on gun trafficking became part of the bipartisan gun safety bill. Her yearslong effort to expand benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits finally passed Congress, as did two separate measures she proposed cracking down on sexual harassment and assault. Her measure expanding federal biological research made it into the CHIPS Act, and other Gillibrand proposals were included in the giant climate change and health bill that Congress passed over the summer.

In the next Congress, Gillibrand said she will continue to push for legislation mandating paid family and medical leave, universal pre-K and affordable day care.

“I think that has been something that we have not had strong Republican leadership on,” she said. “And so really focusing on what they’re willing to agree to is going to be my focus over the next several months, to try to get us to yes on something.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is little known upstate – but he’s well-known to Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican who worked with the likely top Democrat in the House back when they served together in Albany.

“He used to sit next to me in the State Assembly, so I’ve known him for a long time,” said Tenney. “He’s a very talented guy, very smart.”

Long regarded as an understated but effective legislator, Jeffries was first elected to the House in 2012 – and only a decade later, he stands likely to be the first African American to ascend to a top party leadership role in Congress. One prominent lawmaker who considered challenging Jeffries for minority leader, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, last week decided against making that move, and that appears to clear Jeffries’ path to the top.

“It is my hope that we can find common ground where possible with our Republican colleagues in order to deliver results for the American people,” Jeffries wrote in a letter to his colleagues last week. “At the same time, the opposing party appears to have no plan to accomplish anything meaningful. If the Republican Conference continues to major in demagoguery and minor in disinformation, their bankruptcy of ideas must be aggressively exposed on an ongoing basis.”

Rep. Claudia Tenney, formerly of the Utica area, won re-election in a vast new district that stretches from rural eastern Niagara County to the North Country. She’s renting a house in Canandaigua, near the district’s center, and aiming to move up in the House by bidding for a seat on the powerful, tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, which also has purview over health care and Social Security.

“It’s an important committee,” Tenney said. “I think I have an ideal skill set for it with my background as a lawyer and a small business owner.”

She said serving on Ways and Means would be important to her sprawling new district, where small businesses and agriculture dominate the economy and have a huge stake in tax policy.

Rep. Nicole R. Malliotakis, a Staten Island Republican, is also bidding for a Ways and Means seat, but with Republicans in the majority, it’s possible that both Tenney and Malliotakis end up there. 

Tenney has history on her side. For decades, a Republican from Western New York or the Southern Tier – be it Rep. Barber Conable, Rep. Amo Houghton or Rep. Tom Reed, who left Congress earlier this year – has served on Ways and Means.

Rep.-elect Nicholas A. Langworthy comes to Congress well-known by many of his colleagues. Langworthy, who will represent a district that sprawls from the Buffalo suburbs through much of the Southern Tier, serves as New York Republican chairman – and New York elected 11 Republicans to the House this year for the first time in more than two decades.

What’s more, he donated $100,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee before he was elected – meaning he helped others get elected.

Langworthy hopes to parlay all of that into a seat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where he hopes to push legislation that would move America toward energy independence. Even though New York has banned fracking within its borders, he insists that the controversial natural gas extraction method still holds huge economic potential for the Southern Tier.

Otherwise, he said the new House GOP majority must keep the promises that it made during the campaign and enact its “Commitment to America” agenda, which calls for securing the border and adding police officers nationwide as well as “pro-growth tax and regulatory policies.”

“I think it’s incumbent on us to go and put an agenda forward to pass common-sense bills,” he said.

Rep. Brian Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat, will find himself in the minority after four years in the majority. That being the case, Higgins – who will continue to serve on the Ways and Means Committee – hopes to build on the Democratic legislation passed in the current Congress and keep the money the Democrats decided to spend flowing to Buffalo in the next two years.

Long an advocate of increased federal infrastructure spending, Higgins is particularly interested in the 2021 infrastructure bill that’s already slated to include $95 million in neighborhood improvements to East Buffalo and $47 million for the reconstruction of Tifft and Louisiana streets. New York State has received less than half of the money it’s due under the bill so far, meaning there is much more to come.

“We have to find common ground so that we can continue to realize the benefits of all of this money that has just been approved,” Higgins said.