By Phil Orenstein
I’d like to dispute the claim that the widely ballyhooed red wave was a mirage, at least in New York State where we saw Republicans win almost every closely contested congressional race. Four congressional seats flipped from blue to red, including the seat of Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney the formerly powerful chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). In deep blue New York, Republican candidates won 11 critical House races securing the advantage for the Republican majority to retake Congress. New York’s great victory of 2022 is the firing of Nancy Pelosi. The greater victory is that in an overwhelmingly blue state, where Democrats conspired to win by any means necessary, the integrity of our elections was protected, and New York State became the shining light of democracy in America and won a Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
Furthermore, in a widespread voter uprising against the reckless rule of New York by Democrats, Republicans won unexpected seats in Southern Brooklyn, parts of Queens, throughout Long Island and other parts of the state. Ross Barkan writes in the Atlantic, “Why the Red Wave Hit New York” and says it was because of inflation, crime, and “New York’s broken redistricting process.” Now the Democrat Party is in shambles, they’ve lost their grip on power, and Democrat politicians and party officials are clamoring to get rid of their party chair, Jay Jacobs.
New York’s Democrats, who are solely to blame for destroying the redistricting process, shamelessly violated the constitution and the will of the voters by gerrymandering the congressional districts in order to prevent the impending Republican control of Congress. Their guiding principle is “the ends justify the means.” They lie, cheat, and steal to keep themselves in power regardless of the will of the voters, and are thereby the real threat to democracy. Now their bad Karma has come back to haunt them. In our overwhelmingly blue state, we overcame the Democrat’s insidious ploys to compromise the integrity of our election system to maintain perpetual power. The Republican Party, wealthy patriotic Americans, and good election integrity groups, such as New York Citizens Audit (auditny.com), were vigilant and proactive. We stood up and saved democracy in New York State and won Republican seats.
It all started last year when the voters of New York overwhelmingly shot down a sinister ballot proposal to get rid of the Independent Redistricting Commission tasked with drawing up fair bipartisan district maps. No sooner than the Independent Commission got to work on the maps earlier this year and were deadlocked, the Democrat supermajorities in the State Legislature summarily dismissed them, and created their own illegally gerrymandered maps benefiting Democrats by wiping four potentially Republican congressional districts off the map, which Governor Hochul eagerly signed into law as a “loyal Biden Democrat” as she crowed, who wanted to help her party gain congressional seats.
The “Hochulmander” maps as they were branded, were challenged in court by Republicans, with funding for legal challenges provided by billionaire Ron Lauder, and ruled unconstitutional. New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, threw out the Democrat’s maps entirely, and appointed an independent special master to draw up fair bipartisan maps. The special master was a fair and honest man who saved democracy, stopped partisan gerrymandering, and secured the integrity of our elections. In a fair and bipartisan election, Republicans were able to win in those redrawn congressional districts.
In New York State, Republicans were vigilant, and were able to protect the integrity of our elections, which enabled Republicans to win. Now we need to focus our vigilance on stopping early voting, mail-in ballots, ranked choice voting, and to secure voter IDs. The election results should be known on the night of the election.
But in Arizona, California, Nevada, and other blue states, where the election system is rigged, and Republicans were not vigilant, they lost. The Democrat Party has always put winning over democracy and justice, and this was true since the founding of the party. These blue states slow walked the counting of Republican ballots until they came up with enough votes to win. Just like in the movie, Groundhog Day, we saw the same devious drama as in 2020, played out in Maricopa County, Arizona by extending the vote counting indefinitely. The too-close-to call Al Franken vs. Norm Coleman US Senate contest went on for months. Whenever there is a close election, Democrats drag it out until they find the votes to win. We know the Democrats are the threat to democracy, as Obama openly admitted in a 2008 speech: “It helped in Ohio that we got Democrats in charge of the machines…. Whenever people are in power they have this tendency to try to tilt things in their direction.” Elections are deemed fair only when Democrats win.
The moral of the story is to wake up and be vigilant, learn from our past mistakes and stop allowing Democrats to undermine democracy. The whole nation should look to New York standing up to protect the most sacred institution of society – the right to free and fair elections. We protected the integrity of our election system and enabled Republicans to finally pick up seats in the Empire State and save our country by winning the Republican House majority. New York saved America and once and for all fired Nancy Pelosi!
Phil Orenstein is the president of the Queens Village Republican Club. Established in 1875, it is America’s oldest Republican Club. www.QVGOP.org. Historian, Jerry Matacotta, founder of History Seminar Series was the advisor for this article.
