צווישן אנדערע ציטירן זיי יאסי געשטעטנער און שמעון ראלניצקי
Hasidic voting blocs may play key role in two Hudson Valley congressional races
Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
The ability of one community to swing a close congressional race with bloc voting and large turnout has long been clear from the high-level politicians who court Kiryas Joel's leaders.
One year the seat was so vital that two of the state's top Democrats − Sen. Chuck Schumer and Andrew Cuomo, then attorney general and soon to be elected governor − both appealed to the village leadership on behalf of the two-term incumbent, John Hall. The party even wheeled out former president and Westchester County resident Bill Clinton, who called Kiryas Joel Mayor Abraham Wieder on Hall's behalf.
But Republicans went a step further: they dispatched Eric Cantor, a Virginia congressman who was then the second-ranking House Republican, to Kiryas Joel from D.C. to make his pitch in person on behalf of Nan Hayworth, Hall's challenger. Wieder threw the support of the village's largest voting bloc to Hayworth, who unseated Hall in a Tea Party election wave that swept Republicans to control in the House of Representatives in 2010.
This year, with New York's congressional district lines redrawn and House control again at stake, the cohesive voting of Hasidic and Orthodox communities in both Orange and Rockland counties could play important roles in two Hudson Valley races. Both are seen as competitive and could be swayed by endorsements that can move several thousand votes to one column or another.
One is the contest between Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney and Republican Assemblyman Mike Lawler for the 17th District, which takes in all of Rockland and Putnam counties and parts of Westchester and Dutchess. The electorate includes varied Hasidic and other Orthodox communities in Rockland that together cast as many as 19,000 total votes in the 2020 election, by one estimate.
The other is the race between recently elected Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan and Republican Assemblyman Colin Schmitt for the 18th District, which consists of Orange County and parts of Ulster and Dutchess. The growing Satmar Hasidic community in Orange has more than 11,000 voters in the village of Kiryas Joel and perhaps a couple thousand more in surrounding villages and towns.
How those votes could go in the two races is unpredictable, complicated by the fragmentation of votes among multiple Hasidic and Orthodox voting groups, particularly in Rockland, in spite of the popular misconception of a single voting bloc in both counties. Leaders of those groups might endorse different candidates and split the votes.
Redistricting adds to the uncertainty. The 17th District used to be so heavily Democratic that no single voting group or coalition in Rockland was likely to change the outcome. With the new lines, the district still leans Democratic − President Joe Biden would have won it by 10 percentage points in 2020 − but is more competitive.
Redistricting also left both districts without a true incumbent, the candidate who normally would have an edge in winning the support of Hasidic and Orthodox leaders. Maloney has represented Kiryas Joel for 10 years but not Rockland, which is in the reshaped district he's seeking. Ryan won the 19th District seat in an Aug. 23 special election but is now running for a full term in the 18th District, home to Satmar voters in and around Kiryas Joel.
A wild-card issue: fury within Orthodox communities at the state's attempt to force Hasidic schools to add more instruction in English, math and other secular subjects to their largely religious teaching. Hasidic community members say that fresh anger over what parents see as government intrusion and a violation of religious freedom could galvanize voters, even in races for federal offices that have no control over policies of New York's Board of Regents.
"This is so important," said Jacob Ferencz, a leader of the Kiryas Joel Alliance, the coalition that steers the votes of the smaller of two factions in that village.
Republicans such as Lee Zeldin, the Long Island congressman challenging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, have spoken out forcefully in defense of Orthodox yeshivas and parental choice and in condemnation of the state's curriculum enforcement plan. That is likely to boost their support in November with large numbers of Orthodox voters in Orange and Rockland counties and in Brooklyn.
The voting groups
Kiryas Joel's majority party is known as Anash and led by Gedalye Szegedin, administrator of the village of 33,000 people. The party endorsed Maloney in the last four elections but also Donald Trump in 2020 and is much more pragmatic than ideological in endorsements, focused on which candidates will likely win and can help the community while in office.
Kiryas Joel Administrator Gedalye Szegedin.
The Kiryas Joel Alliance commands fewer votes but plans to expand its reach by registering new voters and linking itself with growing Satmar communities in areas outside the village, Ferencz said. One of those places, the village of South Blooming Grove, now has such a large Satmar population that it's emerging as a third voting bloc in that part of Orange County.
In Rockland, influential leaders who decide or help decide political endorsements include New Square Mayor Izzy Spitzer, Kaser Mayor Allie Pinkasovits and Hersh Horowitz, head of the Yeshiva Association of Rockland County. New Square and Kaser are both all-Hasidic villages like Kiryas Joel, with about 4,000 registered voters in New Square and 2,100 in Kaser.
What that might mean in an election with robust turnout is about 3,000 votes from New Square and 3,500 votes from Kaser and areas around that village where other Viznitz Hasidic community members live, said Yossi Gestetner, co-founder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council and a Rockland resident.
Beyond those two distinct voting groups, Gestetner said, are thousands of other Hasidic and Orthodox voters in Rockland with varying degrees of fidelity to the political endorsements of community leaders.
The factors
What will likely matter most to Orthodox leaders and voters in Rockland is which candidates stand in solidarity with their community so its people don't feel "delegitimized," Gestetner said. Also important, he said, will be where candidates stand on the yeshiva oversight push and who will help the community if elected, through funding for public works projects and constituent service.
Gestetner commended Lawler on those counts, saying he has been very accessible and his office helpful to constituents since he was elected to the Assembly with the unified support of the Orthodox community two years ago. "He's very hands-on," Gestetner said. "He has been from the get-go."
But who will be in a better position to deliver? Republicans are expected to win a majority and wrest control of the House from Democrats, a factor that favors their candidates in endorsements from Orthodox leaders. But on the other hand, Lawler would be a freshman if elected, while Maloney wields the clout of a five-term incumbent who has climbed to a prominent leadership role, heading the House Democrats' campaign arm.
Maloney will likely make that case to Orthodox leaders in Rockland, seeking their support based on his high rank and ability to help the community, said Shimon Rolnistsky, publisher of the Yiddish language magazine Der Gluck and a Rockland resident.
Nonetheless, Rolnitsky said he expects many Orthodox voters to vote for Lawler, even if their leaders endorse Maloney. He said Lawler has been campaigning aggressively in every neighborhood to win over individual voters, and has strongly sided with the Orthodox community in opposition to the state's yeshiva oversight push − the biggest issue for those voters, even in a congressional race with no bearing on state regulations.
"There's a feeling in the community that we're being targeted," Rolnitsky explained.
Voters are fired up over that issue and will likely turn out it in droves, although their votes probably will be split between the two candidates, he said.
"You're going to have a big turnout but it's not necessarily a bloc, so to speak," he said.
In the 18th District race, Schmitt has a trickier case to make than Ryan for the support of Hasidic leaders in Orange County, based on his past public statements.
When running for Assembly in 2018, he pledged to continue fighting against Kiryas Joel's "unchecked growth" and "put an end to the special treatment bloc voting interests receive." He also vowed to "stop the unscrupulous block-busting practices" of Hasidic home buyers in neighboring towns, and implied Kiryas Joel was rife with "systemic welfare abuse," which he also promised to oppose.
As an assemblyman, he blasted Attorney General Letitia James for joining a federal discrimination lawsuit against the town of Chester by the Hasidic developers of the 431-home Greens of Chester project. Hasidic groups have lauded James for intervening in the case; Schmitt faulted her for taking sides against residents who want to "preserve the rural character" of Chester, and for failing to investigate the "blockbusting" in South Blooming Grove.
Ryan, who was Ulster County executive for three years before being elected to Congress last month, hasn't represented Orange County's Hasidic communities but has earned initial goodwill through his interactions with Satmar summer camps in Ulster.
Late decisions
Which candidates have secured the endorsements of Orthodox leaders is unlikely to be known until close to the election. In Kiryas Joel, leaders have typically delayed those decisions or any revelations about them until the final days or hours. Sometimes they are revealed only on election day as voters head to the polls.
That is partly for strategic reasons, to avoid fueling a counter-vote in neighboring communities. In some elections, candidates who failed to get the endorsement of Kiryas Joel's leaders have promptly launched last-minute ads or robocalls blasting their opponent for courting the community's votes − an appeal to voters who resent that clout or Kiryas Joel's growth.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach him at [email protected].
Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
The ability of one community to swing a close congressional race with bloc voting and large turnout has long been clear from the high-level politicians who court Kiryas Joel's leaders.
One year the seat was so vital that two of the state's top Democrats − Sen. Chuck Schumer and Andrew Cuomo, then attorney general and soon to be elected governor − both appealed to the village leadership on behalf of the two-term incumbent, John Hall. The party even wheeled out former president and Westchester County resident Bill Clinton, who called Kiryas Joel Mayor Abraham Wieder on Hall's behalf.
But Republicans went a step further: they dispatched Eric Cantor, a Virginia congressman who was then the second-ranking House Republican, to Kiryas Joel from D.C. to make his pitch in person on behalf of Nan Hayworth, Hall's challenger. Wieder threw the support of the village's largest voting bloc to Hayworth, who unseated Hall in a Tea Party election wave that swept Republicans to control in the House of Representatives in 2010.
This year, with New York's congressional district lines redrawn and House control again at stake, the cohesive voting of Hasidic and Orthodox communities in both Orange and Rockland counties could play important roles in two Hudson Valley races. Both are seen as competitive and could be swayed by endorsements that can move several thousand votes to one column or another.
One is the contest between Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney and Republican Assemblyman Mike Lawler for the 17th District, which takes in all of Rockland and Putnam counties and parts of Westchester and Dutchess. The electorate includes varied Hasidic and other Orthodox communities in Rockland that together cast as many as 19,000 total votes in the 2020 election, by one estimate.
The other is the race between recently elected Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan and Republican Assemblyman Colin Schmitt for the 18th District, which consists of Orange County and parts of Ulster and Dutchess. The growing Satmar Hasidic community in Orange has more than 11,000 voters in the village of Kiryas Joel and perhaps a couple thousand more in surrounding villages and towns.
How those votes could go in the two races is unpredictable, complicated by the fragmentation of votes among multiple Hasidic and Orthodox voting groups, particularly in Rockland, in spite of the popular misconception of a single voting bloc in both counties. Leaders of those groups might endorse different candidates and split the votes.
Redistricting adds to the uncertainty. The 17th District used to be so heavily Democratic that no single voting group or coalition in Rockland was likely to change the outcome. With the new lines, the district still leans Democratic − President Joe Biden would have won it by 10 percentage points in 2020 − but is more competitive.
Redistricting also left both districts without a true incumbent, the candidate who normally would have an edge in winning the support of Hasidic and Orthodox leaders. Maloney has represented Kiryas Joel for 10 years but not Rockland, which is in the reshaped district he's seeking. Ryan won the 19th District seat in an Aug. 23 special election but is now running for a full term in the 18th District, home to Satmar voters in and around Kiryas Joel.
A wild-card issue: fury within Orthodox communities at the state's attempt to force Hasidic schools to add more instruction in English, math and other secular subjects to their largely religious teaching. Hasidic community members say that fresh anger over what parents see as government intrusion and a violation of religious freedom could galvanize voters, even in races for federal offices that have no control over policies of New York's Board of Regents.
"This is so important," said Jacob Ferencz, a leader of the Kiryas Joel Alliance, the coalition that steers the votes of the smaller of two factions in that village.
Republicans such as Lee Zeldin, the Long Island congressman challenging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, have spoken out forcefully in defense of Orthodox yeshivas and parental choice and in condemnation of the state's curriculum enforcement plan. That is likely to boost their support in November with large numbers of Orthodox voters in Orange and Rockland counties and in Brooklyn.
The voting groups
Kiryas Joel's majority party is known as Anash and led by Gedalye Szegedin, administrator of the village of 33,000 people. The party endorsed Maloney in the last four elections but also Donald Trump in 2020 and is much more pragmatic than ideological in endorsements, focused on which candidates will likely win and can help the community while in office.
Kiryas Joel Administrator Gedalye Szegedin.
The Kiryas Joel Alliance commands fewer votes but plans to expand its reach by registering new voters and linking itself with growing Satmar communities in areas outside the village, Ferencz said. One of those places, the village of South Blooming Grove, now has such a large Satmar population that it's emerging as a third voting bloc in that part of Orange County.
In Rockland, influential leaders who decide or help decide political endorsements include New Square Mayor Izzy Spitzer, Kaser Mayor Allie Pinkasovits and Hersh Horowitz, head of the Yeshiva Association of Rockland County. New Square and Kaser are both all-Hasidic villages like Kiryas Joel, with about 4,000 registered voters in New Square and 2,100 in Kaser.
What that might mean in an election with robust turnout is about 3,000 votes from New Square and 3,500 votes from Kaser and areas around that village where other Viznitz Hasidic community members live, said Yossi Gestetner, co-founder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council and a Rockland resident.
Beyond those two distinct voting groups, Gestetner said, are thousands of other Hasidic and Orthodox voters in Rockland with varying degrees of fidelity to the political endorsements of community leaders.
The factors
What will likely matter most to Orthodox leaders and voters in Rockland is which candidates stand in solidarity with their community so its people don't feel "delegitimized," Gestetner said. Also important, he said, will be where candidates stand on the yeshiva oversight push and who will help the community if elected, through funding for public works projects and constituent service.
Gestetner commended Lawler on those counts, saying he has been very accessible and his office helpful to constituents since he was elected to the Assembly with the unified support of the Orthodox community two years ago. "He's very hands-on," Gestetner said. "He has been from the get-go."
But who will be in a better position to deliver? Republicans are expected to win a majority and wrest control of the House from Democrats, a factor that favors their candidates in endorsements from Orthodox leaders. But on the other hand, Lawler would be a freshman if elected, while Maloney wields the clout of a five-term incumbent who has climbed to a prominent leadership role, heading the House Democrats' campaign arm.
Maloney will likely make that case to Orthodox leaders in Rockland, seeking their support based on his high rank and ability to help the community, said Shimon Rolnistsky, publisher of the Yiddish language magazine Der Gluck and a Rockland resident.
Nonetheless, Rolnitsky said he expects many Orthodox voters to vote for Lawler, even if their leaders endorse Maloney. He said Lawler has been campaigning aggressively in every neighborhood to win over individual voters, and has strongly sided with the Orthodox community in opposition to the state's yeshiva oversight push − the biggest issue for those voters, even in a congressional race with no bearing on state regulations.
"There's a feeling in the community that we're being targeted," Rolnitsky explained.
Voters are fired up over that issue and will likely turn out it in droves, although their votes probably will be split between the two candidates, he said.
"You're going to have a big turnout but it's not necessarily a bloc, so to speak," he said.
In the 18th District race, Schmitt has a trickier case to make than Ryan for the support of Hasidic leaders in Orange County, based on his past public statements.
When running for Assembly in 2018, he pledged to continue fighting against Kiryas Joel's "unchecked growth" and "put an end to the special treatment bloc voting interests receive." He also vowed to "stop the unscrupulous block-busting practices" of Hasidic home buyers in neighboring towns, and implied Kiryas Joel was rife with "systemic welfare abuse," which he also promised to oppose.
As an assemblyman, he blasted Attorney General Letitia James for joining a federal discrimination lawsuit against the town of Chester by the Hasidic developers of the 431-home Greens of Chester project. Hasidic groups have lauded James for intervening in the case; Schmitt faulted her for taking sides against residents who want to "preserve the rural character" of Chester, and for failing to investigate the "blockbusting" in South Blooming Grove.
Ryan, who was Ulster County executive for three years before being elected to Congress last month, hasn't represented Orange County's Hasidic communities but has earned initial goodwill through his interactions with Satmar summer camps in Ulster.
Late decisions
Which candidates have secured the endorsements of Orthodox leaders is unlikely to be known until close to the election. In Kiryas Joel, leaders have typically delayed those decisions or any revelations about them until the final days or hours. Sometimes they are revealed only on election day as voters head to the polls.
That is partly for strategic reasons, to avoid fueling a counter-vote in neighboring communities. In some elections, candidates who failed to get the endorsement of Kiryas Joel's leaders have promptly launched last-minute ads or robocalls blasting their opponent for courting the community's votes − an appeal to voters who resent that clout or Kiryas Joel's growth.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach him at [email protected].
