In the fight for control of the House of Representatives, Democrats are attacking a district in central New York

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – In the two years since U.S. Rep. Brandon Williams won the election in central New York by just one percentage point, the state's Democratic leaders have done everything they can to make him the most vulnerable Republican in Congress.

Lawmakers changed the boundaries of their district, removing rural areas that heavily favored Donald Trump and adding the college town of Cortland, resulting in a new area where voters favored Joe Biden by 11 points in the 2020 presidential election.

The seat, which includes the city of Syracuse, is now seen as a key opportunity for Democrats to gain control of the House of Representatives in November. While national attention has focused on the districts closer to New York City that hold the key to the balance of power in Congress, the Democratic Party has committed significant resources to this pivotal New York race and senses one of its biggest opportunities this fall.

John Mannion, the Democratic senator trying to beat Williams, will tell you he's not a pursuer.

He notes that Syracuse has been represented by Republicans in Congress for about a decade and has a Republican county executive. Just two years ago, voters in the district narrowly voted for a Republican candidate for governor.

“We have a conservatism around us and sometimes that's reflected in how we vote, so our independents shift really conservative in a lot of ways,” Mannion said in an interview. “We’re just a district in the middle.”

In Mannion, a former school teacher and two-term state senator who is considered a moderate in Albany, Democrats have a candidate they bet can appeal to swing voters. He enjoys significant union support, opposes abortion restrictions and takes a centrist position on changes to state bail laws.

Williams, meanwhile, tries to portray Mannion as a liberal masquerading as a centrist.

“He has all the credentials of the far left, but he's going to pretend he's a Republican here for a few weeks, with a wink and a nod and hoping the Democratic base either forgives him or doesn't notice ,” Williams said.

Williams, who grew up in Texas, served as a U.S. Navy submarine officer, then was a technology entrepreneur before opening a truffle farm in central New York, has spent much of the campaign trying to regain the momentum that brought him helped win a close race in 2022.

This year, Republican candidates in New York outperformed their national counterparts by capitalizing on public backlash against changes to the state's bail laws. The changes limited the practice of requiring many people accused of nonviolent crimes to pay money to be released from prison while they await trial.

Mannion was not in office when these bail changes were passed, but he supported legislation that later gave judges more discretion in detaining a person before trial, a change that many progressives opposed but that moderates believed was necessary.

The race between Mannion and Williams started off mostly cordial, but became increasingly caustic over the final stretch.

A Republican super PAC has aired ads focusing on allegations from an anonymous complaint posted online this summer accusing Mannion of verbally abusing his state Senate staffers. Mannion's campaign has dismissed the allegations as political slander and said an independent Senate investigation cleared him of wrongdoing. The authors of the anonymous complaint did not respond to requests for comments left on their online post to an email address.

Mannion's campaign released an ad showing a video of Williams yelling at one of his former employees at a Christmas party last year. The video was widely circulated in the political media at the time it was recorded and shows Williams pointing a man in the face and telling him, “I will end any relationship you have.” Williams later said in an interview that he was angry, because the former adviser threatened to publicly reveal that his adult daughter was present on a website where people pay to view sexually explicit content.

Perhaps the biggest reason for Democrats' optimism is the extent to which the district rejected Trump. In 2020, Biden beat Trump by about 7 points in an old version of the district. Under the new district boundaries, Biden's margin of victory would now be in the double digits.

In 2022, when Trump was not on the ballot, Williams had a very close race but ultimately defeated Democrat Francis Conole, a captain in the U.S. Navy Reserve, by about 2,600 votes to win the seat.

Republicans can also point to positive past election results. The district supported Republican Lee Zeldin, a former congressman, when he ran for governor of New York in 2022.

“Every election here is up for grabs,” Williams said.

Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, called it a “fundamentally moderate district,” although on paper it looks like it should favor Democrats.

“In a sense, there are almost two generic candidates running, one more conservative and one more mainstream. And you have a district that just seems more suited to people who live closer to the center, party or party,” Reeher said.

Rahzie Seals, 41, a community organizer in Syracuse who has stayed at home since adopting a child, said at a campaign rally for Mannion in Syracuse that it was “still uncertain” whether she should even vote this year but noted that one thing is clear in the district.

“A lot of people are happy to vote against Trump,” Seals said.