Chuck Schumer backs Nadler over Maloney in heated NY-12 House race
Sen. Chuck Schumer endorsed Rep. Jerrold Nadler over Rep. Carolyn Maloney Monday in the Democratic primary that pits two House titans against each other in Manhattan’s newly drawn 12th Congressional District.
“New York has a lot of outstanding leaders but few of them lead with the courage, conviction, and brilliant legislative effectiveness of my friend, Jerry Nadler,” Schumer, the powerful Senate majority leader, said in a statement put out by the Nadler campaign.
“Having worked alongside Jerry for years, I’ve watched as time after time, Jerry — a critical partner of mine in the House — was right on the issues years before so many others,” Schumer added.
Schumer’s endorsement is a boost for Nadler, the current House Judiciary Committee chairman, and a blow to Maloney, 76, who chairs the House oversight committee. The left-leaning New York Times also endorsed Nadler over the weekend, joining the Working Families Party and other progressive groups.
Nadler, 75, returned the favor, calling Schumer a “remarkably effective leader” who has “delivered win after win for New Yorkers.”
“I’m grateful to have Chuck’s support in this race and I’m looking forward to our continued work together to build a better, safer New York,” Nadler said.
Nadler is squaring off in a three-way race in the newly drawn 12th Congressional District against Maloney and challenger Suraj Patel, 38.
The Democratic Party’s unforced gerrymandering debacle and the resulting court-supervised redrawing of New York’s congressional map have left it with two long-serving incumbents, Maloney and Nadler, vying for the same House seat.
The courts ruled earlier this year that state Democratic lawmakers engaged in illegal partisan gerrymandering to win more House seats and threw out their redistricted maps. Republican critics derisively called the illegal effort the “Hochulmander” because Gov. Kathy Hochul signed off on the map the courts rejected.
A court-assigned special master tasked with fixing the maps merged Nadler’s Upper West Side base with Maloney’s Upper East Side turf as part of a new 12th Congressional
District.
Nadler immediately announced he would run in the 12th District against Maloney instead of in his redrawn 10th District, which no longer included the Upper West Side and took in new neighborhoods in Brooklyn he had never represented.
Patel is the third candidate in the race, a dark horse looking to pull off an upset against the two septuagenarians who have been in Congress since the early 1990s.
Nadler made waves last week by saying that New York will no longer have any Jewish members in its House delegation if he loses the Aug. 23 primary, which will determine the next representative of the heavily Democratic district.
Maloney, for her part, has argued it’s important to keep a woman in the seat, and accused Nadler in June of trying to muscle her out of the seat because she is a female.
Schumer spokesman Angelo Roefaro, after Nadler’s office put out a press release about the endorsement, issued a statement saying Schumer has a “deep respect for Carolyn Maloney’s significant accomplishments in Congress.”
Maloney spokesman Bob Liff responded, “At a time when women’s rights are on the chopping block, we need strong women like Carolyn Maloney to carry the fight to Republicans. Besides, Sen. Schumer votes in the 10th district, not the 12th.”
