Delaying a Special Election in New York State

New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is likely to win Senate approval to be the United States’ next Ambassador to the United Nations. But on February 7, 2025, the Speaker of the New York State Assembly and the Majority Leader of the New York State Senate introduced a bill that would allow the election to be delayed until Election Day 2025. This not only would leave the people of Stefanik’s district—the 21st Congressional District of New York—unrepresented and disenfranchised for an unusually lengthy period of time, but it would also leave Speaker Mike Johnson with an even smaller Republican majority, making it more difficult for him to advance President Trump’s agenda through Congress’ lower house. While Albany insiders are now saying that this proposal has been stopped, even if this is accurate, there is nothing that would stop the leaders of the state legislature from putting this bill up for a vote in the future.

Politics playing a part in filling New York vacancies in Congress is nothing new. In 2015, Governor Andrew Cuomo refused to call a special election to fill a vacancy in the 11th Congressional District. This district, which included all of Staten Island and part of Brooklyn, is the Big Apple’s only reliably Republican Congressional District. It was, therefore, no surprise that the Democratic governor was not interested in giving the House Republican Conference a new member. Voters in the 11th Congressional District eventually sued Gov. Cuomo in federal district court. The judge agreed with the voters that Cuomo’s delay in calling the election violated their constitutional rights and ordered the governor to call a special election.

The same political drama played out again in 2019 and 2020. Rep. Chris Collins resigned his House seat, the 27th Congressional District of New York, after pleading guilty in federal court to insider trading-related crimes. The 27th district encompassed large portions of rural and suburban Western New York and, like the 11th district, was a relatively safe Republican district. When Gov. Cuomo again refused to call a special election, a group of voters and Republican party leaders sued the governor (I was their attorney). Eventually, Gov. Cuomo relented and agreed to call a special election to fill the vacancy in Congress, but the COVID-19 pandemic hit and further delayed the election and seating of a new congressman.

Gov. Cuomo’s stall tactics were not a 21st century political innovation. The refusal to call elections to fill vacancies was actually on the list of the Continental Congress’ grievances to King George III in the Declaration of Independence!

After years of political ping pong over the calling of special elections, the New York state legislature, in 2021, passed a bill requiring the governor to call special elections for Congress within ten days of the vacancy being created. Gov. Cuomo, who would resign as governor less than a month later, signed the bill into law on August 2, 2021. Years of political gamesmanship over filling vacancies in office in the Empire State appeared to be over.

But on January 31, 2025, word leaked out that the leading Democrats in the State Assembly and Senate were looking to make a quick change to the special election process in anticipation of the vacancy in Congress occurring after Rep. Elise Stefanik is confirmed to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

The bill introduced on February 7 would give the governor the ability to schedule a special election to coincide with Election Day. State law currently requires the governor set a special election to fill a vacancy in Congress seventy to eighty days from the governor’s proclamation of the special election.

Though Stefanik replaced a Democrat in Congress, the seat has become solidly Republican since Stefanik took office in 2015. In her decade in Congress, Stefanik easily defeated each of her Democratic opponents by considerable margins. While much of Stefanik’s success can be attributed to her hard work and ability to deliver for her constituents, the district has undoubtedly shifted significantly to the right, and it’s hard to see how any Democrat could mount a serious race for the seat.

Albany Democrats appear to know that. While they can’t win the race to replace the future UN Ambassador, they can hurt the GOP by keeping the seat unfilled and denying Speaker Mike Johnson an additional member of the House Republican Conference. Given the narrow margins in the House, every seat—especially this one—matters.

But playing political games with the process for filling a vacancy doesn’t just hurt Speaker Johnson and the House Republicans; those who are really hurt are the people of New York’s 21st Congressional District. Not only will they not know who to call when their Social Security payment isn’t deposited or when they need a new passport, but their voice in the monumental debates coming before Congress in the upcoming months will not be heard. If Democrats were truly concerned about voter disenfranchisement, they would aggressively oppose any effort by their colleagues in Albany to delay the people of the 21st Congressional District from being represented in Congress.