Democrats held a heavily Orthodox Jewish New York state Senate seat in Tuesday’s special election as the party’s greater than two-to-one party registration advantage proved too much of a hurdle for the GOP to overcome.
Democrat Sam Sutton bested Republican Nachman Caller in the race to succeed former Democratic New York Sen. Simcha Felder, who resigned in April after being elected to his old seat on the New York City Council. Sutton was able to hold the district which President Donald Trump won with 77% of the vote in 2024, by capitalizing on the fact that his party had more than twice the number of registered active voters there than the GOP, according to the most recent enrollment data from the New York State Board of Elections.
Sutton won 67.6% of the vote to Caller’s 32.4%, with 90% of the vote in. Decision Desk HQ called the race for the Democrat at 9:28 p.m. EST, less than a half hour after polls closed. Sutton’s convincing win means the Democrats will hold 41 of the state Senate’s 63 seats, compared to the Republicans’ 22 — the same partisan breakdown of the chamber as after the 2024 election cycle.
New York State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris, a Queens Democrat, congratulated Sutton in a post on X and thanked him for “maintaining our [the Democrats’] historically large Senate majority.”
Congratulations to my new colleague in the State Senate, Sam Sutton!
Overwhelmingly victory tonight in South Brooklyn, winning by 2-1, and maintaining our historically large Senate majority.
I look forward to working together for our communities.
— Sen. Mike Gianaris (@SenGianaris) May 21, 2025
On his way to claim victory in the seat, which had backed Trump by large margins each of the three times he ran for president, Sutton notably took several stances at odds with much of his own party. An April 27 Instagram post from his campaign outlined “fighting antisemitism with zero tolerance” and “unwavering support for Israel” as well as “funding (not defunding) the police and fighting against the current bail reform,” among the candidate’s “highest priorities.”
Meanwhile, former Democrat-turned-Republican state Assemblyman Dov Hikind told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Monday that he supported Caller over Sutton, saying the modern Democratic Party “has been an absolute disaster for the Jewish people.”
Hikind had represented much of the territory currently in the 22nd Senate district during his 36-year tenure in the state Assembly. While he served in Albany as a Democrat, he joined the GOP in 2023, saying in an X post at the time that Democrats “have turned their back on Jews & Israel.”
The Democratic Party’s hold of the 22nd district follows its overall trend of performing well in 2025 special elections in districts Trump carried the previous election cycle. In April, the party came up well short of flipping two heavily Republican Florida Congressional seats, but it still outperformed Trump’s 2024 margins by double digits in both seats.
The Democrats’ recent special election success could be explained by the fact that these off-year contests are largely decided by higher propensity voters. A recent analysis from a Democratic-aligned data firm said lower propensity voters, including younger and minority voters, are abandoning the party for the GOP. This proved a crucial factor in former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 loss to Trump.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/PBS NewsHour)
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