Democrat Laura Gillen was projected to win a tight race on Long Island, according to NBC News, one of the hotly contested New York congressional districts that could determine the balance of power in the House of Representatives.
In a rematch from 2022, the Republican incumbent Anthony D’Esposito had been trying to hold onto a congressional district right outside New York City that President Joe Biden won by 15 percentage points in 2020. D’Esposito defeated Gillen in 2022 by about 10,000 votes.
Nearly 48 hours after polls closed in the state, NBC News projected Gillen would win the swing district in Nassau County — where President-elect Donald Trump topped Kamala Harris by five points, nearly 30,000 votes. As of Thursday evening, Gillen led D’Esposito by about 7,000 votes, with about 25,000 ballots still outstanding.
The race for New York’s 4th congressional district this year featured TV attack ads that were unrelenting and partisan. The Republican incumbent D’Esposito tried to cast Democratic challenger Gillen as soft on crime while criticizing Democrats over immigration policies he blames for an influx of migrants. Gillen, former Hempstead town supervisor, rejected those criticisms and said that if elected, she would push for more law enforcement and border security.
Away from the ads, both Republican incumbent D’Esposito and Democratic challenger Gillen had preached the importance of bipartisanship.
In late October, a Newsday-Siena college poll showed Gillen with a double digit lead, though it ended up being far closer. While the issues in the race were similar to others around the tri-state and around the country — abortion, the economy, immigration, crime — there was a late wild card added to the race, in the form of a controversy surrounding D’Esposito.
According to a report by the New York Times in September, D’Esposito may have violated House ethics rules by hiring his mistress and his fiancée’s daughter at his district office. The Nassau County Republican allegedly gave part-time jobs to two women, one was to his longtime fiancée’s daughter who worked at his district office for about $3,800 a month, according to payroll records obtained by the Times.
The other woman was someone who D’Esposito allegedly had an affair with. She was reportedly paid $2,000 a month, for several months, at the same district office until D’Esposito’s fiancée found out about their relationship, the report detailed.
When contacted by NBC New York after the story broke, the freshman lawmaker called the report “the latest political tabloid garbage,” denying that he violated any ethics rules.
“My personal life has never interfered with my ability to deliver results for New York’s 4th district, and I have upheld the highest ethical standards of personal conduct,” D’Esposito said. “Voters deserve better than the Times’ gutter politics.”
D’Esposito was not officially accused of wrongdoing and the House Ethics Committee did not launch an investigation into the matter, though Gillen had demanded one.
“These are very serious allegations that demand further investigation, and it’s clear that Anthony D’Esposito has abused his power in every position of trust he’s ever held,” said Gillen.
Anthony Izaguirre of the Associated Press contributed to this report.
