CBS News
Abortion access defines key New York congressional races
On the night before he was first elected to Congress in August 2022, Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan, flanked by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and other campaign supporters, was delivering the final speech of his campaign.
His address was very different than what he might have imagined it would be a few months earlier.
Ryan — a Democrat who graduated from West Point and served two tours of duty in Iraq — stood in front of a wall-sized American flag in a room often used for weddings and corporate dinners and talked mostly about abortion rights.
He spoke of “fundamental freedoms and rights being ripped away,” adding “control over (women’s) lives and bodies have been ripped away.”
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“Some of the biggest threats in our country’s history are coming from right here at home,” he warned.
Ryan’s special election victory in a closely divided U.S. House district in the Hudson Valley region of New York was the first competitive federal election in the U.S. after the June 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
He pivoted his TV ad campaign and his stump speech to champion his opposition to the court’s ruling and swept enough votes to defeat a formidable Republican challenger and win the seat.
In 2024, as Ryan tries to win another term in his politically purple region of New York, he’s doubling down on abortion access.
In an interview from his congressional district, in the mountains near the Hudson River in Gardiner, New York, Ryan told CBS News that women’s reproductive rights “will be in my stump speech. In my paid TV ads. It’ll be in the campaign mailings. It’ll be part of the message when I knock on doors and make calls.”
“The entire frame and orientation of our campaign is that we expand freedoms,” he said. Control of the House hinges on New York. In a nation with few truly moderate, swing congressional districts, several of the remaining competitive races are in the Empire State. The campaigns are deeply funded and equipped for battle.
And this particular political battleground appears to be centered on women’s reproductive rights.
Both parties are ready to fight over it.
A “branding problem”
Republican party campaign leaders have urged their House incumbents and challengers not to surrender the issue of abortion and reproductive rights to Democrats.
This approach comes after the end of Roe v. Wade posed a massive political challenge for the GOP during the 2022 midterms. House Republicans struggled to find a cohesive way to respond to the end of decades of federal abortion protections, and hopes of a red wave that cycle were dashed as the GOP won only a narrow majority in what had been viewed before the Supreme Court’s decision as a favorable environment for the party.
Republicans are now attempting to avoid making the same mistake again.
Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who now chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and is helping lead an effort to win seats in New York, told CBS News, “Republicans have a ‘branding problem’ on abortion, not a policy problem. Most voters think Republicans’ position is a very narrow, extreme position, which it is not. There is no one Republican position. A lot of candidates have a lot of different positions, from states’ rights to reasonable limits.”
“I’m just telling my candidates and members, ‘Talk about what you believe. Don’t let them define you.'”
A Republican Party official told CBS News, the national campaign committee circulated a memo earlier this year to advise candidates on how best to argue and prepare to campaign on the issue.
New York Republicans already had plans to do so.
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, a first-term Republican from Long Island, told CBS News, “I bucked my own party to stop legislation that would have curtailed access to mifepristone, and I have made clear that I will reject any push to pass a nationwide abortion ban at the federal level.”
D’Esposito and Rep. Marc Molinaro, a first-term Republican from the Catskills were the first Republican House members to co-sponsor a Democrat’s proposal to codify federal protections for in vitro fertilization.
The legislation became a rallying point for Democrats after a controversial court ruling by a state court in Alabama briefly interrupted IVF services for women in the state. Molinaro and D’Esposito made headlines in their hometown media by supporting the bill.
Molinaro told CBS News, “I heard it from my constituents. I know personally the value and the importance of making sure IVF is available to anyone who wishes to grow their family. I think it’s a very special thing.”
A third New York Republican in the House, Rep. Mike Lawler of Westchester County, officially joined as a co-sponsor of the bill earlier this month.
Alison Esposito, a Republican seeking to defeat Rep. Ryan in November, has splashed a lengthy statement about abortion prominently on her campaign website. Esposito, a veteran New York Police Department commander from Orange County, told CBS News, “Like most Americans, I believe in reasonable exceptions like rape, incest, and the life of the mother.”
“I believe in empowering women and babies and supporting them at all stages of pregnancy to have access to more options in terms of financial resources, healthcare resources, and emotional support,” Esposito said.
“Talking out of Both Sides of His Mouth”
Several New York Democrats acknowledged to CBS News that Republicans are more aggressively counterpunching on the issue of abortion in this election cycle. Ryan accused Esposito and Republicans of “muddying the waters” on their positions on women’s reproductive rights.
“Americans will see through the B.S.,” he said.
Laura Gillen, a Democrat who served as a town supervisor in Hempstead, New York, is trying to oust D’Esposito, in part by challenging his abortion positions.
“He tried talking out of both sides of his mouth when he said he wouldn’t support a national abortion ban,” Gillen said of D’Esposito. “He has a record since he’s gotten into office — in support of federal regulations restricting women’s access to women’s reproductive health care.”
Democrats are bullish on their strategy of emphasizing abortions rights and already utilized it in February, defeating a Republican and electing Democrat Tom Suozzi in a special House election on Long Island. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ran ads targeting Suozzi’s Republican challenger, Mazi Pilip, arguing Pilip was “part of the extreme wing of the Republican Party that wants to take away your rights and benefits,” one ad said. “They’d ban abortion even in New York, even in cases of rape or incest.”
In an April 5 memo, the DCCC wrote about the prospect of ballot initiatives codifying abortion rights and recent court rulings severely limiting abortion rights in Arizona and Florida.
“This further guarantees that reproductive freedom will remain a driving issue for voters this November, putting vulnerable House Republicans and GOP candidates on the hook for their anti-abortion and anti-freedom positions,” the memo said. “The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will ensure that House Republicans’ efforts to ban abortion nationwide are top of mind as voters head to the polls to protect their reproductive rights.”
Democrat Josh Riley, an attorney and former congressional aide who is challenging Molinaro in the House district representing the southern tier of New York and Catskills, pressed the issue of abortion rights early in his campaign.
“Right now, people want to restore Roe v. Wade and they want pro-choice candidates,” Riley said. “And that’s what I am.”
Riley said, “I try to meet voters where they are, knocking on doors. I’m hearing over and over again that voters are terrified about what this Republican Congress is doing to our freedoms.”
Federal campaign finance filings through the end of March show millions of dollars already being raised by candidates in New York congressional races this cycle that could help decide who will control the House. Lawler has outraised his best-funded likely Democratic challenger, while D’Esposito has a cash advantage over the leading Democratic fundraiser in his race. But Riley has both a sizable fundraising and cash-on-hand advantage over incumbent Republican Molinaro.
Spending from outside groups will also be key in these races.
House Majority PAC, a leading campaign spender for Democrats, is already set to put at least $18 million towards New York congressional races closer, according to data from AdImpact.
Molinaro, a longtime Dutchess County executive who won his seat in 2022, is trying to fend off the challenge by Riley by pitching himself as a “pragmatist” who has helped bridge the divides of a uniquely toxic House this year. He has emphasized his position in support of federal protections for IVF as a streak of bipartisanship and representative of his House district, which sprawls from the distant New York City suburbs, north to Binghamton.
Molinaro told CBS News, “At a time when we are a divided nation — and too many issues here in Washington divide Republicans and Democrats — there is consensus on IVF. And I hope by taking the lead and showing that it’s important to establish this protection, others will follow.”
Molinaro has experienced the impact of the potent politics over the issue of women’s reproductive rights. He was the Republican who lost the special election to Ryan during that heated special election in August 2022.
A passenger successfully landed a small plane on Friday after the pilot had a medical emergency, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air 90 was traveling from Henderson Executive Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada to Monterey Regional Airport in California, with a pilot and one other person on board, the FAA said.
The pilot suffered an unspecified medical emergency while flying, the FAA said, forcing the passenger to take the controls and make an emergency landing at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California.
The Kern Fire Department told CBS News affiliate KBAX that firefighters were called to a report of a medical emergency on the plane. The pilot was reported to be “incapacitated,” the fire department said. Firefighters saw the plane approach and land safely, then “chased” the plane down the runway in emergency vehicles to meet it.
The FAA did not release the passenger or pilot’s identities nor give an update on the pilot’s condition. The pilot was taken to an area hospital by ambulance. The passenger did not report any injuries.
The FAA and the National Transportation Security Board will investigate the incident, the FAA said.
Congolese authorities began vaccination against mpox on Saturday, nearly two months after the disease outbreak that spread from Congo to several African countries and beyond was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization.
The 265,000 doses donated to Congo by the European Union and the U.S. were rolled out in the eastern city of Goma in North Kivu province, where hospitals and health workers have been overstretched, struggling to contain the new and possibly more infectious strain of mpox.
Congo, with about 30,000 suspected mpox cases and 859 deaths, accounts for more than 80% of all the cases and 99% of all the deaths reported in Africa this year. All of the Central African nation’s 26 provinces have recorded mpox cases. Officials in Congo previously told CBS News that they’ve struggled to diagnose patients and provide basic care in the vast country of 100 million people, where a fragile, under-resourced healthcare system is also burdened by the stigma associated with the virus.
Although most mpox infections and deaths recorded in Congo are in children under age 15, the doses being administered are only meant for adults and will be given to at-risk populations and front-line workers, Health Minister Roger Kamba said this week.
“Strategies have been put in place by the services in order to vaccinate all targeted personnel,” Muboyayi ChikayaI, the minister’s chief of staff, said as he kicked off the vaccination.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
At least 3 million doses of the vaccine approved for use in children are expected from Japan in the coming days, Kamba said.
Mpox, also known as monkeypox, had been spreading mostly undetected for years in Africa before the disease prompted the 2022 global outbreak that saw wealthy countries quickly respond with vaccines from their stockpiles while Africa received only a few doses despite pleas from its governments.
However, unlike the global outbreak in 2022 that was overwhelmingly focused on gay and bisexual men, mpox in Africa is now being spread via sexual transmission as well as through close contact among children, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups, Dr. Dimie Ogoina, the chair of WHO’s mpox emergency committee, recently told reporters.
More than 34,000 suspected cases and 866 deaths from the virus have been recorded across 16 countries in Africa this year. That is a 200% increase compared to the same period last year, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
A lack of diagnostic materials and basic medicines to treat the virus, which can improve survival rates, have also hampered efforts to contain the outbreak, and access to vaccines remains a challenge.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
The continent of 1.4 billion people has only secured a commitment for 5.9 million doses of mpox vaccines, expected to be available from October through December, Dr. Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa CDC, told reporters last week. Congo remains a priority, he said.
At the vaccination drive in Goma, Dr Jean Bruno Kibunda, the WHO representative, warned that North Kivu province is at a risk of a major outbreak due to the “promiscuity observed in the camps” for displaced people, as one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis caused by armed violence unfolds there.
The news of the vaccination program brought relief to many in Congo, especially in hospitals that had been struggling to manage the outbreak. Doctors with several charities working in the country have told CBS News they’re overstretched and short on supplies, even having to use tents and mattresses on the floor of makeshift isolation wards to treat a constant influx of patients.
“If everyone could be vaccinated, it would be even better to stop the spread of the disease,” said Dr. Musole Mulambamunva Robert, the medical director of Kavumu Hospital, one of the mpox treatment centers in eastern Congo.
Eastern Congo has been beset by conflict for years, with more than 100 armed groups vying for a foothold in the mineral-rich area near the border with Rwanda. Some have been accused of carrying out mass killings.
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