NEW YORK — New York Democrats knew Republicans would hammer them over public safety during the midterms. They expected the messaging around changes to the state’s bail laws — the claims that the so-called reforms had actually allowed dangerous criminals to roam the streets.

State lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul even took steps to insulate themselves, rolling back some of the changes and devising a fact-based response to the attacks.

But it didn’t work. And Democratic Party leaders are trying to understand why.

Republicans across the country campaigned on crime. Nowhere did it resonate more than in New York, where the GOP flipped three House seats and won two open races, propelling the party to the majority.

“This was a nationally coordinated campaign by the Republicans, and we did not, frankly, rise to the occasion to explain to people what we did do and how the point was and still is not to criminalize poverty — it’s to criminalize criminals,” state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in an interview.

Democratic strategists and advocates for the bail changes say some of the messaging failed for a simple reason: No one was explicitly championing the bail laws and the reasons for them to voters.

That included Hochul, who won by a narrow six points. She campaigned on public safety, after being repeatedly criticized by her GOP opponent Lee Zeldin, but struggled to highlight the fact that she held up the state budget in April to get reluctant lawmakers to toughen the bail laws amid complaints across the state, including from Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

“New York was arguably the epicenter of a diverse and highly energized criminal justice reform movement — but you wouldn’t know it based on the rhetoric from this past election cycle,” said Jason Kaplan, a senior vice president at public affairs firm SKDK who helped run Democratic campaigns this year.

Republicans blasted the airwaves — fueled by $12 million from cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder — with sepia-toned conjectures that the bail laws, which Democrats have tweaked twice since passing, have been responsible for rising crime and New Yorkers widespread sense of unease, despite little evidence to back up their claims.

And they suggested that politicians who have supported the laws were backing criminals over law-abiding citizens. The laws ended cash bail for most misdemeanors and non-violent felonies as a way to avoid poor people, often minorities, from languishing in jail awaiting the adjudication of their cases.

While state and city data showed the bail laws didn’t increase recidivism rates, some individual cases were highlighted by Republicans and Adams to rail against instances where people released without bail committed new crimes.

Republican Mike Lawler beat Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in a critical swing race in the Hudson Valley, in part on a crime-fighting message.