Kathy Hochul speaks to supporters during her election-night party Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, in New York.
Francis Chung/E&E News/POLITICO

Part of Republican House candidate Mike Lawler’s attacks against Hudson Valley Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney that carried him to victory was regularly reupping a years old, six-second clip of Maloney, the chairperson of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, saying ending cash bail would be a “top priority.”

Maloney recognized the poor messaging after his loss, saying it was more of a factor than new district lines that led to more competitive races in the suburbs. While the campaign committee he led was able to diffuse expectations of a Republican landslide, Maloney wasn’t successful in his own race and neighboring ones.

“It was our inability to speak to voters in suburban New York City — again under any iteration of the maps that — that could have made the difference,” Maloney said Nov. 10 on MSNBC. “I think we own that as Democrats.”

Democrats attempted to pivot toward other public safety measures like combating gun violence, trying to explain that statistics don’t show New York as less safe than other large cities and citing numbers that, so far, have not indicated the bail laws are directly tied to individuals arrested for violent crimes.

“I’m always data driven,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, said after the elections during Democrats’ annual SOMOS conference in Puerto Rico. “I keep trying to tell people — before bail reform, 18 percent of people were rearrested, and after bail reform, 19 percent.

“I get it,” Heastie added. “The perception people have is they don’t feel safe, and that’s something we have to deal with. But, again, I’m just not sure what people want.”

The response to the Republican attacks — despite attempts at correcting the record — didn’t necessarily hit home with voters who feel scared, Hochul said Tuesday.

“This is about making sure that people know that we’re doing everything we can to keep them safe. And perhaps that message was not delivered, ” she told reporters after an unrelated press conference in Manhattan. “Obviously, that was not successful in certain communities who were hearing other voices and seeing other messaging and seeing other advertising with a contrary message about our priorities.”

She added: “I suspect more could have been done to make sure that people know that this was a high priority of ours.”

Sen. Luis Sepulveda (D-Bronx) said advocates in support of bail reform should have been more vocal during the recent elections as Republicans vilified the laws as a culprit for rising crime.