Here's a huge surprise that emerged almost out of nowhere with 2017's fourth-quarter fundraising reports: Previously unknown businessman and attorney Suraj Patel raised a monster $526,000 in just eight weeks for a challenge to longtime Rep. Carolyn Maloney in the June Democratic primary. Maloney has represented what's traditionally been known as the "Silk Stocking District," which takes in Manhattan's wealthy Upper East Side, ever since defeating liberal Republican Rep. Bill Green in 1992. Believe it or not, this area was historically represented by Republicans for decades until Maloney's win, but now it's as blue as they come: Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump (whose Trump Tower lair is in this seat) 83-14 here.
But despite the district’s GOP past, Maloney's never faced a serious threat in all her years in office, and that includes primaries, too. Her stiffest fight came in 2010, when attorney Reshma Saujani spent $1.5 million in a vain attempt to unseat her. (The district at the time was numbered the 14th.) It wasn’t all that stiff, though. Saujani ran on an openly pro-Wall Street platform in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis—"If you go to Texas, you'll never hear a Congressional member speak poorly of the oil industry," she declared—but received an utter drubbing, losing by an 83-17 margin in the primary.
As Politico's Laura Nahmias notes, Patel's background is superficially similar to Saujani's: Like Saujani as was at the time, Patel's a "tech-savvy 34-year-old with fundraising skills." (The two also happen to share Indian ancestry.) But Patel's messaging couldn't be more different. Instead of worshipping at the altar of finance, he's talking about issues like legalizing marijuana, making it easier to vote, and Black Lives Matter.
In addition, as Nahmias notes, the 12th takes in some new areas that weren't part of the old 14th. Both the past and present versions of Maloney’s district cover parts of Manhattan, including not just the Upper East Side but also Midtown, as well as Queens and chiefly its Astoria and Long Island City neighborhoods. However, the seat now also reaches into Brooklyn, including some younger areas like Greenpoint and parts of Williamsburg. Those neighborhoods might boost Patel, whose tagline is "New voices. New energy. New ideas," but the Brooklyn portions of the district make up less than 10 percent of the seat's overall population, while three-quarters is still in Manhattan.
And though Patel did exceed Maloney's $367,000 fundraising haul in the last quarter, she still has a monster $3 million in the bank, and during the Saujani race, the entire Democratic establishment rallied around her; Maloney even earned a rare endorsement from Barack Obama. And Saujani's tale is a cautionary one: After her poor performance against Maloney, she tried running for public advocate (a citywide position) in 2013, but took a distant third in the primary with just 15 percent of the vote. While she's not a prominent member of Congress, Maloney's never really done anything to alienate her constituents, so it's hard to see how Patel will give primary voters a reason to change course.
