A Republican congressional candidate on Long Island says the mood she encounters door to door is driven less by party labels than by two things: New York City’s crime headlines and the growing visibility of the Democratic Socialists of America. Jeanine Driscoll, who is running in New York’s 4th Congressional District, made the argument during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily, telling the program that residents across Nassau County are anxious about what they see happening just over the city line.
Driscoll is competing for a seat that Democrats have held for most of the past quarter century, with a brief Republican interruption. She acknowledged the district’s Democratic tilt but argued the arithmetic is closer than it looks. There are more Democrats than Republicans across Nassau County and in the town of Hempstead, she said, but not so many that a straight party-line vote guarantees a Democratic win.
“It’s lean Democrat because she’s in office, and before Anthony D’Esposito was elected in 2022 we had 25 years of a Democrat serving in the seat,” Driscoll said, according to Breitbart’s account of the interview. She added that she is in the field “every day” and believes that groundwork will allow her to flip the seat.
A district that borders the city
Driscoll described living close enough to New York City that a three-block walk puts her inside its boundaries. She was careful to distinguish affection for the city itself from concern about its governance, saying she grew up there and is not afraid of it. What worries her, she said, is “the DSA crime and everything else” β a combination she said is “certainly concerning to the residents in New York.”
The reference to the Democratic Socialists of America reflects a broader theme Republicans have pressed in the New York suburbs: tying Democratic candidates to the party’s left flank and to the city’s most visible problems. Whether that argument moves voters in a district like NY-4, which stretches across parts of Nassau County, is one of the questions that will be answered in the midterms.
Hochul’s standing and a name from home
Driscoll also weighed in on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s popularity, and she was blunt about the limits of her own observations. “I’m not going to comment on the rest of the state,” she said, but in Nassau County, “they’re not fans of Kathy Hochul.” She noted that Hochul’s Republican opponent, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, lives in her district β a detail she raised as evidence that the county’s political gravity runs against the governor’s party.
Blakeman’s candidacy gives Nassau voters a familiar local name at the top of the ticket, and Driscoll suggested that down-ballot dynamics could cut in her favor as a result.
An election calendar the GOP says backfired
Driscoll pointed to a change in state law that moved municipal elections to even years, aligning them with federal races. She said the shift put roughly 20 people on the ballot this cycle, and she accused Democrats of engineering the change to weaken Republicans.
“I think they’ve shot themselves in the foot,” she said, arguing the new calendar instead placed town supervisors on the same ticket as congressional candidates β and those supervisors, she noted, “have been winning, you know, consistently.” In her telling, a maneuver meant to marginalize the GOP may end up lifting its candidates by association.
Taxes, crime and corporate exits
Beyond public safety, Driscoll cited taxes and corporate relocations as drivers of voter unease. She referenced announcements by large companies β naming Morgan Stanley β that they intend to leave, and asked who would be left to shoulder the tax burden. “We are,” she said, framing the answer as the reason voters cannot keep returning Democrats to Congress.
She returned repeatedly to the idea that Nassau County’s local government is effectively under Republican control, which she said makes Democratic representation in Congress incongruous. “Right now the landscape in all of Nassau is really Republican control,” she said. “So it makes no sense to me that you would have Democrats occupying these congressional seats.”
The interview was conducted on Breitbart News Daily, which airs weekdays on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern. Driscoll’s remarks represent one candidate’s read of the electorate rather than an independent polling snapshot; her claims about voter sentiment and the electoral effects of the calendar change are her own assessments.
NY-4 is expected to be among the suburban battlegrounds that help determine control of the House. Democrats will argue that the district’s history and registration advantage favor their nominee, while Republicans like Driscoll are betting that crime, taxes and dissatisfaction with Democratic governance in Albany and New York City will persuade enough independents and soft Democrats to switch. Driscoll said she intends to keep making that case in person, block by block, through Election Day.
Source: www.breitbart.com β https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2026/09/25/exclusive-jeanine-driscoll-new-yorkers-are-concerned-over-rise-of-crime-and-democratic-socialism/