As Democrats across the country meet in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention to endorse Kamala Harris’s agenda for the country, local elections further down the ballot could be equally influential in determining whether that agenda can actually pass. And several of those local races involve Haredi communities in New York.

This year, though there are only a few dozen competitive races across the country, three of the tightest races that hold the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives will take place in districts where Haredi voters could make all the difference. And while the Haredi grassroots may be mostly Republican, the Haredi leaders who make political endorsements often take a more strategic, less partisan view that involves favoring the candidate they predict will win or throwing their weight behind the party that will control the levers of power.

Democrat Pat Ryan and Republicans Mike Lawler and Marc Molinaro, who represent parts of the Hudson Valley, have all worked to court Haredi communities, because their high voter turnout and tendency to vote in blocs for candidates chosen by their leaders make them an important part of any candidate’s path to victory. None of the candidates or their competitors are Jewish.

Haredi votes are so highly prized that House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries visited Kiryas Joel last year and, more recently, Governor Kathy Hochul’s office reportedly considered weakening rules on secular education in yeshivas in order to aid democrats in these competitive Hudson Valley races, according to the Albany Times-Union. 

On the Republican side, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson recently visited the Skver Hasidic village of New Square in support of Lawler and Molinaro. On issues Haredim generally care about, the two Republicans are both staunchly pro-Israel and have criticized recent attempts in New York State to enforce secular education rules in Haredi schools. Ryan has been quiet about the latter issue — at least in public statements — and supports a two-state solution in Israel.

Ryan is finishing his first term representing the 18th Congressional District, which includes Satmar Hasidic communities in Kiryas Joel and the surrounding area. He won the village  4,039-2,529 in November 2022 when he ran against Republican Colin Schmitt. Ryan won the race by fewer than 4,000 votes. The district includes other Haredi communities, too, including in Blooming Grove. This year, Ryan will compete against Republican Alison Esposito, a former officer in the New York City Police Department.

As for Molinaro, whose 19th Congressional district stretches from Ithaca to the Catskills, he has already gotten the blessing of at least one major rabbi: Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, who is estimated to have around 500 followers in the Sullivan County village of Bloomingburg alone. The district also contains Haredi communities in other parts of the area, including the recently established Vizhnitz village of Ateres and a Skver Hasidic community in the town of Bethel. In the upcoming election, Molinaro faces Democrat Josh Riley, whom Molinaro defeated in 2022 by almost 5,000 votes.

A few miles south, in the 17th Congressional district, Haredi voters are expected to help re-elect Lawler. In 2022, Hasidic rabbis in New Square and Kaser (a Viznitzer stronghold), which constitute two segments of the local Haredi community, endorsed Lawler’s opponent, Democrat Sean Patrick Maloney. Still, at the time, Yossi Gestetner, co-founder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, told the Journal News he estimated about 20,000 Orthodox Jews voted, mostly for Lawler — including some who actively defied rabbinic endorsements.

This year, Lawler faces Democrat Mondaire Jones who previously represented the district. Haredi voters have already had an impact on that election. According to the New York Times, Rafi Silberberg, Lawler’s district director, who grew up Haredi in Monsey, wrote to a group of hundreds of Orthodox Lawler supporters prior to the primary election asking them to contact him if they weren’t already registered to vote. After that, “about 200 members of Rockland County’s Orthodox enclave, a generally conservative community that staunchly supports Mr. Lawler, enrolled in the Working Families Party,” possibly causing Jones to lose that party’s nomination in June and as a result, any general election votes Jones might have gotten through that party line. And although there are more registered Democrats in the district than Republicans, those numbers can be deceiving, because many Haredim register as Democrats believing that this will give them a stronger voice in a blue state.

Haredi votes do not get cast along predictable party lines. As activist Chaskel Bennett was recently quoted as saying in the Yiddish-language newspaper Der Yid, “Haredi Jews vote not for the Democrat or the Republican, but for whoever works with them and helps them out.” Bennett is in Chicago at the DNC, where fellow Haredi activists and politicians such as New Jersey Democratic legislator Avi Schnall — who was the director of the New Jersey office of Agudath Israel of America until his election in 2023 — are reminding politicians of that very fact. From the podium at an Agudath Israel event in Chicago, Schnall said, “Nobody should take the votes of our community for granted, and nobody should ever write us off."

Ezra Friedlander, a government relations consultant who has worked with Haredi organizations and emphasized that he was not endorsing any candidates, predicted that although they may have received divided support in the past, all three incumbents would enjoy vast Haredi support in the upcoming election because of their outreach to the community.

About Lawler in particular, Friedlander said, “this time, I think he’ll get the vast, vast majority of the communal leadership. He’s again been very outspoken, very visible, very present — there hasn’t been a Jewish event on The Hill or off The Hill that he has not participated in.”