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January 6th, 2022 
Awake Goy 
In 2014, when Katko announced his initial run for Congress in a crowded, eight-person primary, Democratic operatives who knew Central New York recognized quickly the potential potency of the pieces of his biography, not just the tough-on-crime central-casting image but the Irish, the Catholic, the hockey, Camillus and the west side — all markers that matter within the political topography of the area. Katko’s brother-in-law even was (and is) the owner of a well-known Irish bar in downtown Syracuse in Armory Square.
The incumbent, meanwhile, was Democrat Dan Maffei, who in 2012 had beaten conservative Republican Ann Marie Buerkle, who in 2010 had beaten … Dan Maffei. After the departure of moderate Republican Jim Walsh, who had held the Syracuse seat for 20 years, the district was ping-ponging in search of a representative who was a comparatively apt match. “We saw Katko on the scene, and we were, like, ‘Oh shit,’” one operative told me. “Everyone was worried from day one,” said another. “He’s just somebody that sort of fit the district extraordinarily well,” said a third.
Katko was asked by Harding from the Auburn Citizen in his first real interview of the race whether he considered himself a conservative or more of a moderate.
“I’m a conservative,” he said, “but a moderate at the same time.”
He beat Maffei by nearly 20 points.
On Election Day, he wore a purple tie — Niagara University’s main color, but there was another reason. “I wore a purple tie,” he said, “to signify my commitment to working in a bipartisan manner to represent Central New York in Congress. I believe that we need to work together — Democrats and Republicans.”
In 2016, he won by more than 20 points. In 2018, a cycle in which Democrats picked up 41 seats in the House, Katko had his only race that was remotely close — and he won by a little more than five points. In 2020, against the same general election opponent, the margin went back up into double digits. Katko was one of only nine House Republicans to win a district Biden won, and he’s one of only three (David Valadao of California, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania) to have won in a Clinton district, too.
After 2021, though, can Katko win again in 2022?
“The tightrope that he’s walking gets thinner and thinner,” New York Democratic strategist Evan Stavisky told me, “and every couple of weeks another strand of the rope starts to pop off.”
“He doesn’t represent the Conservative Party and our principles,” Dadey told me. “He just doesn’t.”
“He’s going to have a very, very tough uphill climb to win reelection,” said Ment, “without the Conservative endorsement.”
“In a primary, if it’s the right candidate, if it’s a semi-known person,” said Jim Quinn, a state Conservative Party vice chair, “I think he can be beaten.”
Katko has the two pro-Trump primary challengers — John Murtari, a software engineer who gave $70 to Bernie Sanders in 2016 but says Katko’s impeachment vote for him was a “trigger” and who’s raised next to no money for his run, and Tim Ko, a neurosurgery physician’s assistant who launched two months ago what is his first bid for public office of any kind. He hasn’t filed a fundraising report.
Quinn had made 100 anti-Katko yard signs. They have his name in a circle with a red strike of a line through it. “NOT A CONSERVATIVE,” they say. “NOT EVEN A REPUBLICAN.” Quinn sent me a picture of one of them. Zigzagging around the district one recent afternoon, I saw none of them. I also saw vanishingly few Trump signs or flags or anything else. Where I live, in North Carolina in the suburbs of Charlotte, I see more Trump stuff in the not-four-mile drive to my daughter’s elementary school than I saw in four days in New York’s 24th district. “Syracuse,” former Post-Standard executive editor Mike Connor told me, “is not Trumpworld.”
But the loss of the support of Conservative Party leaders is nonetheless a complicator for Katko. There are 142,894 registered Republicans in the 24th district and only 9,185 registered Conservatives, but in New York’s fusion voting the combination of Republican and Conservative support helps Republicans win, and the Conservatives could run a candidate in the general no matter what happens in the primary. “We’ll have a candidate on the line for sure,” said Kassar, the state chair. That candidate almost certainly wouldn’t win but could shave away enough of Katko’s vote to effectively make him lose — and the Democrat win. Ment says he’s fine with that. “We’ve given up on believing that he is in any way, shape or form a Republican,” he told me. “As the Conservative Party, we don’t want him in Congress anymore.”
“So much so,” I said, “that you want a Democrat in Congress?”
“We’ll take the Democrat,” Ment said. He believes Republicans with or without Katko will win back the House with ease.
“So your gambit,” I said, “is you don’t need John Katko to have a majority … so f— him?”
“I wouldn’t put it in quite those words, because I don’t want to offend anybody,” Ment said with a laugh, “but yeah.”
The three Democrats that have declared here are all military veterans — Sarah Klee Hood (Air Force), Steven Holden (Army) and Francis Conole (Navy). Conole in an interview pointed to Katko’s district as “a very important pickup opportunity for Democrats.” A fourth-generation Central New Yorker and Iraq War veteran, he ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary in 2020. Of the three, Conole, 43, was the clear fundraising leader coming out of last year’s third quarter — with $237,363.43.
Katko, meanwhile, raised $436,921 in last year’s first quarter, the most he has raised in a first quarter of any year since he first ran in 2014. In the second quarter, he raised more than half a million, his second-best second quarter ever. In the third quarter, he raised almost half a million again, with money coming from PACs associated with House GOP leaders — including McCarthy.
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