In recent months, New York pundits have focused on Governor Kathy Hochul’s sagging poll numbers and weak reelection campaign. But Hochul isn’t the only New York Democrat facing a challenging fight in 2026. Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, could also find that her reelection prospects are far from secure.
While New York is undoubtedly a blue state, its political climate is not as favorable as it once was for Democrats like James. In 2024, Donald Trump saw his biggest vote-share improvement in New York State. He won a higher percentage of the vote in New York City than any Republican presidential candidate since George H. W. Bush. The Republican even saw huge vote-total gains in the still overwhelmingly Democratic boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens in 2024.
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The GOP’s recent gains outside the Big Apple are equally impressive. Once-competitive Long Island—Nassau and Suffolk Counties—is now deeply red, with Republicans controlling both counties’ legislatures and nonjudicial offices. While enrolled Democrats continue vastly to outnumber Republicans statewide, the GOP has narrowed that gap over the past four years, reversing a longstanding trend.
The state’s changing political tides certainly don’t mean that James’s reelection is doomed. But New York is shifting rightward, making statewide races for Democrats like James tougher than they were not so long ago.
Consider James’s and Hochul’s electoral records. While James received over 60 percent of the vote in 2018, her 2022 numbers (54.6 percent) were far less impressive—barely one percentage point better than Hochul’s win over Congressman Lee Zeldin, the worst performance by a winning Democratic gubernatorial candidate in 40 years.
Recent polls confirm that New York voters hold a relatively unfavorable view of the incumbent attorney general. A Siena College Research Institute poll from earlier this year found that, while James has more favorable poll numbers than Hochul, her 40–33 favorable-unfavorable split is worse than one would expect for a Democratic attorney general of New York. While most Democrats viewed the attorney general favorably, she was underwater with Republicans and independents and viewed negatively in every region of the state but New York City.
James’s challenges in 2026 go beyond poll numbers and voting trends. One of her major obstacles to reelection might be the man who polls suggest will be the next mayor of New York: former governor Andrew Cuomo.
Even casual observers of state politics know that there is no love lost between Cuomo and James. Since resigning as governor in 2021, Cuomo has made it known that he believes he was unjustly forced from office and laid much of the blame at James’s feet.
If Cuomo wins the Democratic mayoral primary, he would be the strong favorite to win the general election and become Gotham’s next mayor. As mayor of New York and one of the state’s most powerful elected officials, Cuomo would almost certainly use his office to undermine his hated rival’s 2026 reelection bid.
Historically, Democrats in New York need at least 65 percent of the vote in the city to win a statewide race. Kathy Hochul and Kamala Harris, respectively, met this magic number in 2022 and 2024. Their wins in New York City, however, were much narrower than Joe Biden’s in 2020. A Mayor Cuomo might have the motivation and—by simply telling Democratic allies not to help James’s campaign—the ability to prevent James from getting that all-important 65 percent of the New York City vote in her 2026 reelection bid.
Beyond Cuomo, James faces another challenge: an alleged mortgage fraud scandal. On April 1, investigator Sam Antar reported that she had falsely claimed in a loan application that a home in Virginia would be her primary residence.
This emerging scandal caught the attention of another longtime James opponent: President Trump. After Antar uncovered James’s alleged false statements, the head of the Trump administration’s Federal Housing Finance Agency also claimed that she had made false representations about a multifamily property she owns in Brooklyn. The FHFA referred New York’s attorney general to the Justice Department for prosecution, and the FBI is reportedly looking into James’s alleged misdeeds. James has since hired high-powered lawyer Abbe Lowell to represent her.
While this scandal is still in its early stages, it’s not likely to be over anytime soon. Even if James is never prosecuted for mortgage fraud, she’s certain to take a political hit because of the controversy. Will it be enough to cause an ambitious Democrat to launch a primary challenge to James in 2026? It’s too early to tell, but James’s legal troubles will seriously complicate her reelection bid.
Any incumbent Democratic attorney general is politically formidable in New York. But Letitia James faces potential headwinds that place her future as the elected attorney general in jeopardy—even in the deep-blue Empire State.
Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Congressional Black Caucus Foundation
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