ALL IN FOR GILLEN: The race on Long Island’s 4th District is heating up. And Kamala Harris might help flip the South Shore district blue. Two left-leaning groups are spending big in NY-4, and they have a new partisan poll to tout in their push for Democrat Laura Gillen in her rematch against Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, who beat Gillen by about 3 points in 2022. The Economic Security Project, a national organization that works to promote equitable economic policies, hired the left-leaning pollster Change Research to quiz 713 likely voters online. In a poll shared first with Playbook, they found that Gillen is beating D’Esposito with likely voters by 7 points, with a margin of error of 4 points, before any pro-Gillen messaging was given to voters. We don’t place too much stock in push polling, but what we do know is that the Economic Security Project is relying on those results to launch an effort to back Gillen. They’ve pledged to spend six figures on TV, digital and out-of-home advertising in the district, as well as hosting a series of events. “This is a really important year because of the 2025 fight on taxes to make the tax code more fair at the top and the bottom,” Taylor Jo Isenberg, the organization’s executive director, told Playbook in an interview. Empire State Voices — which says it shares “the same core mission” as the Economic Security Project — is also in the midst of a six-figure spend in that district. (More on that sky-high effort lower down in this newsletter.) But down-ballot spending in this House race might not matter at all. Lawrence Levy, the executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said Harris' ascension to the top of the ticket has given Gillen newfound hope. “One of the reasons that Anthony D’Esposito was able to beat Laura Gillen with such a large enrollment edge was that Black voters pretty much sat it out,” Levy said of the 2022 election. He expects Harris may energize those voters to head to the polls. Gillen outraised D’Esposito handily in the latest filing and is part of the DCCC’s Red to Blue program. Gillen, who started 2024 about $750,000 behind D’Esposito, now has surpassed him and has a $300,000 cash-on-hand advantage, according to her campaign. The D’Esposito campaign said the encroaching presence of out-of-district organizations helping Gillen shows he has more local support than she does. D’Esposito spokesperson Matt Capp said 38 percent of the $1.1 million he raised in the second quarter came from inside the district. (When only accounting for individual itemized contributions, it was 32 percent.) For Gillen, just 3.9 percent of her individual itemized contributions came from within the district, according to Capp. Gillen’s campaign didn’t dispute those numbers. “Laura Gillen and her Democratic cronies are so desperate to demonstrate a ‘win’ that they’re touting a biased push poll as evidence of her traction, when in reality, Gillen only received a dismal 3.9% of financial support from local donors and Long Islanders at-large detest the out-of-touch progressive agenda of AOC that Gillen wants to enable in Congress,” Capp said in a statement. And Republicans on Long Island also have the advantage of the party machine. “They will get their voters out,” Levy said. “They know how to figure out what people are concerned about and turn it into a message that, for the last few years, Democrats have been unable to counter.” — Jason Beeferman
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