If you want to understand the New York metropolitan delegation’s split over the war with Iran, you do not need to read a single press release. You only need to read the roll calls.
Congress has voted repeatedly this year on resolutions invoking the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to direct the president to remove American forces from hostilities with Iran. Take three of the starkest roll calls, two in the House and one in the Senate. On each, every Democrat from the region voted yes. On each, every Republican from the region voted no. In a Congress where cross-party coalitions are rare, the metro delegation has been a perfect mirror of the national partisan divide.
The Senate: 49 to 50
The most recent test came on September 24, when the Senate took up H.Con.Res. 89, a concurrent resolution the House had already adopted. It failed 49 to 50, with one senator not voting.
All six senators from the three states voted yes: Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Cory Booker and Andy Kim of New Jersey, and Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Four Republicans joined them, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. One Democrat, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, voted no. That was enough to sink it.
Kim, a former State Department and National Security Council official, managed floor time for the resolution’s supporters. During the debate, according to the Congressional Record, he noted that Democrats had come to the floor 11 times in 208 days to try to force the question. Murphy, the Connecticut senator who has made foreign policy restraint a signature cause, also spoke in favor.
The vote has a peculiar procedural status. Because it was a concurrent resolution, it does not go to the president for a signature and could not be vetoed. Supporters have argued that under the War Powers Resolution, a concurrent resolution passed by both chambers is enough to require withdrawal. Opponents, and every administration since the Supreme Court’s 1983 decision in INS v. Chadha, have argued such legislative vetoes are not binding. The 49-to-50 tally means the Senate never had to settle the argument.
The House: from 212 to 220
On the House side, the arc has bent toward the resolution’s supporters, though not toward the region’s Republicans.
On March 5, the House rejected H.Con.Res. 38, which would have directed the removal of U.S. armed forces from what it called unauthorized hostilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 212 to 219. Two Republicans voted yes and four Democrats voted no. None of the defectors came from the metro area.
The five metro-area Republicans, Reps. Nick LaLota and Andrew Garbarino of Long Island, Nicole Malliotakis of Staten Island and southern Brooklyn, Mike Lawler of the Lower Hudson Valley, and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey, all voted no.
By September the math had changed. On September 15, the House adopted H.Con.Res. 93, sponsored by Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, 220 to 204. Seven Republicans crossed over. Every Democrat who voted said yes, including the delegation’s newest member, Rep. Analilia Mejia of New Jersey’s Eleventh District, who won a special election this spring to succeed Sherrill. The same five metro Republicans voted no.
Between those two dates, by the accounting of Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia on the Senate floor, both chambers had at one point adopted a concurrent resolution on the war, which is how H.Con.Res. 89 arrived in the Senate at all.
Why the Republicans hold
On paper, the region’s Republicans are the delegation’s most exposed members. Lawler and Kean represent districts that national forecasters rate as competitive, and both sit on the Foreign Affairs Committee. A war that has driven up fuel and grocery costs, as The Guardian reported on Saturday, would seem an obvious place to put distance between themselves and the White House.
They have held, and they have made their case. Across these three votes and more than six months, not one of the five has broken ranks, even as seven of their House Republican colleagues did in September.
Lawler called the March resolution a political move that could weaken U.S. forces mid-conflict. “It would undermine our national security and our troops at the height of this operation to order an immediate withdrawal,” he said, NY1 reported. Republicans also argue that the president may lawfully conduct military operations for up to 60 days before needing congressional authorization, and presidents of both parties have long contended that the 1973 law infringes on the commander in chief’s constitutional authority. Malliotakis, explaining her September vote, put the case in strategic terms: “Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and the United States must stay the course to force the number one state sponsor of terrorism, to continue negotiations to ensure long-term stability and protect our national security,” SILive reported.
On the Democratic side, the unanimity spans the caucus’s ideological range. Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut’s Fourth District, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Gregory Meeks of Queens, the ranking Democrat on Foreign Affairs, have backed every resolution. So have Rep. Josh Gottheimer of Bergen County, a centrist and co-founder of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx and Queens. When members that far apart vote the same way every time, the fight, as they frame it, is as much about Article I of the Constitution as it is about Tehran.
What comes next
The House is out until after the election. The war powers question will be waiting when it returns, likely under new leadership in at least one chamber. If Democrats win the House, the region’s members will be at the center of it: Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn would be in line to become Speaker, and Meeks would be in line to chair Foreign Affairs.
The question then becomes whether a House majority would try to use the power of the purse, not just a concurrent resolution, to force the issue. The roll calls so far show where every member of the delegation stands. They do not yet show what anyone is willing to defund.
Featured image: Sen. Andy Kim, official portrait, 118th Congress. Photo by U.S. Senate Photographic Studio via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
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