Dem Campaigns Chair Sean Patrick Maloney Loses His Own House Seat: 'Blame Me'

After losing his own congressional seat and helping stop a "red wave," Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney spoke about the historic midterm elections of 2022.

Maloney served as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and was tasked by Speaker Nancy Pelosi with keeping the House of Representatives in Democratic hands. With the House still not confirmed to be won by Republicans, Maloney may feel deserving of a victory lap, especially considering the party in the White House typically loses dozens of seats in Congress during midterms. But Maloney, speaking today on MSNBC's Morning Joe, was humbled by his own loss to Republican Michael Lawler, as well as the shocking number of Democratic New York congressional seats lost to Republicans on Tuesday.

"Before you carve me in marble, I lost my seat," he told Scarbrough, though he expressed pride in the fact that the House losses were minimal. "The fact that we're talking about that should give everyone a little of humility in the press who wrote us off for two years...we were always going to be competitive because we had such great candidates and such great leadership in the speaker and the president."

Maloney said that they are hoping the Democrats can still capture the House and are determined to make every vote count, including absentee and mail-in ballots. "We're not going to let [Republicans] steal a single seat," Maloney said.

Scarbrough mildly roasted Maloney and other New York Democrats for overseeing massive losses in their House delegation.

"New York was clearly an outlier," Maloney said on Joe, pointing out wins in the West and South, calling the area around New York a "blast radius."

"It's a hard thing to swallow and the fact that my seat is one of them bothers me because the majority could have been won. It was our inability to speak to voters in suburban New York City. Again under any iteration of the maps that could have made the difference. Now, I think we own that as Democrats," Maloney said, deflecting criticism of New York governor Kathy Hochul and Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City.

"Blame me, because I should have won 3,000 more votes...to do so I would have to outperform the ticket by 10 or 12 points. That's a tall order and I was definitely walking and chewing gum at the same time. And I let people down and that bums me out."

New York state was subjected to a bitter redistricting process that changed the calculus in many 2022 House races. Earlier this year, Maloney faced intra-party criticism when many assumed he was running against a fellow gay congressman, Mondaire Jones, after a judge scrambled the congressional districts (Maloney ran in a reconfigured 17th Congressional District, while Jones ran in a different district and lost his primary). But in terms of cash, Maloney delivered, often outraising his Republican counterpart.

Maloney said this is a work day for him as several crucial House races remain undecided. Watch his segment below.