https://apnews.com/article/new-york-elections-peter-king-a074609863627fd079d924a4510979c8

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney is returning to Congress for his fifth term after winning reelection in a battleground district in New York’s Hudson Valley.

The Democrat defeated Republican challenger Chele Farley, who was making her second bid to go to Washington. She also ran for the U.S. Senate in 2018, losing to Kirsten Gillibrand.

The race was too tight to decide on Election Day, but The Associated Press declared Maloney the winner Thursday after an analysis of absentee ballots determined Farley couldn’t overcome Maloney’s lead.

New York’s 18th Congressional District is one of the just a few in the U.S. where voters favored President Donald Trump in the 2016 election, but picked a Democrat to represent them in Congress. Maloney was New York’s first openly gay member of Congress when he was first elected in 2012.