tabletop excersizes being ortganized by Joe Morelle. per MSNOW panic broadcast

This unassuming congressman may hold the key to the midterms

by Steve Israel, opinion contributor - 06/10/26 10:30 AM ET

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FILE – Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., questions a witness during a Committee on House Administration hearing about noncitizen voting in U.S. elections on Capitol Hill, May 16, 2024 in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell, File)

Some members of Congress beam under national spotlights and become household names (in households glued to cable political talk shows). Their work product — legislative or political — is well known; their acclaim usually but not always well-deserved. 

At the opposite end are the few who occupy their seats in Congress as if they’re swivel recliners. They lay comfortably low; show up for votes and committee hearings, service their districts, and generally stay out of the line of camera lenses. 

Then there are the workhorses who toil in relative national obscurity. It’s not that they shirk attention, it’s just that they prioritize work product over self-promotion. 

A case study: Rep. Joe Morelle, a Democrat from upstate New York. He is the ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, a panel that typically induces yawns among cable television bookers and newspaper editors. But watch him, because in the coming midterm election, Morelle will be at the center of gravity. 

A very narrow House majority may rest on the outcome of a handful of races.Bipartisan observers, lawyers and journalists are bracing for attempts by the Trump administration to use every tool in its arsenal, lawful or not, to preserve the Republican majority.

The possibilities range from voter suppression (sending ICE agents to selected polling places in hand-picked districts) to coercion (pressuring friendly local and state election officials not to certify certain Democratic victories) to co-option (using federal agencies to seize ballots) to a virtual post-election congressional coup (attempting to stop or manipulate the legitimate certification and swearing-in of certain members).

The latter may be fanciful, conspiratorial, even unlikely. But wasn’t the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021 all of those things, right up until until it wasn’t? 

Article I, Section 5, Clause 1 of Constitution stipulates that “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.” That responsibility falls under the Committee on House Administration, which means that the committee that typically deals with controversies as epochal as office spaces, parking designations and member budgets may find itself determining the next majority.

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>tabletop excersizes being ortganized by Joe Morelle. per MSNOW panic broadcast

That’s where Morrelle comes in. I first met him in 2009, when I was exploring a run for the U.S. Senate. He was in the New York State Legislature and the powerful chairman of the Monroe County Democratic Committee. The path to statewide office veered toward his front door. 

He came across as affable, even gentle. My research memo told me that in his early years he had sold dry-cleaning equipment for a local firm. Frankly, I have never met a dry-cleaning equipment salesman that I disliked. (Actually, I had never met a dry-cleaning equipment salesman.) 

But the memo I read didn’t capture his policy depth. At a meeting of local business and political leaders, he asked me my views on the nature of risk in insurance markets. When I fumbled, he sent me a copy of “Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk,” Peter L. Bernstein’s brilliant history of insurance. 

But in New York politics, substance alone won’t cut it. A sharp mind requires sharper elbows. Morelle served as the State Assembly Majority Leader from 2013-2018. Within even that deep blue body, there are interests as diverse as Manhattan progressives and exurban moderates. Leadership in that context requires political survival skills, especially when serving under a mercurial governor like Andrew Cuomo (D). It’s not like swimming with sharks — it’s like swimming with sharks while someone is lobbing depth charges at you.

Morelle kept his members united, not by using sharp elbows alone, but by consistently pulling them in, at times even standing in the background.

I have had several recent conversations with him about the work he is doing to protect the outcome of the midterm elections from partisan subversion. He and others have engaged in table-top exercises,plumbed the depths of state and local laws and regulations governing elections in dozens of separate jurisdictions, dissected the House rules on the seating of members, consulted with legal experts in both parties. They have considered multiple trajectories and scenarios that could play out between now and January, when the new Congress is sworn in, and even later.

It is tragic that we are “war gaming” a democratic election in America; that we have plunged from the high ideals of our Founders to a scene in Woody Allen’s ”Bananas.” But Jan. 6 demonstrated just how far the MAGA movement will go to seize power. And so supporters of election integrity must therefore be prepared.

That’s where we need not just a workhorse, but someone who knows how to buck and kick when necessary — not performative, but prepared.

Morelle may not be a household name today. But if crisis strikes, he will be. So keep your eyes on him