ALBANY, New York – The Associated Press has declared John Mannion the winner in the Democratic primary in a Syracuse-area congressional seat, setting him up for a November challenge against one of the country’s most vulnerable House Republicans.

With a majority of the votes tallied, Mannion had 62 percent in his race against DeWitt town Councilor Sarah Klee Hood.

He will face Republican Rep. Brandon Williams in November.

The race is poised to be one of the country’s most competitive. Williams won his first term in 2022 with 50.5 percent of the vote. The district has since been redrawn to become slightly more favorable to Democrats.

Mannion spent most of his career as an AP biology teacher in suburban Syracuse. He flipped a longstanding Republican stronghold in the state Senate in 2020 before winning reelection by 10 votes two years later.

He says that experience in close contests — this is the first of his four appearances on the ballot in which a winner has been declared on election night — will help while running in a national battleground.

“I’m battle-tested. I’ve won tough elections,” he said in an interview.

In the general election, Mannion will cite his experience in Albany and in schools as evidence that he can accomplish more than Williams.

“Last year in the House of Representatives, they passed 22 pieces of legislation that got signed into law,” he said. “In 2023 myself, I had 27 pieces of legislation that passed both houses of the state Legislature and were signed by the governor.”

People want “logic, they want results,” he said. “And I believe that over the past four years I’ve done that, and certainly I feel that over the past 25 years over the classroom I’ve done that as well.”

Mannion has long been a favored candidate of the well heeled teacher’s union for which he was once a local president. He is popular with other New York labor groups, which are expected to make major investments in his candidacy. And House Majority PAC, a top Democratic super PAC, has already reserved airtime for advertising in the Syracuse market this fall.