NY-17: As Republicans struggle to hold on to their slender majority in the House—which at the moment stands at just four seats—MAGA-flavored extremists are gearing up to do everything in their power to make the GOP's life more difficult. The latest batch of trouble is getting whipped up by former Trump administration official William Maloney, who now tells Hotline that he'll announce whether he'll challenge freshman Rep. Mike Lawler from the right in early January.
Lawler was already one of the most vulnerable House Republicans heading into 2024, and a primary fight won't help. Joe Biden carried his 17th District in the lower Hudson Valley by a 54-44 margin, making it one of the bluest seats held by a Republican. Lawler's efforts to moderate his image have also not gone smoothly: While he voted against making the far-right Jim Jordan speaker, he later capitulated and supported the installation of Mike Johnson, an even more extreme figure.
But a battle with Maloney could yank him even further to the right. After interning with Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, Maloney worked his way through a series of minor government jobs before finally landing at the U.S. Agency for International Development at the age of 23. There, as White House liaison, he was responsible for installing a number of appalling Trump loyalists as political appointees, including one who dubbed the United States a "homo-empire" in thrall to "the tyrannical LGBT agenda" and another who derided Islam as a "barbaric cult."
Maloney enraged longtime USAID employees and only lasted a few months, soon moving over to the U.S. Agency for Global Media. That placed him under Michael Pack, an ally of Steve Bannon who would wreak havoc at the agency, which runs Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. Maloney, too, was "close to people in Bannon's orbit," Politico's Daniel Lippman reported at the time, and later worked at Bannon's radio show, per an update from Lippman just last week.
Maloney told Hotline that he's hoping for Trump's endorsement, but vocal support on Bannon's popular podcast (which has been removed from multiple platforms for spreading disinformation) could prove just as important. He's also already drawing a contrast with the incumbent, attacking Lawler for backing funding for Ukraine and opposing a 15-week abortion ban—the same type of ban that got Virginia Republicans crushed in the suburbs last week.
What makes the GOP's predicament so acute is that Lawler is by no means the only swing-district House Republican facing the same problem. California Rep. David Valadao, for instance, has to deal with a repeat matchup with Chris Mathys, a far-right critic who nearly beat him in the primary last year. Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, has a prominent anti-abortion activist, Mark Houck, seeking to deny him renomination, and it's likely we'll see similar challengers emerge elsewhere.
And even if these MAGA devotees aren't capable of running especially polished campaigns, House GOP leadership always has to worry that outside Democratic groups will help them over the finish line—just as they did in Michigan's 3rd District last year, which flipped from red to blue after Democrats boosted an extremist past a more pragmatic incumbent in the Republican primary. The strategy worked flawlessly nationwide in 2022, and Democrats will be eager for Trump acolytes like Maloney to give them a chance to deploy it again.