So what should we think of the race in New York’s 17th district? On one hand, we have stalwart progressive Mondaire Jones. The other hand holds fake “moderate” Rep. Mike Lawler. Ballotpedia characterizes the race as follows:
According to City & State New York’s Rebecca C. Lewis, this election “may offer Democrats one of their best opportunities to flip back. [Lawler] won the seat by the closest margin among fellow first-term Republicans in the state, and the demographics of the district are among the most favorable to Democrats.” Additionally, this district is one of 18 GOP-held districts up for election in 2024 that Joe Biden won in the 2020 Presidential election. Lewis wrote that Lawler “has a perfect electoral record of defeating incumbent Democrats, first flipping an Assembly seat in 2020 in his first run for office, and doing so again [in 2022] for his position in Congress.”
As of August 17, The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, Sabato's Crystal Ball, and DDHQ/The Hill each rated the district as Toss-up.
Polling suggests this race is a true tossup.
CNN’s Manu Raju wrote that the competitiveness of the district is affecting how the two candidates campaign: “Both sides are trying to tie the other to the most extreme elements of their parties. Indeed, Democrats are touting a ProPublica study showing that Lawler votes the same as the hard-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene roughly 81% of the time. Lawler pushed back, and pointed out that Jones voted with liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 97% of the time, calling him a ‘radical progressive’.”
To combat accusations that he is too far to the left for this district, Mondaire Jones is attempting a rebrand. But in doing so, there could be trouble ahead…
The question for the citizens of the 17th district of New York is which candidate will win the middle-of-the-road voters that dominate this area.
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Mondaire Jones for New York-17
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What’s the Big Idea?
THIS RACE IS A TOSSUP, with a D+3 PVI
County results for NY-17 from 2022.
This district straddles the boundary between Upstate New York and the New York City metro area, and it has characteristics of both places. It includes the characteristic of being a swing seat that both parties have won when it was numbered the 19th and the 18th Congressional district. The lines have stayed similar as well over the years despite New York losing seats with each decade.
Until 2006, this district usually had Republican representation. Rep. Sue Kelly held the seat from 1994 until that point in time. She really did not face any serious challenges in her tenure, because she was seen as fiscally conservative and socially moderate. However, she couldn’t wash the Foley page scandal off of her when it broke in 2006, and Rep. John Hall pulled off the upset during the 2006 blue wave election.
Hall would last four years in Congress before being washed out by Rep. Nan Hayworth in the subsequent red wave in 2010. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney first beat Hayworth in 2012 to head to the House. Maloney also narrowly defeated Hayworth in a 2014 rematch. Maloney cruised in his elections for the rest of the decade.
New York lost a district in 2020 redistricting and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney and Rep. Mondaire Jones were drawn together in the same district. Jones ran in the open 10th district and lost the primary. As for Maloney, new constituents, a lackluster showing at the top of the ticket, and a credible opponent in Mike Lawler led to Maloney being upset in 2022 by a score of 50.3% to 49.7% or about 1800 votes.
2024 re-redistricting in New York did not change this district all that much. New boundaries would have favored Joe Biden in 2020 by 54.5% to 44.4%. 285k voters cast their ballots in 2022, while around 333k did so in 2020. It is those missing voters that Mondaire Jones had better hope to show up against Rep. Mike Lawler. Hopefully, MVP Harris is a better top-of-the-ticket draw than Gov. Hochul was in 2022.
Here’s where this 17th district race will be won.
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Westchester County: Jones will pile up votes from the wealthy denizens here. There are a few red precincts in this area, but overall this anchor county is clearly blue.
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Eastern Rockland County: Rockland County is sharply polarized, and most of the eastern half of the county is extremely blue. Jones will need to appeal to the minority voters living in eastern Rockland County if he is to win this election in the fall.
Here’s where we need to keep the margins down, or we lose.
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Western Rockland County: This half of Rockland County is where the Orthodox Jewish communities reside, and they tend to swing to whichever party caters to their specific needs the most. More recently, it has been the GOP that has been winning these voters.
- Putnam and Dutchess Counties: These areas are a light red and tend to be the swingy areas of the district. Jones will have to get as close to 50-50 as possible to ensure a win, because Lawler’s win came from these counties in 2022.
Mondaire Jones: Needing to Rebrand?
If Mondaire Jones can pull off this rebrand, toss out everything you know about politics.
Mondaire Jones was born in Nyack, New York in 1987. He grew up in the projects of Spring Valley and was raised by a single mother and his grandparents. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University. That got him the connections to work in the DoJ during the Obama administration. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2013.
Jones would then go on to clerk for Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr. of the US District Court of Southern New York. He then worked as an attorney for Davis Polk & Wardwell for four years. Just before running for Congress, Jones joined the Westchester County Law Department which represents the county in various civil trials. He ran to replace the retiring Rep. Nita Lowey in 2020 and won the primary with 41% of the vote. That was tantamount to election in the blue NY-17 at the time before it was largely merged with Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney’s districts.
Jones is openly gay, having come out at the age of 24. He was the first gay Black member of Congress. For his history-making campaign and his impact on politics, Queerty named Jones amongst the “50 people leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people”. He still is an active member of the First Baptist Church in Spring Valley.
Jones definitely lived up to the title of this article in a way that could be problematic in a swing district. He was seen as a rising star in the progressive wing of the party when elected. While in Congress, he supported Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. He has called for the expansion of the Supreme Court from 9 to 13 justices. He even supported calls to “defund the police” in its heyday in 2020 as his goal in Congress was to “fight systemic racism”. These views are sure to make their way into a bevy of attack ads - especially the latter two.
Another issue Jones might have is his attempt to run for New York’s 10th district, located in Manhattan and Brooklyn, in 2022. This came about because of New York losing a seat after the 2020 Census. Jones had few options once Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney declared for the 17th district. Or at least that was the official story until this came out in 2024. Jones chose to run for an open seat in Manhattan and lost the primary to Trump impeachment attorney Dan Goldman. He ran as an unabashed progressive but that lane in the primary was very crowded as shown by a third-place finish.
Mondaire Jones was tapped by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve on the US Commission on Civil Rights on the last day of the 117th Congress. He would also join CNN as an on-air contributor shortly after leaving Congress. Jones held a salaried position with Future Forward USA Action, a left-leaning 501(c)(4) organization.
So what issues will Mondaire Jones decide to run on now that he is in a swing seat? It’s hard to gauge what he will run as because he doesn’t have an issues page on his website. He’s in a bit of a box politically - if he disavows his progressive leanings he’s a flip-flopper and if he doesn’t he will be tarred as an extremist in a moderate suburban district.
One issue I hope he doesn’t jettison is his call for a “Third Reconstruction”. This plan would enact the John Lewis VRA and the For the People Act to start. The next step would be to end partisan gerrymandering which skews political outcomes to the extremes. Finally, the plan would do as follows:
That means making voting as easy as possible for everyone, by establishing automatic voter registration, protecting our voter rolls from purges, and ensuring universally accessible ballots for seniors, people with disabilities and anyone else who needs an accommodation. That means restoring that right to the 5.2 million people, disproportionately Black and brown, who have been disenfranchised because of felony convictions.
Jones is touting some past accomplishments as issues he will run on. He is celebrating lowering prescription drug costs for seniors as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act. He touts his work on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law which is rebuilding roads and bridges in the district. He is also beating the drum for passing the American Rescue Plan which saved many small businesses during the pandemic.
One issue where Jones has adapted is his steadfast support of Israel. This is a political necessity in this district, which as discussed before has a large contingent of Orthodox Jewish voters that he has to court. He has been so outspoken in defending Israel and supporting George Latimer’s bid to unseat Rep. Jamaal Bowman that the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Working Families Party have rescinded their endorsement of him. That friction also led to a complete nobody winning the Working Families Party nomination for the district.
Mondaire Jones is also running “to return to Congress to finish the work he started to lower costs for Lower Hudson Valley residents, defend our democracy, raise wages, and stop Republicans from banning abortion.” Above all, he is running against Project 2025 and all that it stands for. He will attempt to tie Rep. Mike Lawler to it at every opportunity.
It will be interesting to see how former Rep. Mondaire Jones does in his attempted rebrand.
Rep. Mike Lawler: A Television “Moderate”
Rep. Mike Lawler is yet another member of the GOP that plays the “moderate” on TV.
Rep. Mike Lawler is a native of Rockland County, having been born there in 1986. He has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from Manhattan College and was valedictorian of his graduating class. Lawler has a long history of public service. He served as the Deputy Town Supervisor in Orangetown and was a Senior Advisor to the Westchester County Executive. Lawler also served as Executive Director of the State Republican Party and previously founded his own government affairs and public relations firm.
Lawler was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2020, as he defeated a Democratic incumbent for a Rockland County district. His short tenure in Albany set him up to challenge Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in 2022 as he didn’t have much of a record to attack. He was seen as a pragmatic bipartisan lawmaker and still is seen that way as evidenced by the Lugar Center rating him the 4th most bipartisan member of the 118th Congress. That could prove to be a problem.
The real Rep. Mike Lawler is nothing like the publicity moth and cable TV personality. When it comes to local press, he shuns them and freezes them out of his town halls - or at least he did until outcry prompted him to reverse this policy. He’s also been caught editing his own Wikipedia page both to inflate his thin resume and to scrub unfavorable information about him. Lawler obviously doesn’t want the “moderate” soap bubble that he has built to collapse around him.
One issue where his extremism shows: his votes to restrict abortion rights. He claims to be for the usual exceptions and against a national abortion ban. Even in his New York Assembly days, he was an extremist on the issue. He’s voted against protecting doctors who perform abortions. His spokesperson claims that abortion rights advocates are trying to “distract voters” by showing them his awful record on women’s rights.
The soap bubble further collapses when it comes to his choices on Social Security and Medicare. Mike Lawler is a debt and deficit peacock who preaches about unsustainable spending but also is against measures such as the Inflation Reduction Act. Instead, he says that discretionary spending needs to be savagely cut and mandatory spending needs to be reformed. That means attacking Social Security and Medicare by raising the retirement age and means testing them!
One would think that someone who is so bipartisan would jump at the chance to enact the toughest border security bill ever considered into law. Yet Lawler followed the lead of Trump in rejecting the bill despite all of his blathering on cable television about the need to secure the border. He even rejected it a second time when Democrats approached the so-called “moderates” about it.
Speaking of Trump, Lawler has shown himself to be nothing more than a partisan lackey for the former President. He endorsed the convicted felon despite sitting in a seat that Biden won by a 10-point margin. He’s defended Trump from the legal process and attacked the rule of law, even after claiming he wouldn’t support Trump if convicted of a crime. Lawler has even profited handsomely off of Trump’s campaign, earning a direct-mail deal that was worth $4M.
The “moderate” soap bubble Lawler has built hopefully will collapse around him. His record is nothing like what he portrays it as on television.
How Can You Help?
Mondaire Jones isn’t hurting for money right now. He has outraised Rep. Mike Lawler in every quarter since joining the race. Both candidates raised around $1.5-$1.6M last quarter and have about $4M in cash to spend on this race. With one month to go in the critical 3rd Quarter reporting period, I suspect that Jones and Lawler will raise a gargantuan sum once again for this race. Mondaire Jones is a member of Red to Blue as well.
Outside money could also flow into this race, especially for Republicans. The district is in the pricey New York media market, and this is potentially the most competitive of the six races under the umbrella of New York City. The DCCC and its allies have booked $18.7M in advertising so far, while the NRCC and its allies have reserved $22.9M for the same six seats. Expect a heated ad war in this district!
There are innumerable opportunities to volunteer for Mondaire Jones on Mobilize. First, there is a virtual phone bank running from Sunday to Thursday for Mondaire Jones and other Democrats in the lower Hudson Valley. This will happen every week until the election.
There are many canvassing and door-knocking operations happening in the district as well. If you live in the district, please help with this operation. There are opportunities to knock on doors in Rockland County, Cortlandt, Croton, Ossining, Sleepy Hollow, and many more. I’m linking to the page with all of the results I could find.
Mondaire Jones will either prove that running a progressive in a suburban moderate district was a mistake or that previous political positions don’t matter when considering the lean of the district. It is highly probable that MVP Harris will carry the district once again, and Jones will ride the coattails into office.
New York has fusion voting where voters can vote for candidates who get on the ballot for multiple parties. Rep. Mike Lawler has the Conservative Party nomination, but Mondaire Jones does NOT have the WFP nomination. In a race that could be decided by a thousand votes or less, this disparity in fusion voting could matter tremendously. Polling suggests a collapse in support on his left flank leading him to trouble in the district.
Rep. Mike Lawler is on cable television a lot, and he plays the “moderate” well on the TV. His voting record really doesn’t match his rhetoric and the soap bubble he has built for himself should pop once the attack ads start rolling. He sits in the 6th most vulnerable House seat that the GOP controls. It is paramount that we win this district to take back the House.
The question is whether or not the suburban moderates in New York’s 17th district hold Mondaire Jones’ previous issue positions against him while giving a pass on Rep. Mike Lawler’s extreme positions.
Mondaire Jones for New York-17
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