I got some good news yesterday: Mondaire Jones is going to run for Congress in his old Hudson Valley district. He was an excellent member and the only thing he ever did wrong was to allow crooked conservative, Sean Patrick Maloney, chase him out of his own district. That was depressing— and the nice, safe blue district (D+7 partisan lean) flipped Republican because… who likes a carpetbagging asshole? Of course the Westchester parts of the district stayed blue and the Dutchess and Putnam parts went red. But the key was Rockland— where Mondaire was strong— and that is the area that fucked Maloney. And in a close race like that, you can’t lose the second biggest county and expect to win. Republican light-weight Mike Lawler squeaked by with a win. Maloney would have won his old district, which stayed blue, and Mondaire would still be in Congress now.
That all said, a mutual friend told me Mondaire has pretty much made up his mind to take on Lawler. There’s a problem though— Liz Gereghty, who’s on a local school board, says she’s running too. Who cares? Well, she’s Gretchen Whitmer’s sister. Who? The governor of Michigan. Why should anyone care? I don’t think anyone does, except some people who live and breath politics. Apparently, she’s also kind of conservative for a Democrat, more like New Dem Maloney than like Mondaire.
Nicholas Wu and Ally Mutnick reported that the race will “test competing views on how the party should run in competitive districts: by juicing up the progressive base or appealing to the center. Jones was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus while Gereghty seems more likely to carve out a more moderate lane. She met Thursday with the executive director of the New Democrat Coalition Action Fund, the political arm of the centrist group, according to a person familiar with the situation.”
A bunch of extraordinarily unimpressive conservative-leaning Michigan congresswomen are lining up behind their governor’s sister. Having been born and raised in New York, I have a feeling that’s not going be a big plus in New York. If Gereghty were smart, she should run for town councillor in whatever Westchester town she lives in and practice being a legislator before running against a strong and well-liked figure like Mondaire. But that’s up to her… and the governor of Michigan I suppose.
Maloney’s shocking upset last year forced the district, which President Joe Biden won by 10 points, to the top of Democrats’ 2024 target list. The party has signaled it’s willing to spend heavily to recapture Biden-won districts in New York after suffering unexpected losses in 2022.
Other candidates could still emerge in the race, but so far, Gereghty is the only Democrat who has filed.
Both Jones and Gereghty bring their own advantages. Jones could draw from wells of support among other national Democrats and the powerful Congressional Black Caucus. As a first-term lawmaker, he had carved out a niche by vocally calling for the expansion of the Supreme Court. He’s stayed active in local politics, too.
“He’s a dear friend, and I’d like to see him come back, and so I would love to be able to support him,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), who served with Jones on the House Judiciary Committee.
Gereghty, for her part, has been reaching out to members in the Michigan delegation, and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) has been helping with the early stages of her campaign. Gereghty’s campaign manager will be Carissa Best, who led Rep. Hillary Scholten’s (D-MI) successful campaign to flip a Grand Rapids-based seat in 2022.
“We love her,” Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) said of Gereghty, though she is not yet endorsing and is also friendly with Jones.
“New York has lost some female leadership over the years,” the Michigan Democrat added. “She’s been steeped in that community for decades and is on the school board and was a small business owner and a mom.”
Jones, first elected in 2020, would not likely not launch a run until the third quarter of the year and wouldn’t make a final decision before May, according to a person familiar with his thinking. But he is starting to assemble his political operation and a campaign staff-in-waiting. Some Democrats on the ground in his district are urging him to jump in, too.
“Mondaire has a great relationship with most of the voters in NY-17 and it’s unfortunate others would risk forcing a divisive primary instead of uniting around our strongest candidate to beat Mike Lawler,” Rockland County Democratic Party Chair Schenley Vital said in a statement.
Jones, he added, was forced out of office by some in “the national party establishment.”