Oct. 22, 2024, 8 p.m.
PEARL RIVER, N.Y.—Amid the sound of a live band playing retro radio hits and attendees queuing up at funnel-cake and homemade-pickle stands, Rep. Mike Lawler worked his way down East Central Avenue, shaking hands with constituents and taking selfies with kids.
The 38-year-old freshman representing New York’s 17th Congressional District said the youngsters know him from the YouTube and online ads—both for and against him—that have deluged constituents during his neck-and-neck reelection race against former Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones.
“The kids certainly recognize me,” Lawler said. “They go talk to their parents. Two years ago they did it as well, but now it's at a more pronounced level.”
At the 17th annual Pearl River Day, Lawler was at home, both politically and literally—he lives a short drive from the festival. Pearl River and the broader Rockland County, nestled at the red-leaning southwestern corner of his district, is a blue-collar suburb only 15 miles from Manhattan and home to a large population of veterans, firefighters, and law enforcement working in New York City and the surrounding areas.
But the district hadn't elected a House Republican for decades before Lawler, and it has voted for a Democratic president for as long as anyone can remember. Lawler won his first race by fewer than 2,000 votes, and this showdown is close as well, with recent polling from Emerson College showing a 1-point lead for the incumbent over Jones.
Speaking to reporters not far from a mechanical bull—ticket in hand, Lawler was moments away from riding but ultimately backed out—he said he’s feeling good heading into the final stretch. He dismissed the Emerson poll, saying it drew too heavily from college-educated voters.
“There’s a reason [Democrats] don’t talk about this race as their No. 1 target in New York,” he said.
Lawler and Jones, both natives of the district, are embroiled in a bruising fight for a constituency that in 2022 elected its first Republican in 43 years after a controversial redistricting process. The stakes are high. With tight margins in the House, Lawler and a handful of other freshman GOP members from the Empire State could determine who controls the chamber in 2025.
Those freshman Republicans—Lawler, Reps. Anthony D’Esposito and Nick LaLota of Long Island, and Rep. Marc Molinaro, whose district is further north—have spent the past two years working to navigate the drama of a historically dysfunctional and unproductive House, at times breaking with their conference on issues such as abortion and the state and local tax deduction.
Democrats are targeting the GOP freshmen, and in some cases they’re having success. Recent polling shows embattled Rep. D’Esposito trailing Democrat Laura Gillen by 12 points. Democrat Josh Riley leads Molinaro by 4 points in a poll released Tuesday. LaLota, however, remains ahead of challenger John Avlon by 3 points in polling.
Jones is the only of these challengers to be outraised by the incumbent, bringing in $4.7 million for the cycle compared to Lawler’s $7.3 million, according to campaign finance disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Lawler’s race is a case study in the GOP effort to win over voters in key suburban swing districts, trying to tack to the middle, bucking the conference where needed, while deploying copious campaign dollars and bold-name visitors to the district. Speaker Mike Johnson has already visited once. Lawler said Johnson and Majority Whip Tom Emmer are likely to come to the district in the final weeks of the election.
“I do think it's an interesting race, where you have an incumbent who's pretty in line with the district ideologically,” said Laura Tamman, a political science professor at New York’s Pace University. “He's governed as a moderate. He's campaigned as a moderate. He's not campaigned on most issues as an extremist.”
Lawler has broken from some in his conference, including Johnson, saying that former President Trump lost the 2020 election, although he has still endorsed Trump. Lawler is antiabortion except in cases of rape or incest, or to protect the life of the mother. He has pledged to vote against any national abortion ban, and he has also made a point to defend in-vitro fertilization against calls from antiabortion advocates to ban the procedure.
Jones makes his pitch
Jones is betting these efforts won’t pay off, and that swing voters otherwise satisfied with Lawler’s centrist positioning will vote Democratic because of broader issues such as gun control, abortion, and control of the House.
On Sunday morning in the leafy, affluent town of Chappaqua—home to the Clintons—about 30 Democrats gathered in the backyard of a supporter’s home as Jones delivered a pep talk before the group headed out to canvas. The hamlet is in northern Westchester County, the district’s progressive stronghold that went for Lawler’s 2022 Democratic opponent by 17 points.
Jones instructed the group to point out to voters that Lawler was not the centrist he made himself out to be, and that a Democratic majority stands in the way of another Republican House speaker and the dysfunction of the recent Congress, in which hard-line Republicans routinely ground legislating to a halt. He singled out one such firebrand, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
“And as you have conversations with people who think that Mike Lawler isn’t so bad, he’s not as bad as Marjorie Taylor Greene, please explain something that many of us learn in basic civics, which is that he determines who has the gavel—he empowers Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Jones said.
Jones, 37, represented the district prior to Lawler, but in 2022 new district maps would have thrown Jones into a primary fight against Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, at the time the head of the House Democrats’ campaign arm. Instead, Jones ran in the 10th District, but he lost in the primary to now-Rep. Dan Goldman. Lawler went on to defeat Maloney.
When asked why Democrats lost the district in 2022, Jones said: “Because I wasn’t on the ballot, it turns out. People here were not enthusiastic with the Democratic party because of the way redistricting went down. And Lawler also pretended to be someone who he’s not, and his voting record reveals that.”
Jones and Lawler have held one televised debate, with another set for Wednesday evening. But they also squared off during one of many candidate forums Sunday inside the Palisades Community Center, a former schoolhouse built in 1870, not far from the border with New Jersey.
One attendee, Mary Ann Brueckner, a retired librarian who immigrated from England and became a citizen in 1985 so she could vote, said that she was impressed by Lawler at a previous candidate forum but couldn’t vote for him, despite his carefully crafted stance on the abortion issue.
“I feel that Mondaire has exaggerated Lawler’s stance on abortion,” said Brueckner, 79. “It’s not quite as extreme as Mondaire points out, but all in all, abortion is a big issue for me.”
The Middle East conflict plays a role
The conflict in Gaza and Lebanon has also emerged as an issue in the district, which holds a large percentage of Jewish-Americans, including one of the largest Hasidic enclaves in the country.
Both Jones and Lawler have pledged full support for Israel. Jones, though, has criticized Lawler for not criticizing Trump’s recent statement that, if he loses, Jewish support of Democrats will be partly to blame. Lawler has shot back at his opponent, attacking Jones for his past affiliation with the progressive wing of his caucus that opposes Israel’s prosecution of the war.
Jones, though, has broken with his former progressive colleagues amid a broader move to the center, endorsing George Latimer over Rep. Jamaal Bowman in a heated primary for the district just to the south. Bowman is an outspoken critic of Israel’s military activity in Gaza. In response, the Congressional Progressive Caucus rescinded its support of Jones.
Jones said he doesn’t see the decision as a political misstep but as an example of his bona fides in fighting antisemitism.
“I’ll keep taking those hits from the Far Left because that is what leadership requires, and it is also the morally right thing to do,” said Jones, who was at times associated with the ultra-progressive “Squad” in the House.
Now, Jones has the endorsement of the centrist New Democrat Coalition and would likely caucus with them if elected.
But it was another progressive group, the New York-based Working Families Party, that has created a major headache for the Democrat. The group typically nominates the Democratic candidate, but Jones lost the party’s primary in July to an unknown, Anthony Frascone, with only a few hundred voters casting ballots.
With Frascone polling at 3 percent in the Emerson survey, the candidate could siphon key progressive votes from Jones. Both Jones and the WFP have accused Frascone of being a GOP plant. Now, the WFP is throwing its support again behind Jones, but the party lost a court battle this week to kick Frascone off the ballot.
Lawler has said he’s not involved in the third-party debacle.
At the candidate forum was Matt Miller, who said he has previously voted for and volunteered for Democrats and is a “big fan of purple districts,” but said he plans to vote for both Lawler and Trump as well. Miller said he thought both Jones’s and Kamala Harris’s tack to the center during this election cycle was inauthentic.
“I think Mondaire ran as a progressive when that was convenient to him, Harris ran as a progressive when that was convenient to her, and I don’t think either of them have provided good explanations of how they’ve changed their position or why they’ve changed their position,” Miller said.
For local Democrats, it’s unbelievable to think a Republican would continue to represent the district after the performance of the current GOP Congress. Randee Glazer, cochair of the New Castle Democratic Committee, expressed the hope that Jones would win and help usher in a Democratic House led by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, now the minority leader.
“The new Congress gets sworn in on January 3, three days prior to the 6th, and we need Speaker Jeffries there and we need Mondaire Jones representing the values of CD-17, because Mike Lawler does not,” Glazer said.
