Former Rep. Mondaire Jones Announces Run For Old House Seat
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Former Rep. Mondaire Jones (D), who ran unsuccessfully in New York City amid a redistricting mess, now hopes to oust Rep. Mike Lawler (R), who occupies his old suburban seat.
Former U.S. Rep. Mondaire Jones (D) announced his candidacy on Wednesday for New York’s suburban 17th Congressional District, a seat the progressive previously represented but left last cycle amid an intra-party dispute.
After a complicated redistricting plan ― and the decision by Sean Patrick Maloney, then the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to run in the 17th District ― prompted Jones to run unsuccessfully in New York City last summer, Jones has returned to his suburban stamping grounds, where he hopes to unseat Republican Rep. Mike Lawler. Lawler is one of the House Democrats’ top targets as they seek to retake the chamber in November 2024.
Jones is set to first compete for the Democratic nod against Liz Gereghty, a former member of the Katonah-Lewisboro school board in the 17th District and the younger sister of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). The battle between Jones and Gereghty could be a marquee ideological clash within the Democratic Party to determine who will run in one of the nation’s hottest House races.
“I’m running for Congress because, for me, policy is still personal,” Jones told HuffPost in a late June interview in Manhattan, where he had been meeting with advisers.
Jones wants the opportunity to build upon the raft of progressive legislation ― from President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 relief bill to the bipartisan infrastructure package ― in which he played a role in 2021 and 2022. “I’m really proud of what we accomplished last term and what was objectively one of the most productive calendars in modern history,” he said.
Jones has tapped Kunal Atit, former campaign manager for Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), to run his 2024 bid. He has also hired Tim Persico, who was executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2022 and was a longtime top aide to Maloney, as a senior adviser.
When Jones won the race to succeed then-Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) in 2020, he became one of the first two openly gay Black men to serve in Congress. In his first term, Jones, a graduate of Harvard Law School, staked out a name for himself as an outspoken advocate for progressive causes, such as expanding the size of the Supreme Court.
At the same time, Jones stopped short of embracing the stances and tactics of the left-wing House members known as “The Squad.” A self-described “pro-Israel progressive,” Jones is aligned with the liberal group J Street but refused to co-sponsor legislation that J Street backed, which would restrict how U.S. aid can be used in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Jones also served as House Democrats’ freshman representative to party leadership and declined to join some “Squad” members in voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill (the Squad did not want to relinquish its leverage to push for a vote on an ambitious social policy and climate bill). And Jones cited his co-sponsorship of a “right to repair” bill with Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) as an example of his bipartisanship.
“I was a pragmatic progressive member of Congress,” Jones said.
This is not a Washington-driven campaign or even a Michigan-driven campaign.Former Rep. Mondaire Jones (D)
Gereghty, who is running as a moderate, is trying to capitalize on some suburban homeowners’ appetite for a centrist, electable candidate.
Gereghty told HuffPost in a phone interview she was motivated by two of the major issues resonating with suburban voters across the country: gun control and abortion rights.
“The federal government needs to be in the business of protecting rights, voting ― not just individual rights, human rights ― and expanding freedoms,” Gereghty said. “And what we’re seeing right now from Republicans in the House is an attack on different communities pretty consistently.”
When asked what populist economic policies she supports, however, Gereghty was vague, discussing how her past service on the board of the Community Center of Northern Westchester, which provides food aid and other services to needy families, expanded her consciousness of economic need in the region.
“I am well aware that there is need in this community and all of the communities in this district,” she said. “And we can’t look away.”
Given Jones’ name recognition and deep political ties in the lower Hudson Valley, Gereghty is an early underdog against him. Jones’ campaign commissioned a poll that found him leading Gereghty by 35 percentage points among Democratic primary voters in a hypothetical matchup between the two.
Jones also starts off with the support of 109 local Democratic Party elected officials and party leaders, including Rockland County Democratic Party Chair Schenley Vital, state Sen. Pete Harckham, state Assembly member Dana Levenberg and former state Sen. Elijah Reichlin-Melnick.
“Mondaire just did a great job and was in Congress. He really is a voice for the underrepresented, and he’s had a lot of experience,” Levenberg told HuffPost after joining Jones to deliver remarks at the Putnam County, New York, Pride march in Brewster. “He’s reasonable, he’s rational, he’s thoughtful.”
But Gereghty has tapped into a powerful political network that is more than capable of vaulting her into contention.
Gereghty has already called upon Whitmer to help raise money for her. And she is receiving early assistance from EMILY’s List, which backs pro-choice female candidates and is not afraid to throw elbows in contested primaries. Gereghty’s campaign announced Monday that she had raised $400,000 since entering the race in May.
Gereghty’s access to fundraising resources is a prerequisite for success in the expensive New York City media market. But whether or not those resources end up producing a competitive bid for the seat, there are already signs that the race between Jones and Gereghty will resurface long-simmering intra-party tensions over identity, ideology and electability.
Marcia Dickstein Sudolsky, a Manhattan resident who runs Tristate Maxed Out Women, a Democratic fundraising group backing Gereghty, argued Jones’ decision to run in a New York City seat last cycle and his progressive pedigree make him unelectable against Lawler in November 2024. Gereghty is “not a former candidate who’s moved around from district to district,” she said.
Liz Gereghty, a former school board member and sister to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is a moderate focused on gun control and abortion rights.
Brendan Martin, a Democratic activist in Rockland County with experience advising national campaigns, also has concerns about Jones’ competitiveness in a general election.
“He gave up on us, and I think it’s kind of disheartening that he wants to date us again,” Martin said, noting Jones closed his office to new constituent service requests two months before he officially left office. “There are exes for a reason.”
Jones told HuffPost that he had wound down his operations at the advice of the Chief Administrative Officer of the Capitol, whose office runs the U.S. Capitol complex, and feared handing over a high number of unfinished constituent cases that would risk slipping through the cracks during the transition.
Jones’ first stint in Congress came to an unexpectedly early end last summer following New York Democrats’ redistricting fiasco. The state’s highest court threw out the congressional map drawn by state Senate Democrats on the grounds that they were motivated by partisan advantage.
The new map, drafted by a court-appointed political scientist, put Jones into conflict with Maloney, who announced his plans to run in New York’s 17th District before Jones made his intentions publicly known. Jones would end up running in the state’s new 10th Congressional District in lower Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn, where he lost to Rep. Dan Goldman, a self-funder, in the August primary. For his part, Maloney lost to Lawler in November. Jones moved back to Westchester County soon after.
To Jones and his allies, the criticism of his decision to run elsewhere in 2022 feels like an unfair jab at somebody who was already an innocent casualty of the state’s chaotic redistricting process.
“Every candidate has some personal history,” said Suzanne Berger, a Jones ally and chair of the Westchester County Democratic Party. “And in Mondaire’s case, the people who care about his relocation to Brooklyn think he was pushed out and so don’t take that as abandonment.”
In any event, the drama over New York’s congressional district boundaries is not yet over. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both Democrats, are now in the process of appealing for the right to redraw the congressional district map.
I’ve lived here for 20 years consistently. I’m invested in this district.Liz Gereghty
It is unclear whether they will prevail and, if so, how they would redraw the districts. Overall, Democrats benefit from making New York’s 17th District more closely resemble the district where Jones won in 2020. That district, which contained the racially diverse city of White Plains, was more liberal. Biden carried New York’s old 17th District by 20 percentage points in 2020, compared to the 10 points by which he carried the new one.
A more Democratic-leaning district would presumably weaken the electability-driven arguments for nominating a more moderate Democrat. But Jones, who supports Hochul and state Senate Democrats’ effort to redraw the districts, framed his position in terms of the imperative for “communities of interest” to remain in the same district.
“I love the district that has been drawn, but it is also a district that does not make the most sense,” he said.
Gereghty declined to offer an opinion on the matter when asked.
Jones has begun to take subtle shots at Gereghty that seek to paint her as an interloper backed by interests outside the district.
“This is not a Washington-driven campaign or even a Michigan-driven campaign,” Jones said. “This is a campaign that is rooted in the Hudson Valley, in New York’s 17th Congressional District.”
Gereghty defended her local bona fides without responding in kind.
“I’ve lived here for 20 years consistently. I’m invested in this district. I care about the people, and I’m willing to do the work. I’m not going anywhere.”
Gereghty noted she had worked to secure funding to prevent school shootings in the district, and other colleagues credited her with helping shepherd the district through the COVID-19 pandemic and with changing the name of a local high school’s sports teams from the “Indians” to the “Wolves.”
Terrence Cheng, who served alongside Gereghty on the school board ― and happens to be the head of Connecticut’s state college and university system ― characterized her as a “practical and very charismatic” voice, whom he hoped could help de-escalate partisan polarization in Washington much as she had locally.
“I didn’t even know that Liz was related to Gov. Whitmer until over a year into our working together on the board,” Cheng added. “That says something about a person ― that she doesn’t need to name drop.”
