The many missteps of Mondaire Jones

As he looks to unseat Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, former Rep. Mondaire Jones isn’t too worried about the fact that Sean Patrick Maloney, the former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, lost the seat to Lawler two years ago. He argues that people in the 17th Congressional District know him much better than Maloney, owing to his two years representing them in Congress during the Biden years.

Returning to the Lower Hudson Valley district after a doomed run for the 10th Congressional District in Manhattan and Brooklyn, Jones is banking on his existing relationships in the district. While Jones may be remembered in the district, he may not be well-liked – largely thanks to a series of self-inflicted blunders.

Jones was a progressive when he entered politics amid the Black Lives Matter protests and the pandemic. That label still haunts him, as Lawler looks to link him to the “defund the police” movement and brings up his past comments calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement a “racist institution.” Since leaving Congress, Jones has made a concerted effort to change the way voters see him, calling out leftists “who are more interested in burning shit down” than working to make incremental change. In the process, he has alienated a chunk of the district’s progressive base that previously supported him strongly. The flashpoint came earlier this year, when he endorsed Westchester County Executive George Latimer over Rep. Jamaal Bowman during a heated primary battle. Jones criticized his former colleague’s strident denunciations of Israel, which he said had made his Jewish constituents feel unsafe.

The backlash was immediate. The Congressional Progressive Caucus rescinded its endorsement and the New York Working Families Party, which had invested heavily to support Bowman, announced that it would no longer assist Jones’ campaign.

The WFP never rescinded its endorsement of Jones, but the damage was done. The effect was that he lost the WFP’s ballot line. The Lawler campaign sent out misleading mailers to voters implying that the WFP had withdrawn all support for Jones, while conservatives were encouraged to register as WFP members in order to vote in the primary. And Anthony Frascone, a former registered Republican, defeated Jones in the WFP primary. Lawler has not confirmed any links to the registration drive or to Frascone's candidacy.

WFP Co-Director Ana María Archila said the scheme confused WFP voters who normally don’t need to vote in primaries and the party had to play catch-up to try to keep Jones on the ballot. “The combination of a very public political fracture and the fact that we were having to contact voters to show up to an election that they normally wouldn’t show up to, those two factors (mattered),” Archila said. “But really it was more than anything, the fact that Frascone had registered voters very recently, just with the purpose of getting them to show up to his election.”

The presence of a third-party candidate may not make or break most elections, but Maloney lost to Lawler in 2022 by decimal points. In that race, Maloney garnered 8,273 votes on the WFP line – and those votes could make all the difference for Jones. According to a recent poll by Emerson College, Lawler is leading Jones 45%-44%, with Frascone getting 3%. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in the district have sued to try to get Frascone kicked off the ballot.

Moderates have their own bone to pick with Jones, who left the Hudson Valley in 2022 when he chose to run for an open House seat in New York City. Although it was once widely believed that Jones had been pushed out of his district by Maloney following redistricting, City & State reported earlier this year that Maloney had actually offered to let Jones run in the district, which Jones declined to do.

Jones has a habit of alienating onetime allies. While praising former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in an interview with New York magazine, Jones implied that Gov. Kathy Hochul was a “little bitch” in comparison – despite her work to support a statewide coordinated campaign to flip and retain House seats in swing districts, including his own. (Jones later said that he apologized to Hochul about the incident.)

Veteran political consultant Hank Sheinkopf called Jones a “phony” and said that voters in the district can see that his decision-making seems to be driven purely by “political expediency.”

“It smacks of just gross political manipulation, and it’s not going to work out well for him, likely because Lawler is popular, and there are segments of that population that are as likely to vote for Mondaire Jones as the average person is to take poison,” Sheinkopf said.

Sheinkopf conceded that Jones may have a path to victory if abortion remains one of the top issues on the minds of voters in the 17th Congressional District. Democrats are certainly trying to keep the issue top of mind for voters, including a proposal on November’s ballot that would enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution through the Equal Rights Amendment. But the Emerson College poll found that just 2% of voters in the district said abortion was the biggest issue facing the state, which might not bode well for Jones.

He believes that his path to victory lies in painting his opponent Lawler as an extreme Republican. “We have got to work extra hard to make sure people understand who this guy is and understand who my opponent is, and when people understand that, they choose me decisively,” he said outside a candidate forum in Putnam County.

He is far less concerned about his standing within his own party. Quibbles from the left don’t concern him, in part, because he believes he didn’t lose any votes as he changed his image. And he is confident that his record in Congress – which included votes in favor of additional grants for local law enforcement – will dispel any attempts to paint him as a leftist. He still has a race to run, but in his mind, everything is fine.

“The party is not divided when it comes to me,” Jones said. “Sure, it was a controversial decision that I made in June, but that’s different from (saying) progressives aren’t supporting Mondaire Jones.”