Dick Hubert’s Worldview: Mondaire Jones tries to avoid chaos while steering his political career
June 27, 2024 at 12:20 a.m.
Tuesday night, June 25, was, for local Democrats and political junkies of all stripes, an institutional earthquake.
Less than an hour after the polls closed, the New York Times proclaimed: “Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York, one of Congress’s most outspoken progressives, suffered a stinging primary defeat on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, brought down by a record-shattering onslaught from pro-Israel groups and a slate of self-inflicted blunders.
Mr. Bowman was defeated by George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, in a race that became the year’s ugliest intraparty brawl and the most expensive House primary in history.”
But even before adjusting to these results, I could not help but reflect on the personal career upheaval of our former (when we were the 17th District) Democratic Congressman, Mondaire Jones.
When Jones first ran in 2020 for our then Congresswoman Nita Lowey’s seat in the Democratic primary, he seemingly emerged out of nowhere to beat a formidable array of local notables who all decided to go after the soon-to-be-vacated Lowey seat but wound up splitting the vote up into small pieces.
As public radio’s WAMC in Albany looked southward and described the scene here at the time:
“Jones defeated a raft of other candidates in New York’s 17th Congressional District, currently represented by Democrat Nita Lowey who is retiring after more than 30 years in Congress. The district includes parts of Westchester County and all of Rockland County. Jones is 33 and had earned endorsements from U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He defeated primary opponents including former U.S. Defense Department official Evelyn Farkas, former federal prosecutor Adam Schleifer and state Sen. David Carlucci.”
The Journal News’ Mark Lungariello summed up Jones’ promise in one pithy sentence.
“Jones, who grew up in Section 8 housing in Rockland and eventually graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Law School, received national media attention from the likes of CNN for his likely win as a harbinger of change in the traditionally moderate suburbs.”
That he was Black and proudly gay didn’t hurt in a district with a host of liberal Democrats east of the Hudson River who could counterbalance the far more conservative west side of the Hudson River part of the 17th.
It also was a plus when Port Chester’s Joan Grangenois-Thomas wound up after the November 2020 election as his District Manager.
Jones was responsive, charming, and someone local Democrats (and not a few independents and Republicans) could support.
And then, just as he was building his reputation and record, BOOM, redistricting occurred under a court-appointed special master, and Jones’ district was broken apart.
Rye Brook and Port Chester wound up in the 16th District with Jamaal Bowman as our Congressman, with the west side of the Hudson River now in the newly reconfigured 17th District with then Democratic Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney.
Jones’ excruciating 2020 choice
I can only imagine the anguish Jones faced.
He could challenge a fellow Black, Jamaal Bowman, in a primary contest in the 16th.
Or, he could go back to his Spring Valley, Rockland County roots and challenge Maloney.
He did neither.
Instead, he embarked on what in retrospect was a fool’s errand, running for Congress as what locals termed a “carpetbagger” in the newly drawn 10th District in Brooklyn. As the political news site Roll Call described the outcome at the time:
“Jones, who in 2020 became one of the first two openly gay Black men elected to Congress, finished third in the Democratic primary for New York’s 10th District. Dan Goldman, who was a staff attorney for the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, came in first, while state Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou came in second. Goldman had 26 percent, Niou 24 percent and Jones 18 percent when the Associated Press called the race at 12:39 a.m. Wednesday.”
I always thought he should have challenged Bowman.
Jones runs again in 2024—
a different political world
So now it’s 2024. And Jones has decided to make another run for Congress in his old 17th District stomping grounds.
But this time out, he’s facing Republican Michael Lawler, who beat Maloney in 2022.
Lawler is the great political hope for Republicans not just on the Rockland County side of the river, but Republicans in what is now the 16th District as well.
While local Republicans pretty much abandoned putting money and staffing resources into fielding a candidate against Bowman in 2022, and look to repeat that against Latimer in 2024, they are going all out for Lawler.
Rye’s Julie Powers Killian, who was the Republican nominee for Lt. Governor in 2018 along with then GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Molinaro (now a Congressman), this past Saturday hosted a major fundraiser with her husband Gary for Lawler, with House Speaker Mike Johnson as special guest.
Faced with this formidable competition, as well as the Lawler campaign’s attacks on Jones’ “progressive” roots, Jones did something that stunned his current backers, and even surprised a host of political observers.
He endorsed George Latimer over Jamaal Bowman in a public media conference on June 4 in Tarrytown. That Village was split in half by redistricting in 2022, with half of it in Bowman’s 16th District and the other half in Lawler’s 17th District.
As WCBS 2’s Tony Aiello noted:
“Jones, a former Bowman ally, cites Bowman's criticism of Israel as a big factor in his decision to endorse Latimer.
‘Jewish residents in my district feel anxiety, fear and anger due to Representative Bowman's words and actions in particular and an overall climate in this country,’ Jones said.
‘My position on Israel, I think, is not only similar to Mondaire's, but I think it's the mainstream of the Democratic conference,’ Latimer said.
Breaking with Bowman could help him with Jewish voters there as Jones tries to unseat Republican incumbent Mike Lawler. Lawler's campaign sent around a clip from 2020 where Jones says, ‘We need more people like myself and Mr. Bowman in Congress.’”
Jones’ current political mess
You don’t have to be a political guru to see who has it in for Jones now.
The incoming political fire is coming from the Democratic left and the Republicans, and it’s not clear who’s doing what to whom.
Jones is denying reports that Maloney offered to step aside in 2022 in favor of Jones, and that he turned him down.
As Chris McKenna reported in The Journal News:
“He (Jones) told CNN that the story, which relied on unnamed sources, was untrue, and suggested progressive Democrats made it up to retaliate for his rebuking Rep. Jamaal Bowman days earlier.”
Last Saturday, David McKay Wilson in The Journal News reported that “the Lawler campaign has sent out mailings highlighting Jones’ endorsement of Westchester County Executive George Latimer in Latimer's bid to oust Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-Yonkers.”
So with Republicans and “progressive” Democrats having it in for him, I suspect that one way or the other Jones will ask Latimer to campaign for him in the fall.
How that will go over in the Rockland County part of the 17th is anyone’s guess.
Suffice it to say that if you’re Mondaire Jones, redistricting is a wound that may never heal.
Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award.
Editor’s Note: This column, written by Dick Hubert, represents his opinion and not that of this newspaper.
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