Mondaire Jones launched a comeback bid for the New York House of Representatives on July 4, through a masterfully crafted campaign video.
Jones’ tagline for his campaign is centered around how personal this race is for him and, on his website, his announcement video featured this theme prominently. Jones emphasized his working-class background, positioning himself as someone who is interested first and foremost in the well-being of New York’s workers.
Jones is running against the sister of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Liz Whitmer Gereghty, for the Democratic nomination in New York’s 17th Congressional District. Gereghty is expected to position herself as a moderate Democrat in her effort to flip the House seat from Republican incumbent Mike Lawler.
According to his website, Jones was responsible for negotiating the passage of the bipartisan Infrastructure Act as well as getting the American Rescue Plan Act passed. Both of these legislative actions helped to establish Jones as a rising star in the Democratic party and also led to him being named the most legislatively active freshman in Congress during his term.
Though Jones was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus during his tenure, he still voted to increase police funding and to give Israel more money for their Iron Dome project. Both of these were moves that did not sit well with leftists and seemed inconsistent with Jones’ general platform, as he supported the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. Jones seems aware of this, as he took a little time to discuss his past choice to vote for increased police funding in his announcement video.
Jones elected not to run for the position last cycle after gerrymandered redistricting shuffled the area he would be representing. Jones seemed to regret that choice as he told News 12 Westchester in an interview: “I never imagined that I would wake up one day and would have to decide against primarying a member of the Democratic party at a time when we were seeing an assault on our democracy,” Jones explained. “To that extent, yeah, I do regret not being the Democratic nominee last cycle.”
I’ve never been Washington’s choice. It’s because I stand up to corruption. I battle with Republicans trying to overthrow our democracy & ban abortion, even as I push my party to fight harder for working people.
I’m running to finish the work I began. Chip in >>… pic.twitter.com/iDO1yYYUH6
Source: Black Enterprise
