And They’re Off: Incumbents Lawler and Latimer Officially Launch Re-Election Bids
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By Barrett Seaman—
Unopposed from within his own party—in fact touted as the GOP’s best hope of retaining control of the House of Representatives, 17th District Congressman Mike Lawler officially launched his re-election campaign at a midday Sunday campaign event at the Elks Lodge in Nanuet, Rockland County, arguably ground zero of Lawler’s conservative base.
With far less fanfare on the same day, incumbent Democrat George Latimer, whose 16th District abuts Lawler’s through a divided Tarrytown, announced that his nearly 10,000 signatures and lack of opposition had secured his place on the Democratic line for the November 3rd general election. Also qualifying to be on the ballot are Independent John Franklin Wilson IV and Republican Joseph Cinquemani, though neither has reported raising any campaign contributions to date. Latimer is widely expected to win by a large margin.
Lawler’s launch was a full-blown campaign rally with a dozen local and regional supporters speaking on his behalf. They included former gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino and current GOP challenger to Governor Kathy Hochul, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. Among the speakers, Dr. Mark Geller, CEO of Montefiore Nyack Hospital, the county’s largest, praised Lawler’s effort to secure over $1 billion in federal funding for local hospitals; Philip Valenti of the Transport Workers Union International announced that his 70,000-member union was officially endorsing Lawler. Detective Patrick Casey, head of Rockland County’s Police Benevolent Association and other law enforcement officials credited Lawyer for his staunch support of the Back the Blue movement at the height of the Defund the Police movement that grew out of George Floyd’s 2020 death at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Blakeman, who has been hampered by low voter recognition, trails Hochul in the polls. While her lead has been narrowing in recent surveys, the race is considered hers to lose. At the Lawler event, Blakeman declared that throughout the state, “people are miserable with over-taxation, over-regulation that has brought [the state] to the bottom of economic development.” Lawler, he promised, would cut taxes, cut regulation, back the blue, wage war against antisemitism and work towards “a common sense immigration program.”
When he finally took the podium, Lawler tread the tightrope he has walked since taking office—touting his ability to “work across the aisle” and craft bipartisan solutions on the one hand while blasting Democrats as “radical and extreme.” Those opponents contend that Lawler has consistently voted for policies dictated by the Trump administration.
In his references to the current war against Iran, Lawler avoided directly criticizing the administration’s plunge into war and instead turned on Democrats. “My opponents cower to the antisemitic, anti-Israel and in many respects anti-American elements of their insane and reckless political base,” he said at one point. “They would rather see America fail and our enemies succeed.”
Lawler’s reluctance to fault Israel is understandable, given his solid support from Rockland’s large Hasidic community along with staunch defenders of Israel among the nearly 20% of District 17 voters who are Jewish. “The oppressor is not Israel,” Lawler declared at the campaign launch. “It is imperative that we stand up for Judeo-Christian values,” which e claimed Israel and America share.
Referring to the Westchester Democratic candidate forum at Manhattanville University a few days earlier. Lawler charged that all three of the candidates on the podium “support dangerous sanctuary state and city policies for criminal illegal immigrants and a return to the days of completely unchecked open borders.” All of them, he said, called for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection agency (CPB). “Every single one of them is opposed to the Working Families Tax cut, which saves the average Hudson Valley family over $4,000.”
Only twice in his speech was President Trump mentioned by name: once to credit the President for classifying Mexican drug cartels as “terrorists” and once as way of explaining liberal opposition to him. “These Democrats don’t just disagree with me over policy,” contended. “They literally hate me personally, and frankly, they hate many of you. Why? Because we’re Republican or because we voted for President Trump.”
Yet in almost the same breath, Lawler called for a more civilized approach to politics. “We should be able to disagree about policy without sowing discord and hate.”
The political discourse, however, is unlikely to reach that kind of civility until Lawler and those Democrats vying for his job can agree on what his positions are, as stated publicly or reflected in his actual voting record, and whether they help or hurt the district’s voters.
There are a number of issues—immigration and ICE tactics, tariffs, voting rights, support for Ukraine and NATO—where the positions are staked out and relatively clear. But two cases in particular beg for clarification from Lawler: first, he insists that the cuts in Medicaid included in the “Big, Beautiful Tax Bill” will only impact “waste, fraud and abuse,” while Democrats argue that they will strip more than ten million qualified Americans of their health insurance. Lawler claims the tax cuts he voted for are already triggering an average of $4,000 in refunds for all voters, while his opponents say they are going almost entirely to the highest bracket of earners. It is likely voters will know the answers to those questions—and others—before November 3rd.
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