Government & Politics

Lawler Retains His Seat With Commanding Victory Over Mondaire Jones

Published 6 months ago6m ago • Bookmarks: 77

November 6, 2024

By Barrett Seaman–

The Paramount Country Club in New City, on the Rockland County side of District 17, turned out to be an appropriate venue for Mike Lawler’s surprisingly robust victory over Mondaire Jones. The club was on the site of a mansion owned by Adolph Zukor, one of the founders of Paramount Pictures, and thus an apt setting for a Hollywood ending to a campaign that was supposed to be razor-thin close—and wasn’t.

Early returns displayed on jumbo TV screens in the club’s ballroom showed Lawler steadily up eight to ten points throughout the evening, a margin that settled in right around 12 points for the incumbent. When Lawler and his family finally came to the podium around 11:30 p.m., the usually dour incumbent’s bearded face was bathed in a wide grin as he declared, “Tonight, Hudson Valley told Mondaire Jones to beat it.”

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Lawler pointedly told his supporters that he had won over 81,000 votes in Rockland County alone. He didn’t fare so well in Tarrytown, where Jones garnered 1,112 votes to Lawler’s 602. Lawler lost Greenburgh and White Plains as well but made up the difference in Rockland, Putnam and points north.

Jones’s loss was an outlier in New York Congressional races, as other contested districts in the Hudson Valley and Long Island swung back to Democrats. George Latimer breezed to victory over Dr. Miriam Levitt Flisser by an almost three-to-one margin in District 16. In Tarrytown, he won 1,026 votes to his opponent’s 416.

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