Government & Politics

The Knives Are Out In CD-17 As Voting Starts

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One of the trucks hired by the Police Benevolent Association targeting Alessandra Biaggi

August 13, 2022

By Barrett Seaman—

A telltale sign of a close political race is if and when it gets nasty. In today’s polarized country as a whole, “nasty” is a relative term, but for a Democratic primary, the race for the party’s nomination in the newly drawn Congressional District 17 has become at the very least edgy as early voting began on Saturday, August 13^th.

Perhaps it was destined to be so when Sean Patrick Maloney jumped into the race early, causing incumbent Mondaire Jones to pack his bags and head into New York City’s 10^th District. Jones, who is gay and Black, was a particular favorite of progressives. As a freshman, he had moved quickly into a leadership position within the party caucus in Washington. Progressives in Westchester took umbrage at Maloney’s presumptuousness, and State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, granddaughter of longtime Bronx Congressman Mario Biaggi, donned the liberal mantle to do battle with him.

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Though the two opponents share most of the party’s tenets—gun control, reproductive rights, clean energy, Maloney is more centrist on bellweather issues like health insurance and policing. In their July League of Women Voters debate, he challenged Biaggi’s support for Medicare for All, charging that it left no room for any sort of private insurance—an issue important to many unions that have negotiated private insurance contracts with their employers (and that back Maloney).

The hot button issue that has risen to the forefront of the primary race, however, has been police reform. In the immediate wake of George Floyd’s murder in June of 2020, Biaggi joined the liberal chorus calling to defund the police. Enthusiasm for that has waned as crime rates have since risen across the country. Biaggi also championed cashless bail, a policy adopted by New York State only to see a handful of highly publicized cases backfire.

Biaggi has since walked back her support for the purist formulation of the “defund the police” movement. When asked about it at a recent “meet and greet” session in Sleepy Hollow, she allowed, as she did in a New York Times editorial board interview published this weekend, that that was “an act of solidarity” with those who were—and are—outraged by the George Floyd case and other instances of police brutality. She said she doesn’t use that term anymore, calling it “unworkable.” She does assert, however that she is “committed to what is behind it, which is police reform, police accountability, making sure that we are really thoughtful about how we can address police brutality in this country, because it’s not a new problem,” as she told the Times.

That may prove to be too nuanced a message—especially when it is up against a blunt counterattack spearheaded by the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York. Seen cruising through train stations and downtowns throughout Westchester and Putnam Counties have been several vans (with New Jersey license plates) plastered with “Alessandra Biaggi voted to release criminals without bail,” and reviving the “Defund the Police” issue. According to several progressive news sites that picked up the story, the PBA has spent some $400,000 against Biaggi. Maloney has not endorsed the negative campaign; he doesn’t have to.

For her part, Biaggi has hardly been a wallflower. Calling ethics reform one of her top issues, she has attacked Maloney for taking fossil fuel PAC money (she takes no PAC money), for supporting the Keystone XL Pipeline, for skipping a series of environmental forums, for voting against Obamacare.

Her favorite target, however, has been Maloney’s role as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in funneling party funds to support a Michigan MAGA Republican candidate, John Gibbs, in his primary fight against incumbent Peter Meijer, who had voted to impeach Trump. Gibbs won. He is not the only far-right candidate Democrats have furtively supported on the Machiavellian theory that they will be easier opponents in November, but Biaggi has singled Gibbs out as a particularly egregious example of party money ill-spent.

Biaggi only recently moved into the district from Pelham, buying a house in Bedford. Though not as well-known as Maloney, who has lived in Garrison with his husband for some time, she has campaigned widely and energetically. She is likely to do well in Sleepy Hollow and that half of Tarrytown that remains in CD-17, but much of the activist enthusiasm that helped put Mondaire Jones in office two years ago is now in the re-drawn CD-16. Maloney is expected to do well up-county and points north where Democrats tend to be more centrist and where Republicans are competitive.

On the GOP side, there are five listed candidates, but Assemblyman Mike Lawler is all but certain to be the party’s nominee. He is certainly running that way—more against “Joe Biden and Sean Patrick Maloney’s reckless inflationary agenda,” Kathy Hochul and liberals in general than he is against his intra-party competitors. In his campaign literature anyway, he does not mention Trump.

At least one recent poll showed Lawler with a narrow lead over Maloney and a larger one over Biaggi. National pollsters, like UVA’s Larry Sabato, still have the district leaning Democratic. Implicit in such judgments, however, is an assumption that Sean Patrick Maloney will be on the Democratic ticket.

For what it’s worth, the New York Times, on the day early voting started, endorsed Sean Patrick Maloney. The editorial board cited Biaggi’s approach to politics as “an appealing example of what the progressive movement in Congress could be,” but concluded that her opponent better represented the views of District 17.

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