Democratic congressional candidate Mondaire Jones on Tuesday denied once again that he was attacking New York Gov. Kathy Hochul when he expressed his desire for a Democratic governor who is a “political animal” — before using an expletive to describe the alternative — in a recent interview that spotlighted his race against Republican incumbent Mike Lawler for a swing district in the Lower Hudson Valley.
Speaking on WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show,” Jones said he was not referring to Hochul in a New Yorker story last month, where he was quoted saying he wanted a governor like former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has maintained influence within the party after decades in a leadership position. Pelosi herself had blamed Hochul for New York Democrats’ 2022 midterm losses that cost the party control of the chamber.
“The governor understands that I wasn't talking about her. She has said that publicly,” Jones said.
The former New York congressmember, who declined to seek re-election to his Hudson Valley seat after the 2022 redistricting and instead ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat in New York City, emphasized that he apologized to Hochul after the New Yorker story was published, and previously insisted that the reporter took his words “out of context.” Hochul has publicly acknowledged accepting Jones’ apology, though her spokesperson did not immediately clarify on Tuesday whether she felt his comments to the magazine were not specifically about her.
Jones is running against Lawler, a moderate Republican, to represent the 17th Congressional District, which is considerably less Democratic than when Jones was first elected as its representative in 2020. It is seen as a critical piece of Democrats’ bid to retake control of the U.S. House, and possibly Congress, this November.
The district spans four Hudson Valley counties — northern Westchester, Rockland and Putnam, and a sliver of Dutchess — where Lawler has a razor-thin lead in several polls, including recent polling commissioned by the Jones campaign. Lawler has attacked Jones over his prior embrace of calls to reduce police funding, which Jones has since walked back, as well as what Jones’ critics have called his defection from the district during the 2022 midterms, when the Democrat relocated to Brooklyn only to place third in the 10th District’s congressional primary.
In the New Yorker piece published last month, Jones said former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — whom Hochul succeeded after he stepped down following a series of sexual misconduct allegations — would not have stood idly by a redistricting process that sent Democrats into political disaster in 2022.
“I want my Democratic governor of New York to be a political animal — I want them to maximize Democratic power,” Jones told the magazine. “I want my Democratic governor of New York to be Nancy Pelosi, OK? And not some, like, little b---- who is afraid to stick his or her neck out.”
Jones added at the time, “By the way, I’m not talking about any specific person.”
Hochul has confirmed Jones called her to apologize over the perception he was attacking her leadership. “He apologized, but I hadn’t read the article,” she said last month. “But I accepted it. Anyone who wants to apologize to me can apologize to me and set the record straight.”
Lawler took to social media in the aftermath of the New Yorker story, writing, “Yikes!”
“This is an extremely demeaning and misogynistic way to talk about the first female governor in the history of New York,” he said.
