Mike Johnson’s running for his life – and possibly Trump’s – this election

HUDSON VALLEY, NY — The foliage is spectacular, but there’s little respite in upstate New York for people trying to escape this year’s elections. Yard signs are everywhere, and if you flip on a TV or YouTube, chances are you’ll hear ominous music before an ad accuses one member of Congress or another of being either a “sellout” or “so extreme, it’s dangerous.”

“I'm here today to cut through the BS that you see on television,” first-term Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY) told local upstate New York business owners recently.

Good luck with that.

While there are lots of loud pro-Trump signs up here, the presidential contest is a sideshow even in rural parts of this blue state. The main event here is the fight for control of the House of Representatives, evidenced by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) once again crisscrossing the same sprawling upstate New York district Friday.

A rural residence in Saugerties, NY. (Photo: Matt Laslo/Raw Story)

The two party leaders know their personal futures — and those of their respective parties, including potentially the presidency itself — are on the line in battleground districts like these from coast to coast. Still, the two leaders have been paying particular attention to New York contests of late, for good reason.

“The final battleground”

While this year’s Senate map is favorable for Republicans and gives them a solid chance of recapturing the chamber Tuesday, Democrats only need four more House seats to win back the majority. And as many as seven races are up for grabs across the Empire State.

Even Democrats who are all-in for Vice President Kamala Harris say that in the event her blue wall—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin—fails and Trump recaptures the White House, the House of Representatives is Democrats' last potential check on the twice-impeached former president and the GOP he’s remade in his populist image.

“They're really intense — ground game! They matter. It's the balance of power in the House,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) — who many New Yorkers barely know is up for reelection this year — told Raw Story this fall. “We have to win the House because the House is the final battleground to prevent the horrible things that a Trump presidency would do.”

A rare Gillibrand reelection sign in West Point, NY. (Photo: Matt Laslo/Raw Story)

In 2020, Trump and his allies filed some 60 lawsuits after the election. This year, roughly a week ahead of Election Day, Democratic lawyer Marc Elias reported there were “199 active voting and election cases pending in 40 states,” and the conservative-leaning Roberts Supreme Court already ruled in Trump's favor on one of them challenging a last-minute purge of the voter rolls in Virginia.

With the Trump campaign suing early and often nationwide, challenging everything from mail-in ballots and state voter rolls to drop boxes and overseas ballots, Democrats argue their party needs the House majority back because they don’t trust Johnson in the speaker’s chair when the election is certified Jan. 6, 2025.

Democrats say that’s all the more true after Sunday’s Madison Square Garden rally, where former President Donald Trump hinted at an election secret—“...we will tell you what it is when the race is over…”—he shared with Speaker Johnson.

With the election mere days away, party leaders' final push in upstart New York is telling, but it may not be enough.

Embattled congressional incumbents across the region have been working hard to maintain their brand identities since the 2022 midterms, but the 2024 election cycle is testing whether moderates are now mere mythical creatures.

“They don't blame that on House Republicans”

During halftime at a recent home Mahopac High School football game, after a short speech, suitless Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) walked through a sea of his voter’s children, pausing for an occasional selfie in this exurb of New York City.

Rep. Mike Lawler marking the 50th anniversary of the 1974 State Champion Mahopac High School football team (Photo: Matt Laslo/Raw Story)

“Is that Mike Lawler?” a couple of giggling young girls ask.

“How are you?” Lawler replies.

“When six-year-olds know who you are, it’s like — it says something,” Lawler says through a fatherly, if slightly depressed, laugh. “I don't hide. You have to be present.”

And Lawler’s, seemingly, been everywhere. He’s held nearly 1,000 events across his district in the past 21 months. Children recognize him from all the ads he’s in these days, even as many parents know him for regularly appearing on local television or CNN, whether he’s speaking on behalf of the more liberal wing of his far-right party or, say, apologizing for wearing blackface in college.

Outside groups and his opponent, former Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), have spent countless millions of dollars portraying Lawler as a rubber-stamp for Speaker Johnson, his colleague’s far-right agenda and Washington dysfunction. That’s precisely what Lawler doesn’t want his constituents to know him for, even as this Congress has been one big ball of GOP-fueled dysfunction.

Lawler’s party is in the majority, but it can’t fund the government without relying on Democrats. Lawmakers nearly defaulted on the nation’s debt last summer. And Republicans shut down Congress itself for some three weeks last fall as the party bitterly battled behind closed doors over former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s replacement.

“Like, what's your pitch?” Raw Story asked as the marching band took the field. “Because there's been so much dysfunction in the House…”

“You guys — the media — zeros in on that. That's not where people are. They're looking at the actual substance of the issues,” Lawler told Raw Story. “The affordability crisis? They don't blame that on House Republicans, they blame that on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The border crisis? They don't blame that on House Republicans, they blame that on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”

While Republicans across the northeast used to inhabit the moderate middle, in recent years at the federal level most have evolved into something many New Yorkers barely recognize.

New York Republican’s Trumpian turn

Take Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). After winning in 2014, the conservative Club for Growth described her as “very much a liberal” because she advocated for things like conservatives leading on climate change. She was hailed as the youthful future of the GOP.

In 2015, she became the youngest female member of Congress in history (a record she relinquished to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in 2019). The Republican Policy Committee created a new Taskforce on Millennials for her to chair. And she’s risen in the ranks since.

She transformed in the first Trump administration, and then, in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Stefanik replaced former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) in House GOP leadership. Climate change is now a curse to her, as she tries to curry favor with Trump by moving the Republican Conference even further to the right.

Earlier in this Congress, Stefanik teamed up with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) when the two introduced companion measures to expunge Trump’s impeachments (even as many legal scholars say that’s impossible).

While Stefanik represents a sprawling, seemingly safe rural seat bordering Canada, incumbent Republicans who live closer to New York City have also been turning heads this cycle by mirroring Trump.

Reminder to vote at a Hudson Valley liquor store. (Photo: Matt Laslo/Raw Story)

From moderate to MAGA

While MAGA is en vogue in today’s GOP, following Donald Trump’s lead gets expensive real quick in the suburbs of New York City, where Trump made a name for himself on Page Six over the decades.

The Trump effect has played a big role in why Molinaro — the Republican congressman who promised to “cut through the BS” up top — has found himself locked in a roughly $38.4 million rematch with his Democratic opponent, Harvard-educated lawyer Josh Riley.

In 2022, Molinaro beat Riley by a mere 2%, and they’re neck and neck again. This is why both Johnson and Jeffries are spending Friday in New York’s 19th district as the race for the speaker’s gavel heats up in the final hours.

Molinaro is a former Dutchess County town executive known for being pragmatic, at least in the past. He gained respect statewide in 2018 for running for the state Republican Party and challenging then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo as a strong, if young, moderate conservative.

Molinaro held his own, in part by keeping Trump at a distance, like when he called Cuomo a “schoolchild” after the governor pressed him on Trump in their debate. Back then, he refused to say whether or not he voted for Trump. After two years in Washington, the Lugar Center and Georgetown University’s McCourt School named him the second most bipartisan House member.

But his critics say something changed this election cycle. The Molinaro running in 2024 is all-in on Trump. He now pushes the party line on immigration and policing.

But he really turned heads for refusing to remove his tweet on X that perpetuates the Springfield, Ohio migrant conspiracy, even after upwards of 30 bomb threats were called in to schools and government buildings in the formerly sleepy midwestern town.

Molinaro’s tweet on X spreading lies about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio that he’s refused to take down since posting it Sept. 9, 2024.

“Congressman, you've been criticized for amplifying unfounded claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were capturing and eating pets,” a moderator asked in their October debate. “What is your response to the criticism that your claims are both inflammatory and dangerous?”

“You've missed all of the year and a half of us arguing for real border security,” Molinaro replied. “I voted for the strictest border security policy in generations, and the president of the United States chose not to negotiate.”

“He wouldn't answer the question as to whether he stands by a dangerous and harmful conspiracy theory that he's been peddling,” Riley told the audience. “Maybe you're embarrassed about it. I would be if those words had come out of my mouth.”

That’s far from the middle-of-the-road conservative upstate New Yorkers knew when he first became a small town mayor. Still, that’s the Molinaro many residents remember — despite all the accusations flying in what’s become the 4th most expensive House race in 2024.

“These are our people. These are our people from our community, and they are present locally — they try and be present locally,” Jennifer — a regional executive who asked we withhold her last name to keep politics out of her business — told Raw Story after the candidate’s forum.

No place for bipartisanship in 2024 election

The record of incumbent Republicans in these parts is complicated.

The delegation was pivotal in forcing GOP leaders to let the House vote to expel former Rep. George Santos (R-NY). And they’ve teamed up with Democrats on locally essential measures, like cleaning up the Hudson River, which Reps. Lawler, Molinaro and Pat Ryan (D-NY) collaborated on.

But 2024 isn't about bipartisanship. It’s about winning and expanding the party.

“I certainly want a Democratic majority,” Ryan told Raw Story after he and Molinaro addressed the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce candidate’s forum. “Marc and I have worked together. Like, we are genuinely friends on the human level — we've taken our kids to Blippi shows together — but we disagree on a whole lot of stuff.”

Campaign signs dot the Hudson Valley ahead of Tuesday’s elections (Photo: Matt Laslo/Raw Story)

While many GOP incumbents have tried to distance themselves from party infighting and the ensuing Washington dysfunction, Democrats have been making the case that moderate Republicans are extinct. But Ryan goes further and has been running against Speaker Johnson himself.

“I always try to remind people, one of the most — if not the most — important votes you take as members is who will be speaker. And we've seen [fmr. Speaker Kevin] McCarthy fail to deliver anything. Now we've seen Johnson — who represents the most extreme right-wing in the party — be selected as a speaker, the guy who authored the national abortion ban bill, was a legal architect of Jan. 6, attacked LGBTQ rights,” Ryan said. “When I tell people that they almost sort of sit up.”

For their part, the GOP has painted upstate New York Democrats as far-left radicals. Ryan’s been criticized for campaigning with Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), especially after he — gasp! — hugged her at an October event.

The Democrat brushes the barbs aside, in part by regularly bragging about standing up nationally to the Biden administration on, say, immigration while also pushing back locally against Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) on unpopular measures like congestion pricing in New York CIty.

What presidential contest?

That doesn’t mean the incumbent wants to talk about this year’s Democratic presidential nominee, as the audience learned at the candidate’s forum.

“You’re all smart, educated, informed people, I’m not here to talk about the presidential race,” Ryan said. “In a pretty unusual way, I’ve been willing to stand up and speak truth to my party in a way that doesn’t happen that often these days in our politics.”

“This is the difference between speaking one way and actions,” his GOP challenger, former NYPD officer Alison Esposito, replied. “The congressman has been a rubber-stamp for the failed Biden-Harris administration on many levels.”

“I’m actually not gonna unpack it mistruth by mistruth, what I am gonna remind everybody is, my opponent didn’t actually answer the question whatsoever,” Ryan replied. “I am gonna vote for Kamala Harris.”

While Esposito didn’t tell the audience who she was voting for, in the hall afterward, she told Raw Story she was backing Trump.

“I'm not voting for Harris, I'm not. Absolutely, yeah, I'm voting for Trump,” Esposito told Raw Story. “[Ryan] has no policy to stand on, so he needs to make this election about MAGA, Trump, abortion — existential threats.”

Handmade sign in upstate New York. (Photo: Matt Laslo/Raw Story)

MAGA’s on the ballot

In the campaign's final week, Speaker Johnson also has events scheduled with a candidate in New Jersey, a candidate North Carolina, a candidate in Virginia and a fundraiser with a Connecticut candidate (who’s thought to have no real chance of winning, wealthy friends and all).

After traversing his home state, Minority Leader Jeffries is heading to Alabama to help former Obama aide Shomari Figures try and pick up the newly redrawn Black-majority seat that resulted from the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting a GOP drawn electoral map last year. Then Jeffries is off to Michigan where three seats are in play.

With its staggering seven seats in play, New York has been, basically, one-stop shopping for both parties since the midterms, but with this year’s razor-thin polling margins, the Empire State is now the epicenter of Election 2024.

“If Trump wins, is your pitch to voters, we need the House to be a check on him?” Raw Story asked.

“Absolutely, absolutely,” House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) told Raw Story on the campaign trail recently. “No matter what happens at the top of the ticket, we need the House.”

But more so, Democrats have come to see the House as the fount of extremism in today’s Washington, as it’s been the chamber legitimizing and magnifying Trump’s message, conspiracies and all. And they especially don’t trust today’s conspiracy-peddling House majority in charge when the House is tasked with certifying the election on Jan. 6, 2025.

That’s why across the northeast — once the land of clear-headed, if brash, political titans dotted throughout U.S. history — voters are being told America needs them.

“We’ve had a do-nothing Congress that is also one that has true extremism in its leadership,” Clark said. “The so-called moderates go along with the most extreme parts of that agenda, so winning the House is absolutely crucial to continuing to put solutions before the American people and not just MAGA extremism.”