The Post endorses Mike Lawler in NY-17 House race

In the fight for the new Rockland-Westchester 17th Congressional District, The Post endorses Assemblyman Mike Lawler over Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney. 

Lawler is a no-nonsense Republican with a vision to get the things that matter to New Yorkers done. 

On crime, he wants to end cashless bail and give judges back the power to actually make decisions based on a dangerousness standard. On the economy, he promises to fight back against disastrous policies that harm everyday citizens, including runaway government spending that drives inflation as well as regressive taxes on the less affluent, like the MTA’s insane congestion pricing plan. 

He’s also promising to battle woke nonsense in schools and talking sense on abortion — and worked with genuine bipartisan enthusiasm in his prior legislative career. 

In other words, he’s the model of a conscientious, serious elected official doing his best to fight for the interests of his voters. Which makes him the very opposite of his opponent. 

We’ll say it again: Sean Patrick Maloney is the most arrogant, self-serving incumbent in all New York, and possibly all of Congress. 

How? Let us count the ways. 

• He couldn’t be bothered to alert fellow Dem Rep. Mondaire Jones before announcing that he’d run in NY-17, which contains a lot more of Jones’ old district than it does Maloney’s — despite being the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, i.e. in charge of making sure Dems get elected and re-elected. 

• Speaking of new districts, Maloney was one of the presiding geniuses behind the New York Dems’ disastrous gerrymander effort in the first place — which failed and set the Empire State caucus to clawing at one another’s throats (and may end up costing Dems control of the House).
• In 2018, this joker ran for two offices at the same time, entering the state attorney general primary even as he stayed in the race for his then-House seat, in a scheme widely seen as part of then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s vendetta against progressive gadfly Zephyr Teachout. More, he shadily spent cash from his federal campaign fund on the state race.
• He also spent campaign bucks on what sure looks like a hire for personal services in the form of his aide Harold Leath (who’s registered to vote at the property Maloney lives in with his family), a move that is now the subject of a House ethics complaint.
• He’s a mastermind of the cynical Dem strategy of backing far-right congressional candidates — you know, the MAGA Republicans who represent an existential threat to democracy? — on the grounds that they’ll make weaker opponents come the midterms.

His policies are awful, too. In his 2018 AG run, he vowed to make ending cash bail a “top priority” if elected, only to fall back on supporting Gov. Hochul’s lame “fixes” after crime soared. He voted for all the Biden spending blowouts through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, yet told The New York Times in August, when inflation hit 8.3%, that “what we’ve done on the spending side” is not the “primary driver of this.” In the same interview, he again called for packing the Supreme Court and killing the filibuster, but dodged when asked about term limits.

Maloney fended off a primary challenge from socialist Alessandra Biaggi. But polling now shows Lawler ahead. No shock there: New Yorkers left and right alike are sick of self-dealing, smug insiders like Maloney putting their own interests ahead of the voters’ and even fellow Democrats’. 

Lawler is a standup guy; Maloney, a total tool. The choice is obvious.