In the News

Lawler is one of six freshman Republicans in New York whose 2022 victories in districts President Biden had carried two years earlier helped deliver the House majority and speaker’s gavel to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.). They are also now at the top of the Democrats’ hit list for 2024 as they seek to retake control of the chamber.

“How can you separate yourself from a really destructive agenda?” one constituent asked. “Do you acknowledge that climate change is real and poses an immediate threat?” shot another. “How sane are your Republican colleagues?” shouted an attendee, sitting toward the back.

After more than three hours of grilling, Lawler had kept his cool and stuck to his pitch for a moderate Republican platform, and some constituents seemed to have come around. “I like you more than I want to!” one Democratic voter said, prompting laughter in the room. 

Like his fellow GOP freshmen, Lawler is trying to tread a fine line between holding his conservative Republican constituents while also appealing to enough Democratic voters to win re-election. 

His victory came after New York legislators drew new House district boundaries before the 2022 election, prompting scrambling by some of the veterans. At that time, the district’s incumbent, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D., N.Y.), instead ran unsuccessfully for a seat in Brooklyn. Lawler eked out a victory against Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney by a margin of less than 2,000 votes.

Now, Jones—still a popular candidate in the district he won by more than 80,000 votes in 2020—has returned to his old turf in a quest to take back a seat in Congress by defeating Lawler.

The state’s 17th Congressional District, up the Hudson Valley from New York City, is more mixed than Biden’s win there might suggest. There are Republican strongholds that the Dutchess County Democratic Chairman Michael Dupree calls “the ninth circle of hell” for Democrats. 

Westchester, Dutchess and Putnam counties are solidly red or blue in the district. Rockland County, where both Lawler and Jones hail from, is a right-leaning battleground that is all sorts of purple, even down to individuals. 

Mark and Elaine Klein, Rockland retirees of West Haverstraw, N.Y., campaigned for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but “were raised as Democrats,” Mark, an 81-year-old former printer, said, donning a hat emblazoned with the words “Stand with Trump.” “I wear this hat wherever I go, and I get varying degrees of disrespect and acceptance,” he said.

“Nobody is conservative enough,” added Elaine, 80, about Lawler. “You can’t please everybody, but he’s on the right side of things.” 

The Kleins aren’t the only conservatives who are pragmatic about Lawler, who presents himself as a moderate to reflect his district. Jerry Kassar, the New York Conservative Party chair, said he anticipates the party might endorse Lawler in 2024 like it did in 2022. “I personally would not conclude that he is anyone other than conservative,” he said.

Lawler’s record features a number of high-profile moments when he broke with his party. An outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, Lawler was among the earliest voices to condemn the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and call for embattled Rep. George Santos (R., N.Y.) to resign. 

Democrats have tried to chip at his moderate veneer by attacking his party-line votes to restrict abortion access and on gun-safety provisions.

“He tends to be this reach-across-the-aisle kind of guy,” said Paul Diamond, a progressive activist in Rockland County. “But if you look at his record, he’s nothing more than a mouthpiece for all of the worst qualities of the Republican Party.”

However, Jones’s attacks on Lawler were undermined when Biden, visiting the district in the spring, praised the freshman incumbent. “He’s not one of these MAGA Republicans,” the president told a Westchester audience with Lawler sitting in the front row.

“Unfortunately, in our politics today, it’s become so black and white,” Lawler said in an interview. “I try to look at things rationally, reasonably.” 

For independents and moderates in the district, Lawler’s middle-of-the-road brand can be puzzling. “He talks the talk,” said Jerry Korn, an 81-year-old Clarkstown, N.Y., independent who took issue with some of Lawler’s “lopsided votes” with his party. “In actuality, what is he really?” 

Retired Spring Valley, N.Y., police officer Reggie Anderson, who is a registered Democrat and self-described independent, is facing a difficult choice given that he backed Lawler in the last election and has known his opponent, Jones, since the Democrat was a child. “I love Mondaire,” Anderson, 60, said. “We go to the same church.” Though he’s still undecided, Lawler just might have his vote because “he’s a proven person.” 

Mayor Mike Curley of Suffern, N.Y.—Lawler’s hometown—calls himself a Reagan Democrat who ran on the Democratic ticket yet earned the support of the Conservative Party and was former chairman of the local GOP branch. While he’s not about to predict the outcome of the race, he is certain of one thing: “It’s going to get dirty.” 

Trump has been indicted in New York for allegedly paying hush money to a porn star and in Georgia over efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He also faces federal charges related to the election-interference allegations, as well as for the mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump has denied wrongdoing and called those probes “witch hunts.”

“In a seat that looks like this, everyone is impacted by the presidential—or races above us,” said Rep. Marc Molinaro (R., N.Y.), a fellow freshman Republican from a neighboring district who is also running for re-election. 

Even if Lawler “is no right-wing screwball,” as New York Democratic political strategist Hank Sheinkopf put it, he might be running alongside candidates far more conservative than him on hot-button issues that might not sell well in the district. 

“Whether he likes it or not, Lawler is running with Trump,” Sheinkopf said.