Rep. Mondaire Jones downplays newcomer status in N.Y.’s 10th congressional district race

When Rep. Mondaire Jones ran for Congress in Westchester and Rockland two years ago, his ties to the district were something he highlighted often on the campaign trail.

But now — as he runs a new campaign for a different seat that covers Brooklyn and lower Manhattan — his roots and where he’s lived before are topics he seems far less comfortable with.

After a protracted legal battle over how New York’s Congressional lines would be redrawn, Jones, a Democrat, found himself in the uncomfortable spot of having to decide where to run. The redistricting, which meant the redrawing of borders for Congressional maps, put his home in Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s district and generally led to quite a bit of Democratic infighting.

In the days after the new maps were released, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who represents a neighboring Dutchess County district, decided it would be in his best interest to run for Jones’ current seat. Jones, in turn, slammed his congressional neighbor, saying Maloney didn’t even give him “a heads up” before tweeting the announcement.

But Jones ultimately bowed out of a re-election bid for his current seat, opting instead to run, not for Bowman’s seat, but for a Manhattan-Brooklyn post he has far fewer ties with.

Despite his advantages — he’s viewed as a politically-talented progressive and has amassed a $2.8 million war chest so far — his political calculation has dogged him.

In general, his response to questions about it has been to downplay his residency or argue that the 10th Congressional District is where he became his “authentic self,” as he said in the Daily News recently. Last month, he even accused the city’s chattering classes of “harping over” the issue, effectively dismissing his newcomer status as irrelevant.

“Harping over the length of someone’s residency in a district and lines that were just drawn a few weeks ago is something that the political class, including many journalists, give outsize weight to,” he told the NY Times recently.

But it wasn’t so long ago that Jones himself placed a lot of weight into where he lived — only then, it was within his current congressional district.

During his 2020 campaign, Jones said on Instagram that “there’s no greater feeling than to be running to represent the community that raised me.” And after winning, he told News12 that “nothing beats living in Westchester and Rockland counties.”

“I promise you that I’m not going anywhere,” he said on election night after it became clear he won the June 2020 primary. “These seats don’t just materialize overnight. And I’m gonna stay here for a long time and make sure that you have the champion that you deserve, that I deliver the kind of representation that this district deserves.”

Jones, who grew up in Spring Valley, even went so far as to attack his opponents in the race for being carpetbaggers.

“I’ve spent the vast majority of my life in this district. And that is a stark contrast with at least half of the folks running it seems,” he said during one interview. “You know half the folks running against me just moved back to the district — Chappaqua in particular frankly — over the past few months.”

Jones was presumably referring to Evelyn Farkas, an opponent who grew up in Chappaqua, moved to D.C. and then moved back to Westchester.

“She grew up in Chappaqua, and after several decades of being away, working in Washington as a senior defense department official, has returned to run for congress,” he added.

Jones even praised voters for their discernment on the topic of residency, raising that aspect of the issue when speaking of another opponent at the time, Adam Schleifer.

“I thank God to the people of this district, New York’s 17th Congressional District, for evaluating the candidates, seeing who’s what, and who actually cares about this district, who didn’t just move back here,” Jones said during another interview.

In 2020, Jones also vowed in an interview to prioritize “the people I’m running to represent.”

“I will always put them over someone else’s ego, or, you know, desire to rise in leadership,” he said.

After choosing against running for reelection in the district he currently represents, Jones entered a crowded field for the Brooklyn-Manhattan seat that features several candidates with deep ties to the area.

His Democratic opponents include former Mayor Bill de Blasio, Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon (D-Brooklyn), Councilwoman Carlina Rivera (D-Manhattan), former federal prosecutor Dan Goldman and former Congresswoman Liz Holtzman, among others.

Simon, who joined the Assembly in 2015, has lived in Brooklyn for more than 40 years and had been active in civic groups for years prior to representing Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Gowanus in Albany.

She wouldn’t call Jones out by name when asked about his recent arrival — he moved to Carroll Gardens just several weeks ago — but she did emphasize her own long tenure as a community leader.

“I started getting involved in my community about 20 years after moving here after someone was shot in the head at the bodega across from my house,” she said of one of the issues that prompted her to get civically involved, adding: “When you have a record of serving the public, people respond to that. I think that’s the way people vote.”

Jones’ spokesman Bill Neidhardt blamed the redistricting on a “Republican-backed gerrymandering plan,” which he said put Jones’ old residence within the district of Bowman, who like Jones, is Black.

“Any Democrat who prefers pitting two Black progressives against each other is not acting in the best interest of our city or party,” Neidhardt said. “The only candidate in this field who doesn’t live in this district is Councilmember Carlina Rivera, but what should really decide this race is whether a candidate can prove they can deliver progressive results in Congress, and only Congressman Mondaire Jones can say that.”

Rivera, who represents the East Village and parts of the Lower East Side, has also touted her local bona fides during her run and on Wednesday called Jones “the representative from upstate.” She moved a few blocks north of the current Congressional district prior to the redistricting, but has lived within its borders for most of her life.

“I went to school here. I played basketball here. You know, I was married downtown. Every milestone in my life is here,” she said.

When asked about Jones’ history in the district, Rivera’s spokeswoman Alyssa Cass pointed not only to his current district, but to the fact that as a Congressman, he voted remotely from France and has said he plans to travel around the United States to boost other Dems if he’s elected.

“Congressman Jones currently represents Westchester, votes remotely from France, and says he’s heading to Arizona after the election,” Cass said. “If you’re that disinterested in New York City, why even bother running here?”

Before he was mayor, de Blasio represented several Brooklyn neighborhoods as a City Council member, and the vast majority of that district lays within the Congressional district he’s now vying for. Holtzman, who currently lives in downtown Brooklyn, noted that she’s “been a resident of this district for a very long time — before it was even a district.”