Surge of new voters in Rockland boosts mystery opponent
Democrats usually carry the Working Families Party line in elections, but that will not be the case for Mondaire Jones in November as he seeks to defeat U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler for the U.S. House seat covering District 17, which includes Philipstown.
With the counting of absentee and affidavit ballots from the June 25 primary complete, little-known candidate Anthony Frascone used a surge of new Working Families registrations in Rockland County to win the party’s line, 287-195, depriving Jones of an important second ballot line in what is expected to be a close contest against Lawler, a Republican.
In addition to Putnam and Rockland County, the district’s boundaries include parts of Dutchess and Westchester counties.
While Working Families voters chose Jones by wide margins in Putnam (21-2) and Westchester (75-6), the results were reversed in Rockland. Frascone, a former Republican, won 73 percent of the votes (275-98) in Rockland. (Franscone won four of five ballots cast in Dutchess.)
Nearly 200 new voters in Rockland registered for the Working Families Party just before the primary, according to an article by Gothamist. Almost all the new registrations came from Monsey and Spring Valley, two areas with heavy Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish populations, according to the article.
“MAGA Republicans are trying to steal the Working Families Party line in order to elect Mike Lawler,” Shannon Geison, a representative for the Jones campaign, told Gothamist.
