District 18 House candidates take up key voter concerns
The contest for U.S. House District 18, which includes Beacon, pits ex-Army officer Pat Ryan against ex-police officer Alison Esposito.
Ryan, the Democratic incumbent, was born in Kingston and graduated from West Point in 2004. After serving two tours in Iraq, he earned a master’s degree in security studies at Georgetown University and was elected Ulster County executive.
Esposito, a Republican from Orange County, studied at SUNY Delhi, the City University of New York and the FBI National Academy. She served in the New York City Police Department for 25 years, rising to precinct commander, before joining the ticket of gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin in 2022.
An Emerson College/Pix11/The Hill poll of 450 likely voters in District 18 conducted Oct. 24 to 26 showed Ryan drawing 51 percent and Esposito 42 percent, with seven percent undecided. The poll had a 4.6 percent margin of error. It also found Donald Trump with 49 percent support in the district and Kamala Harris with 48 percent.
According to the poll, the top issue for District 18 voters is the economy (32 percent), followed by immigration (19 percent), housing affordability (14 percent), threats to democracy (11 percent) and crime (8 percent).
Those topics took the stage in a candidate debate hosted by Pix11 on Oct. 9.
Abortion
Esposito believes the U.S. Supreme Court “did the absolute right thing” in its decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade and let states regulate abortion. She claimed in early October that Ryan “lacks the integrity to tell voters the truth” and “would love to make this entire election about abortion.”
Ryan backs efforts to make abortion legal nationwide. “I risked my life in combat for freedoms for fellow Americans,” he said.
Economy, taxes, housing
“Americans are less prosperous because Bidenomics is a failure,” Esposito said at the debate, referring to President Joe Biden. “We have to become more prosperous and we have to lower regulations. We’re over-taxed, we’re over-regulated and there’s just no availability of affordable housing because everything is expensive.” She said taxes must come down and “out-of-control spending” reined in. “It’s not just Social Security” that adds up in the federal budget, Esposito said, “it’s all these other social programs. And it’s the millions and billions of dollars now being funded on illegal immigrants.”
Ryan said that, as the Ulster county executive, he reduced property and gas taxes and, in the House, pursued bipartisan legislation to cut grocery costs, authored four bills to increase housing options for those of modest income and wants safeguards “to make sure that Wall Street speculators coming into our community in the Hudson Valley jacking up prices” face obstacles so “we stop them and prevent that” escalation.
Likewise, he said, referring to the Federal Reserve bank, “I called on the Fed — and they listened — to lower interest rates, bringing down mortgage costs and rents.”
Ryan mentioned his membership in the bipartisan congressional SALT caucus, focusing on the limit imposed by then-President Donald Trump on the amount someone can claim, when submitting federal income taxes, as an exemption for paying state and local (SALT) taxes. The caucus is “working aggressively to eliminate what is double taxation,” Ryan said.
“Donald Trump has said himself he is going to remove the SALT cap” Esposito said. Claiming Democrats in the House declined to cooperate with the Republican majority in resolving the problem, she said “that SALT cap could’ve been raised” already.
Border security
At the Oct. 9 debate, Esposito faulted Ryan for not backing legislation by House Republicans to boost funding for border policing and rejecting a move “which would have required illegals — people — to show proof of residency, citizenship, to vote.”
Esposito also advocated “holding criminals accountable for their actions. We have to deport gang members” along with “people committing crimes” and “people preying on our innocent Americans.” She said she and others “welcome immigration the correct way, but that’s not what’s being done right now.”
Calling Ryan “a man who’s not serious about border security,” she blasted him for supporting a Senate immigration bill that “would have codified reckless and dangerous Biden policies” and went nowhere.
Ryan described himself as “an independent representative and a moderate Democrat” and “one of the very few Democrats — proudly so — who from Day One called out President Biden for failing to secure our border.” Moreover, he said, he and other Democrats urged Biden to decrease the number of asylum-seekers allowed entry and Biden “finally listened to us. The numbers have come down 80 percent.”
He said he worked on bipartisan measures to augment the border police force and stop drug trafficking. In addition, he defended the Senate bill that Esposito castigated, noting that it was crafted by a conservative Senate Republican but “got torpedoed for political reasons” because Trump repudiated it.
Gun control
Esposito emphasized that she would not support a ban on assault rifles. She also said she opposed banning or restricting ammunition clips that carry more than 10 rounds and bump stocks, used to make rifles deadlier.
“You do not accomplish any rule or safety by taking guns out of legal, lawful people’s hands,” she said. Instead, “we have to punish criminals for their actions. We have a heart problem in this country and a mental health problem. We don’t have a gun problem. We do not remove a Second Amendment right from our citizens simply because someone else committed a crime.” She depicted Ryan as “a defund-the-police guy.”
“I know these weapons,” Ryan responded. “I carried them in combat for 27 months. These are weapons of war. They should not be in our streets. We absolutely should” adopt an assault weapons ban, like the one in place from 1994 to 2004, “which dramatically brought down gun deaths and saved lives.”
Democracy and Trump
The debate moderator observed that Esposito had “made a career out of arresting bad guys” but supports and is endorsed by Trump, “a convicted felon” awaiting more criminal proceedings.
When asked if she feels any qualms, Esposito downplayed Trump’s legal problems as rigged. “The American public can see through this, that these are political prosecutions aimed at a president,” she said. “We need to be holding criminals accountable for their actions, but we also shouldn’t be attacking our political opponents using the criminal justice system.”
Ryan called Trump’s attempts to discredit the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as “a dark and damaging moment. And it, honestly, pissed me off, as someone that put my life on the line for this country, that President Trump did that and that those traitorous individuals did that. I’m glad they’re being held accountable.” Trump “should never be anywhere, ever, near the White House again,” Ryan added. “He’s unfit for office.”
Israel
“Israel is our greatest ally,” Esposito said. “This war could end tomorrow if Hamas would lay down its weapons and surrender” and release hostages seized on Oct. 7, 2023. “Israel has every right to defend itself right now and they are doing so as carefully as they possibly can to avoid any further loss of human life,” she said.
Ryan called Israel a “critical ally” and said that “we need to increase the pressure and rigor in deterring Iran and stand strongly with Israel, and, of course, do everything we can to try to stop the loss of innocent civilian lives in these conflicts.”
When asked if there was “anything or any action Israel could take that would make you lose support for the Jewish state,” Ryan replied: “Not — not that I can think of.”
Pro-Palestinian activists such as No Votes for Genocide have campaigned for voters to leave the District 18 line blank on their ballots. The group said in a statement on Tuesday (Oct. 29) that it has been critical of Ryan but not Esposito “because he claims to be a progressive Democrat and should be able to take a clear position in support of basic human rights and against genocide” by supporting an embargo on weapons supplies to Israel. “We do not support Esposito and would prefer to vote for Ryan,” it said.
