Candidate Profile: Mondaire Jones For Congress

HUDSON VALLEY, NY - New Yorkers will be hitting the polls on June 23 for the primary election to choose who will be on the ballot for the general election in November.

Among the local races, some residents of the Hudson Valley will be able to elect who will run for Congressional District 17 on the Democratic line. Longtime Rep. Nita Lowey is retiring at the end of the term.

The district covers Rockland County and most of Westchester.

In anticipation of the election, Patch asked candidates in the contested races to answer questions about their campaigns and will be publishing candidate profiles as election day draws near.

Mondaire Jones is seeking the Democratic line on the ballot in November. His opponents in the June 23 Democratic primary are Evelyn Farkas, Adam P. Schleifer, Allison H. Fine, Asha Castleberry-Hernandez, David Buchwald and David Carlucci.

Jones, 33, is a former litigator in the Westchester County Law Department and former Department of Justice staffer during the Obama Administration. He has degrees from Stanford University and Harvard Law School.

Check out Patch's full Q&A with Mondaire Jones:

Campaign website

www.mondaireforcongress.com

Why are you seeking elective office?

I’m running for Congress because, for me, policy is personal. I know what it is for a working family to struggle and rely on government assistance to survive, and I am going to bring those lived experiences with me to Congress.

I grew up in the working-class village of Spring Valley, where I was raised by a young, single mom who, like so many women throughout my district, and all throughout this country, worked multiple jobs just to provide for our family—even as we relied on Section 8 housing and food stamps. When we talk about the fight for a $15 minimum wage at the federal level, that fight is personal for me.

My mom got help from my grandparents. My grandfather was a janitor at our local middle school, and later, he was a small business owner. My grandmother cleaned homes, and when day care was too expensive, she took me to work with her. Now, I’m running to represent the same people whose homes I watched my grandmother clean growing up. When we talk about the fight for universal child care, that’s a fight I’m invested in based on my own experience.

After my grandfather died of cancer, I watched helplessly as my grandmother worked well past the age of retirement just to pay for the high cost of prescription drugs and medical procedures not fully covered by Medicare as we know it. When I quit my job to try to better my community by running for Congress, I lost my health insurance. I believe health care should be a human right in the richest nation on Earth, not tied to employment status or economic means.

I’m 32 years old. I remember what it’s like to be a broke college student, because for me, that wasn’t so long ago. And the fact is, this country has failed its young people. Thousands of people in my district, my age and younger, despite having college degrees, are still living at home with their parents because they can’t afford to pay rent or own a home. We were told that if we just went to college and graduated like our parents may have, things would work out. But we know that that’s not true. Part of that is due to low wages in this broken economy -- wages that have been stagnant for decades as the cost of living has soared -- but it’s also due to a student debt crisis to the tune of $1.7 trillion. I propose tuition-free public colleges and universities and forgiving college debt to liberate an entire generation of people to meaningfully participate in our economy.

The Green New Deal is personal for me, and in fact the environment is my number one priority. Our generation is inheriting a planet that stands to be devastated by climate catastrophe because people who have been in office for a really long time have failed to act with the kind of urgency the issue requires.

And when Democrats huddle together to talk about how to respond to this President’s embrace of white supremacy, and his assault daily on members of the LGBTQ+ community, of which I am a part, I think that more people like me need to be at the table participating in that discussion and indeed driving the conversation. In fact, there has never been an openly gay, black member of Congress in the 244-year history of the United States.

We have never been at a moment in American history when we have more urgently needed people in office for whom policy is personal. I think we get better policy outcomes when we have more people in Congress for whom policy is personal. Representatives like me can be trusted to always fight for the best interests of their constituents, even when the doors are closed in the halls of Congress and our constituents can’t see what we are doing.

The fact is, I’ve been fighting my whole life. First, it was against the odds of my upbringing, to the point where I was able to make it to Stanford University, work in the Obama Administration at the Department of Justice (vetting candidates for federal judgeships and working on criminal justice reform), and then attend Harvard Law School. More recently, as a lawyer in government, I’ve been fighting in the courtrooms of Westchester County on behalf of my future constituents. Now, I’m running to fight for all of the people in my district and across the country.

The single most pressing issue facing our nation/state/community is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

The single most pressing issue facing our nation and our world is climate change, and I will fight tooth and nail to ensure that we have a planet to live on.

Our planet is in peril. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we only have 10 years left in which we can act to prevent irreversible damage to Earth due to global warming.

We need bold solutions to meet this unprecedented challenge. The Green New Deal, outlined in H.R. 109, proposes federal mandates to decarbonize our economy instead of unproven market-based ideas. It would transition America to 100% renewable energy by 2030 and avert climate catastrophe, creating 20 million good-paying jobs in the process. It would also ensure that there is a just transition to green jobs for fossil fuel workers who are displaced, hold fossil fuel companies accountable, provide dedicated support to the communities most at risk, and invest in new, sustainable infrastructure across the country.

I will also co-sponsor the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, which would invest up to $180 billion over 10 years in sustainable retrofits that include all needed repairs; vastly improved health, safety, and comfort; and the elimination of carbon emissions in our federal public housing stock by transitioning them to solar energy.

The transportation sector is the single biggest contributor to carbon emissions globally. We need to wean ourselves off of relying on automobiles and transition to high-speed and light rail powered by clean, renewable energy sources. This would be especially useful in Rockland, where rail service is lacking.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

Health care is a human right. But I am the only candidate in my race who supports Medicare for All, which is the only proposal that would ensure every single American has health care.

I am the only candidate in my race who supports an unadulterated Green New Deal, which would stop climate change while creating millions of good-paying jobs. I am the only candidate supporting universal child care, an issue that is deeply personal for me and which would help so many families throughout our country and district. And I am the only candidate who supports full college debt forgiveness, which would liberate an entire generation of young people to meaningfully participate in this economy.

Unlike many of my opponents in this race, I do not come from money or from a political family. I am not accepting any money from corporate PACs. I am not able to self-fund with millions of dollars of my own money, nor would I if I could because it would be a distortion of our democratic process.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform

Some of my other priorities, which are outlined in further detail on my website, include:
Reducing the role of money in our elections, including by passing a system of public financing of our campaigns (as outlined in H.R. 1) and enacting a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.
Universal child care, including co-sponsoring the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act (H.R. 3315), and supporting paid parental leave.
A massive investment in affordable housing, including co-sponsoring the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act (H.R. 1737) and repealing the Faircloth Amendment.
A $15 minimum wage, and raising the federal poverty line, as I recently wrote about in Crooked Media.
Fully funding our public schools, including increasing Title I funding for our most impoverished schools, as well as increasing funding under Titles II and IV and fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act.
LGBTQ+ rights and equity, including co-sponsoring the Equality Act (H.R. 5).
College debt relief and tuition-free public college, which will benefit students of color who are disproportionately burdened by debt.
A suite of criminal justice reforms to redress racial inequalities and harms in our justice system, including repealing the 1994 crime bill that fueled mass incarceration, defunding police and reinvesting this money in health, education, and alternatives to incarceration, eliminating mandatory minimums in sentencing, legalizing cannabis, and banning the box in employment applications.
Reproductive justice, including a constitutional amendment and federal statute to codify Roe v. Wade, repealing the Hyde Amendment, ensuring comprehensive sex education, and ensuring abortion and contraceptive coverage in any Medicare for All legislation that is enacted.
Comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship for our undocumented community, as well as co-sponsoring the DREAM Act (H.R. 6) and ending family separation.
Disability rights, including expanding Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income to end the backlog of 800,000 cases, and ending the sub-minimum wage for people with disabilities.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

My time in the Obama Administration, where I worked in the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice on criminal justice reform and judicial nominations (including now-Supreme Court Justice Kagan), helped me engage with and learn the inner-workings of our federal government and gives me a keen understanding of how to make policy at the federal level. As a lawyer in the Westchester County Law Department, I worked on and won some of the County’s biggest cases, and am also proud of drafting legislation and helping the County’s Human Rights Commission respond to the uptick in acts of hate in Westchester. My work co-founding a national nonprofit called Rising Leaders, which teaches professional skills to underserved middle-school students and has gotten two grants from the Gates Foundation, has given me hands-on experience in improving the lives of our most vulnerable young people, and insight into what interventions will work best. My activism with the Spring Valley NAACP, and as a former member of the NAACP’s National Board of Directors, has given me invaluable experience organizing residents at the local level for important causes, in addition to substantive policy experience nationally.

And I have already demonstrated an ability to organize my community to stand up to systemic racism: as a senior in college, after the Palo Alto Police Chief made comments embracing racial profiling, I successfully organized my fellow students and Palo Alto residents to pressure the department until she resigned and we obtained policing reforms.

I also believe that governing is a moral endeavor as much as it is a technical one, and that your personal experiences inform how hard you fight, and what you fight for. We need more elected officials for whom policy is personal - people who share the lived experiences of so many regular Americans who have to struggle to make ends meet, who have crippling student debt, who have experienced daily the realities of structural racism and inequality. As an attorney, I understand the laws that govern our society - and as a black, gay man and young person, I understand on a personal level how unjust laws affect people’s lives. I am running for Congress to fight for a better world for everyone.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

Growing up in the Village of Spring Valley, my mother told me that I could be anything I wanted. It was a radical idea. My mom, who struggled with mental illness, had dropped out of college and was working multiple jobs just to make ends meet — even as we relied on Section 8 housing and food stamps. But I took her advice, and I dreamed big. She opened my world to a universe of possibilities that would have been unthinkable for most people born into my circumstances. That’s why I am drawn to public service: because every kid in this district should be able to dream big. My story should not be the exception.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

Our campaign has been endorsed by The New York Times, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sec. Julián Castro, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Deb Haaland, Rep. Ro Khanna, Rep. David Cicilline, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Mark Pocan, the Stony Point Democrats, United Auto Workers, the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, the Working Families Party, Democracy for America, The Collective PAC, Victory Fund, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, New York Communities for Change, Food and Water Action, Rockland United, the Hispanic Democrats of Westchester, Equality PAC, Common Defense, Empire State Indivisible, New York Immigration Coalition, and over 40 local leaders in Westchester and Rockland counties.