New York, NY—In response to the release of the revised Congressional maps, Sochie Nnaemeka, Director of the New York Working Families Party, has released the following statement:

“This redistricting process has been unusually chaotic for voters, candidates, and the state. One single individual appointed by one single trial court is redrawing maps weeks before primary elections. This is creating a mad dash in which politicians are seeking to choose their voters, rather than the other way around.

“The voters of the 17th Congressional District chose Rep. Mondaire Jones for a reason. He has been an exceptional leader in Congress, serving his constituents with his fierce commitment to voting rights, fixing the Supreme Court to work in the people’s interests, and protecting the climate. He’s earned the right to seek re-election in his home district.

“That’s what makes Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney’s announcement that he intends to run in that district so troubling—a district which includes Rep. Mondaire Jones’s hometown in Rockland County and is mostly composed of the electorate that Mondaire currently serves.

“Rep. Maloney seemingly wants to avoid having to run in the 18th Congressional District—a slightly more competitive, but still very winnable seat, composed mostly of voters he already represents. His decision to jump into a neighboring district and challenge a fellow incumbent is self-serving and unbecoming of the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

“As head of the DCCC, Rep. Maloney’s role is to help Democrats hold a majority and advance a more representative and equitable democracy, especially in the face of an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party. His current approach, however, is neither strategic nor defensible.

“Rep. Maloney should seek re-election in the 18th district. Instead, he seems to want to defeat a fellow Democratic member of Congress, or else force Mondaire out of the district he represents and bully him into a race that would pit two Black progressive Democrats in the New York delegation against each other. 

“We strongly urge Rep. Maloney to take a different path and look forward to supporting Rep. Jones’s re-election bid in CD-17.”