One-time progressive Rep. Mondaire Jones has regularly condemned former President Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, but Jones was once himself accused of stealing an election — when he was an undergraduate at Stanford University.
In 2007, Jones ran for vice president of the student government. Jones and his running mate, Hershey Avula, squeaked by their top rivals by just 38 votes, one of the closest elections in memory, The Stanford Daily reported at the time.
While the student body constitution specifically called for a runoff election, Jones was concerned he would not be able to replicate high turnout among graduate students a second time around.
“Grad student turnout would be atrocious were they to have another election,”Jones told The Stanford Daily at the time. “This is a time for mending, not for increased polarization.”
While the elections commissioner, Bernard Fraga, said the constitution required a runoff, the Undergraduate Senate and Graduate Student Council voted 12-1 against holding one — coronating Avula/Jones as winners.
Three senators later told The Stanford Daily that they had been “pressured” by Avula and Jones to nix the runoff, actions which they called “unethical.”
The move also earned a rebuke from the editorial board of the Stanford Daily.
“We owe it to all slates to declare a new campaign period and hold a runoff election,” the paper wrote. “The call for a runoff vote, as recommended by unbiased and principled Elections Commissioner Fraga, is not about one slate or another. It is about fairness.”
Avula and Jones faced allegations two years later of improperly spending $13,000 government funds on food and gas, though an investigation into the matter was inconclusive, according to The Stanford Review.
Reached by phone Fraga disputed that the election had been stolen, and called the issue a “technicality.”
Jones, a former upstate congressman, is currently locked in a tight race against GOP Rep. Mike Lawler in New York’s 17th district, which includes Rockland and Putnam Counties and parts of Westchester and Dutchess.