In one hypercompetitive Hudson Valley congressional district, the left-leaning Working Families Party is campaigning on an unusual message: Don’t vote for us.
The 17th District is home to one of six congressional seats that New York Democrats are banking on to deliver them a majority in the House of Representatives. Former Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones is trying to knock out Mike Lawler, a Republican incumbent whose seat is considered a toss-up. The race is so close that a little-known third-party candidate named Anthony Frascone could make the difference.
But Frascone isn’t running like a regular candidate.
“You’re kidding me,” said Julie Solis, who lives across the street from Frascone, when Gothamist asked for her thoughts on her neighbor running for Congress. “I didn’t know that he was the flippin’ Working Families Party candidate.”
Solis, a registered Democrat with a blue Harris/Walz campaign sign in her front yard, is just the kind of voter WFP candidates would typically try to reach. In most New York congressional races, the party line bears the Democratic nominee’s name, giving the minor party a chance to stump for progressive issues while granting Democrats another chance to pick up votes.
Both parties are sacrificing those opportunities in the 17th District, where the WFP is spending at least $25,000 imploring voters to vote on the Democratic line. They say Frascone is a Republican spoiler who managed to clinch the WFP primary while the party feuded with Jones.
Frascone, a former Republican, defeated Jones in the June primary by just 90 votes. At the time, Jones and the WFP were at odds over a Democratic primary in the neighboring 16th District, where Jones was backing Westchester County Executive George Latimer over the WFP-endorsed incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman. The Working Families Party pulled its ground support from the Jones campaign before Frascone’s unexpected win.
Latimer, who prevailed in his primary, is all but guaranteed to sail into Congress in his deep-blue Westchester district. But, for Jones, the WFP switch-up could now cost him the race — even though Frascone isn’t actively campaigning.
“Anthony Frascone is not running for Congress,” said Ana Maria Archila, codirector of the state’s Working Families Party. “What he is is a fake candidate who succeeded in tricking voters in Congressional District 17 to elect him as their candidate on the Working Families Party line.”
But if you drive around the Hudson Valley, you won’t see yard signs supporting Frascone for Congress. He doesn’t have a campaign website. He has reported no fundraising. He does not respond to calls. When Gothamist rang his doorbell and left a business card, he did not answer. Even his neighbors didn’t know he was running for office.
As Solis processed the news, she wondered aloud why Frascone would run, then quickly came to her own conclusion: “He wants to split the vote.”
Even though Frascone doesn’t have an active campaign, the WFP fears the small number of votes he might win just by being on the ballot could tip the race in Lawler’s favor.
Lawler flipped the seat for the Republicans in 2022 by beating former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, then the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, by just 1,820 votes. It wouldn’t have been so close without Maloney’s support on the WFP line, where he picked up 8,723 votes.
Frascone’s candidacy also poses a somewhat existential problem for the Working Families Party. Every two years, minor parties need to win either 2% or at least 130,000 votes statewide in the top contest to maintain their ballot line. In presidential election years, that usually means an all-out push statewide.
Frascone’s presence on their line is forcing the party to alter their strategy, just for this district. WFP operatives seem to know it would be too confusing to ask voters to choose Harris/Walz on the WFP line and Jones on the Democratic line, so they’re giving the district up entirely. The party’s planned $25,000 campaign includes mail, phone calls and text alerts to urge voters to vote on the Democratic line. The party is also printing 20,000 palm cards that label Frascone a “MAGA spoiler.”
“We will not allow MAGA Republicans to confuse voters and to steal the election with dirty tricks,” Archila told Gothamist.
The race has become increasingly volatile in recent days. Jones drew attention last week with a comment in the New Yorker insinuating that Gov. Kathy Hochul was a “little b—h.” And on Thursday, the New York Times reported that Lawler wore blackface while dressing as Michael Jackson in college. Both men have apologized.
Meanwhile, a handful of voters are fighting to knock Frascone off the ballot.
On Wednesday, six voters — three Democrats, two Republicans and one Working Families Party voter — filed a court petition in Westchester County asking the Board of Elections to remove Frascone from the WFP line. Though military and overseas ballots have already gone out, the court is preventing any more from being distributed in the race until it holds a hearing next week.
Pointing to some of the claims in the petition, Jones campaign spokesperson Shannon Geison framed Frascone’s candidacy as a desperate ploy by the Lawler campaign.
“Mike Lawler doesn’t think he can beat Mondaire Jones,” she said.
The Lawler campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Throughout the weekend, both Jones and Lawler are working to drum up support for their campaigns with events scheduled across the district. Frascone is keeping a low profile.