Freshman Congressman Mark Molinaro said of his current opponent that Andrew Cuomo is the lesser of two villains.
A first-term Republican said Democrat Josh Riley is running an even more dishonest and deceptive campaign in Congress than he did in his 2018 matchup with the disgraced former governor.
“On any given day, on any given day, that's Josh Riley,” Molinaro said when asked to compare himself to his rival in a meeting with the Post editorial board.
“The worst thing that Andrew Cuomo could come up with is that I was a mini-Trump. It was hilarious at the time, but this is… completely disingenuous. It's just the way it is and I’ve never really seen anything like that,” he added, pointing in particular to Riley’s insistence on supporting a national abortion ban.
Molinaro, 49, insists he does not support a national ban or any federal action related to it.
“I said two years ago that I would not take any action to support a national ban,” Molinaro said in the same interview.
Mr. Molinaro won 50.8% of the vote in 2022, defeating Mr. Riley by about 4,500 votes.
“They're running an ad saying I'll be the deciding vote for a national ban. I don't know if they don't know this, but the House is almost 50-50. “I am already the deciding vote, and I have used that vote to consistently oppose any encroachment on access to abortion in New York State,” he continued.
Still, Molinaro still described the former government, which resigned in August 2021 amid a number of scandals, as “horrible.”
“I could have been so bad, you wouldn't have known it, because [Cuomo] Molinaro, who was Dutchess County Executive at the time, talked about running for governor in 2018.
Mr. Cuomo, 66, who is believed to be considering a political comeback, trashed Mr. Molinaro in 2018. received nearly 60% of the votes After President Trump won in 2016, there was a blue wave of support.
“Governor Cuomo has legalized marriage equality, and the construction of LaGuardia and JFK airports, the Second Avenue subway, which had previously been declared impossible,'' and the construction of the Kosciuszko Bridge, are being built with tax cuts and spending restraints. As a result, he received the most votes of any candidate in New York history,” Cuomo press secretary Rich Azzopardi said in a statement to the Post.
meanwhile. A Riley spokesperson reiterated the candidate's claim that Molinaro “voted 13 times to restrict access to abortion.”
“These are just facts,” the official said. “Mark Molinaro's record speaks for itself,” Riley's representatives said in a statement to the Post. “These are just facts.”
New York's 19th Congressional District has a bipartisan rating cook political report As a toss-up.
