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From left: Mike Lawler and Mondaire Jones
Jones, a Black gay man, is running for Congress against Mike Lawler, who wore blackface for a Michael Jackson costume in 2006.
Black gay congressional candidate Mondaire Jones has responded to resurfaced photos of his opponent, Mike Lawler, in blackface, saying Lawler “knew exactly what he was doing.”
Lawler, a Republican, wore blackface as part of a Michael Jackson Halloween costume in 2006, when he was in college. The New York Times obtained the photos and reported on them last week. Lawler, a Jackson superfan, has apologized “for anyone who takes offense” and said the costume was meant “as a genuine homage.” He also told NBC’s New York City affiliate, “Obviously, in hindsight I certainly recognize how people would portray that and be offended by it, so certainly I apologize.”
Now Jones has made his first comments on the photos. “Mike Lawler knew exactly what he was doing,” Jones told the TV station. He added, “He knew it was wrong and is only upset because he got caught doing it and not because he actually engaged in offensive behavior.”
Jones, a Democrat, is running against Lawler, a first-term incumbent, in New York’s 17th Congressional District, located in the suburbs north of New York City. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the 17th District in 2020, becoming one of the two first Black gay men in Congress, the other being New York City’s Ritchie Torres.
But New York State congressional districts were redrawn for the 2022 election, and Jones would have been up against another gay Democrat, Sean Patrick Maloney, in the new 17th District. So Jones moved to run in a newly created congressional district, the 10th, covering parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. He lost the Democratic primary to Dan Goldman, who’d been a prosecutor in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. Goldman went on to win the seat, while Lawler beat Maloney in the 17th.
Jones is now back in the 17th. He was unopposed in the Democratic primary, so it was canceled. The redrawn district is one of the most heavily Democratic areas currently represented in Congress by a Republican. It includes 73 percent of the residents of the previous 17th District.
“People here know me,” Jones said in a video announcing his candidacy last year. “I stand up to Republicans trying to overthrow our democracy and take away the freedom to have an abortion even as I push members of our party to fight harder for working people.”
