Gretchen Whitmer’s sister enters race to unseat Mike Lawler
Ryan King
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Liz Whitmer Gereghty announced her bid to unseat Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) on Tuesday.
Gereghty, the sister of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and a small businesswoman from Westchester County, New York, cast herself as a consensus builder and warrior against “radical Republicans” in Congress. Lawler is widely regarded as one of the most vulnerable congressional Republicans in the Empire State.
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“Today, extreme Republican leaders in Congress — enabled by the current 17th District congressman — are threatening our core rights, our safety, and our economic future,” Gereghty declared in a campaign debut video.
https://twitter.com/LizforNY/status/1655924069949227008?s=20
Lawler narrowly managed to flip New York’s 17th Congressional District, besting former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee head Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) by less than a percentage point. Gereghty’s announcement comes as President Joe Biden is poised to head to the district, which he won in 2020, on Wednesday for fundraising.
Gereghty served on the Katonah-Lewisboro School District board and has resided in the area for nearly two decades. Her sister clinched a smashing victory during the 2022 midterm elections in a battleground state rendering Democrats in control of both Michigan legislative chambers for the first time in nearly four decades.
Echoing her sister, Gereghty honed in on hot-button progressive causes such as abortion and gun control during her campaign debut.
“Instead of solving problems, they are trying to roll back women’s reproductive rights, blocking even modest gun safety measures, threatening to default on the debt, and spending more time worrying about how to ban books than helping our families and small businesses thrive. That has to change,” she said.
Lawler has joined his fellow Republicans in backing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) demands that Biden agree to slash spending in exchange for a debt limit hike, something which Gereghty seemed to allude to.
So far, Gereghty appears to have the primary field largely to herself, though there have been murmurs about former Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) or Maloney entering the fray. Biden is planning to nominate Maloney as his ambassador to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, according to Axios.
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Given the small 222 to 213 GOP margin in the House, Democrats only need to flip five seats to recapture the lower chamber.
The Washington Examiner contacted a Lawler spokesperson for comment.