Published vote studies rank Lawler third among House Republicans for breaking with his party, and two Democrats who have worked with him are vouching for his record
Democrat Cait Conley has built her campaign against Congressman Mike Lawler in New York’s 17th District, which covers Rockland and Putnam counties and parts of Westchester and Dutchess, around one line (of shall we say “lie”): that Lawler votes with President Donald Trump “100% of the time.” Conley said it on the News 12 debate stage on Sept. 28, and she keeps posting it, most recently on Oct. 2, when she accused him of “100% fealty to Donald Trump.”
The independent, published record says otherwise. City & State reported on Oct. 5 that Conley’s figure comes from “a VoteHub tool statistic showing how frequently members of Congress voted with the president in 2025,” adding: “But that analysis doesn’t include every piece of legislation.”
Yes, you read that correctly: It turns out that Conley is basing her 100% claim on data that intentionally omits votes where Lawler broke with Trump.
CQ Roll Call’s annual vote study, published in March, ranked Lawler third among all House Republicans for votes against his own party in 2025, behind only Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. He held the same spot in 2024. This summer, the nonpartisan Bridge Grades project scored Lawler 99.2 out of 100 for bipartisanship, the best mark in New York’s congressional delegation.
The attack is not new. In 2022, Sean Patrick Maloney, then chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, dubbed Lawler “MAGA Mike,” and a DCCC ad called him “MAGA Mike Lawler.” In 2024, Mondaire Jones said Lawler “votes like an extreme MAGA Republican.” Voters rejected both: Lawler unseated Maloney, then beat Jones to win a second term running ahead of the President by nearly seven points.
The votes
When Yonkers Times reached out to the Lawler campaign for comment, the campaign provided a 17-page, single-spaced document laying out, issue by issue, where Lawler has broken with House Republican leadership and the president, from Haitian TPS and Ukraine to labor, taxes and redistricting. In some cases, Lawler’s opposition to the Trump or Republican position wasn’t captured in a typical roll call vote.
For example, Lawler provided the 218th signature on a discharge petition (a parliamentary procedure used in the U.S. House of Representatives to force a bill out of committee and onto the floor for a vote without the approval of House leadership) that forced a vote on the Protect America’s Workforce Act, which restores the collective bargaining rights the Trump administration took from many federal workers by executive order. When the bill passed 231-195 on Dec. 11, 2025, he was one of 20 Republicans voting yes.
In December Lawler signed a Democratic discharge petition to force a vote on a three-year extension of the enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, then voted for the extension on Jan. 8, one of 17 Republicans who did.
The same day, Lawler voted to override Trump’s vetoes of the Miccosukee Reserved Area Amendments Act and the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, one of 24 Republicans on the first and one of 35 on the second.
In April Lawler voted for H.R. 1689, a bill he co-led with Democratic Rep. Laura Gillen to extend Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, after signing the discharge petition that brought it to the floor. It passed 224-204.
Lawler, who called the “100%” line “provably false” at the debate, made the same case to WABC-TV on Oct. 6: “When I’ve disagreed with the president, I’ve said it. Whether it’s collective bargaining rights for public employees, whether it’s extending the enhanced tax credit for the Affordable Care Act, whether it was Haitian extension, I took on my party on these issues.”
Democrats vouch for his record
Four Democrats who have worked with Lawler have crossed party lines to support him. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, who is leaving Congress in January, endorsed him in a Sept. 21 op-ed in The Journal News. “Lobster traps, union rights and health insurance do not have much in common, except that on all three, Lawler chose to solve the problem rather than campaign on it,” Golden wrote.
Ally Chemtob, a Democrat elected to the New Castle Town Board on the New Castle Democratic Committee ticket, endorsed Lawler on Sept. 14, citing his record against antisemitism and his work across the aisle, Jewish Insider reported.
“My support for Mike is personal, because when I look beyond party labels to someone I know and trust, I see someone who cares about the safety and well-being of my children,” said Chemtob, who has served on the board for five years.
Chemtob said Jew hatred is on the rise, including in New Castle, and that the moment calls for elected officials “willing to confront it, wherever it comes from, even when doing so is uncomfortable, even when it creates political problems, and even when it means challenging people within our own political parties.” Lawler, she said, “has always been willing to stand up against antisemitism and to stand with the Jewish community, both before October 7 and after.”
She said she is “horrified daily” by the Democratic Party’s embrace of “fringe, anti-American and antisemitic” Democratic Socialists of America candidates “and their sympathizers,” Jewish Insider reported.
“I don’t have to agree with Mike on every issue. Neither do you. But I’m asking you to consider the individual, look at his record, recognize his character and his courage,” Chemtob said. “We shouldn’t write off a candidate based on the letter in front of his name.”
Montebello Deputy Mayor Stacy Caridi, a Democrat who has known Lawler since his days in the Assembly, endorsed him on Oct. 5. “Mike stands with Israel, and he stands up to antisemitism. He calls it out when it comes from the right, and he calls it out when it comes from the left. I’m putting my community ahead of my party and supporting a candidate who works for all of us,” Caridi said in a video for the campaign, Jewish Insider reported.
Ramapo Deputy Supervisor Brendel Logan-Charles, a registered Democrat, spoke for Lawler at his campaign kickoff in April. Endorsing him in 2024, she called him “a model member of Congress” who “has actually sought to get to know the communities he represents.”
Conley’s own words
Conley has a line of her own about the other side, one she has used since at least September 2025. On The Contrarian with Jennifer Rubin in January, she described her years “hunting down some of the most brutal terror groups in the world, pushing back against some of our foreign adversaries like Russia, Iran.” Then she said: “I never thought I would feel like the greatest threat to this country, to our future, to who we are, would come from within our own borders.”
She put it in writing in an April 30 guest editorial in The Croton Chronicle: “I never imagined I would feel like the greatest threat to America, to our future, would be coming from within our own borders. But that’s exactly where we are. And our congressman, Mike Lawler, has been complicit at every turn.” On the Beyond the Campaign podcast in May, she said: “Today’s Republican Party is, I think, just a MAGA cult.”
Golden, a Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on that argument in his op-ed without naming Conley. “Veterans understand something too many politicians have forgotten: the greatest threats to America do not come from within our own borders. They come from beyond them,” he wrote. “When candidates for office tell voters that the gravest danger to this country is other Americans and the leaders they elect, that is radical talk, and it is the same politics of fear I have refused to practice for my entire career.”
“Cait Conley keeps lying about Mike’s record because she can’t defend her own,” said Ciro Riccardi, campaign manager for Lawler for Congress. “She has spent this campaign telling audiences that the greatest threat to America comes from inside our own borders, not from Russia, Iran or the terrorists she fought overseas. She means the Americans who voted for Donald Trump and the leaders they elected. She calls today’s Republican Party a ‘MAGA cult.’ That is not someone who plans to work with anyone across the aisle. Send her to Washington and she’s one more rubber stamp for Hakeem Jeffries and the far left.”
Taxes and utility bills
Conley has also attacked Lawler over the state and local tax deduction. The $10,000 SALT cap was enacted in 2017, years before Lawler first ran for office, and was in place when Lawler ultimately took office in 2023. He pushed his own party’s leadership to raise it, and the 2025 tax law quadrupled the cap to $40,000. At a May rally at Rockland Community College, Trump called Lawler “Mr. SALT.” “He didn’t stop. This guy was a pain in the ass, it was terrible, he didn’t stop,” Trump said, according to the New York Post. Lawler says the typical family of four in his district saved over $4,000 this year.
Conley has also blamed Lawler for utility bills, posting that he was “voting to raise energy costs” and that bills are “up $1,000 / year Mike has been in office.” Congress does not set utility rates. In New York, electric and gas rates are approved by the state Public Service Commission, whose members are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate.
Lawler and Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey introduced the Energy Affordability and Reliability Act in April to create an Office of Energy Affordability at the Department of Energy. In February he joined Democrats and Republicans in introducing the FREEDOM Act to speed permitting for energy projects, and in March he and Energy Secretary Chris Wright called for rebuilding and reopening Indian Point.