Photo by Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan
Latest poll—Lawler 45%-Jones-44%
By Dan Murphy
With Republicans currently holding an ultra-slim, 5-person majority in the House of Representatives, every competitive House race across the country could determine which party holds the majority in 2025. Among the most competitive, and closely watched is here in Westchester, in the 17th Congressional district, with Congressman Mike Lawler being challenged by former Congressman Mondaire Jones.
Lawler was elected in 2022 by 1780 votes, less than .5%. Jones was elected in this district in 2020, but was forced out during redistricting, ran for Congress in NYC in 22’ and lost. Lawler and Jones now face off for the first time in 2024, a Presidential election year, in a district that President Biden won by 10 in 2020, where every vote counts.
Enter the Working Families Party into this election. Earlier this year, in Westchester’s other Congressional race, in NY-16, in the democratic primary between George Latimer and Congressman Jamaal Bowman, Mondaire Jones endorsed Latimer.
Jones’ endorsement enraged progressive democrats, most of who were supporting Bowman. So much so that the NY-Working Families Party withdrew their support and funding for Jones, but they never rescinded their endorsement.
Enter into the confusion Anthony Frascone, a registered WFP member who collected enough signatures from registered WFP members in the district to get on the ballot for a WFP primary with Jones held on June 25.
490 WFP members cast their votes, with 287 votes for Frascone and 197 for Jones. Anthony Frascone won the WFP primary and will appear on the Nov. 5th ballot as the WFP candidate for Congress. Voters in the district will have three choices: Lawler, Jones, and Frascone.
Questions are now being raised about Frascone, why he ran in the WFP, and who was behind it. And the national media, already interested in the Lawler-Jones race, has now taken interest in Frascone, who has ties to the Rockland County republican party, where Lawler calls home.
“Mr. Frascone, a bankrupt construction executive and former registered Republican, does not appear to have run a campaign by any conventional measure himself. He has no political website or social media.
“In early June, Rafi Silberberg, Mr. Lawler’s district director, wrote to a group of several hundred Orthodox Jewish supporters of the congressman, asking anyone who was not already registered to vote to contact him, according to messages reviewed by The New York Times.
“In the weeks that followed, about 200 members of Rockland County’s Orthodox enclave, a generally conservative community that staunchly supports Mr. Lawler, enrolled in the Working Families Party,” writes Nicholas Fandos from the NY Times. (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/05/nyregion/mondaire-jones-bowman-wfp.html)
“In 2022, Lawrence Garvey, an attorney and the head of the Rockland County Republicans, represented Anthony Frascone when he was sued by the state of New York in Rockland County for allegedly stealing workers’ compensation benefit premiums from two insurance companies. The case was dismissed later that year,” writes Brigid Bergin, from Gothamist
(https://gothamist.com/news/mondaire-jones-working-families-party-mike-lawler-anthony-frascone)
Our concern is that Frascone is missing in action for this election. While it is not unusual for minor party candidates not to run active campaigns, this election has serious implications for the country. We wanted to interview Frascone but could not find him. There is no online presence, or website, or anything. He refuses to respond to calls or emails for interviews.
Frascone was a registered republican for years before joining the WFP more than 10 years ago.
A lawsuit has been filed, (not by WFP), to try and remove Frascone from the ballot. But the legal arguments to try and remove Frascone, “The candidate…engaged in subversive practices in bad faith as an attempt to illegitimately influence the outcome of the general election,” do not seem to meet the difficult threshold to remove a candidate from the ballot in New York. The six plaintiffs in the case include the Democratic Party leaders of Westchester and Putnam counties and four voters from New York’s 17th Congressional District — two Republicans, a Democrat, and a Working Families voter.
Instead, the NYWFP has begun an information-education campaign, urging voters to vote for Jones and not Frascone.
Digital ads and a website- https://www.wfpprotectny17.com/, give voters some information to use before casting a vote.
“Anthony Frascone never applied for the WFP endorsement. He is a conservative with a checkered personal history who never intended to be a real candidate of the Working Families Party. Unbeknownst to the WFP and Jones’ campaign, Frascone and his associates registered a few hundred Rockland county residents as Working Families Party for the sole purpose of collecting enough petition signatures to put Frascone on the ballot and force a surprise WFP primary for the congressional election,” states the website.
“The NYWFP has gone so far as to urge voters to vote Democrat on Nov. 5, and not on the WFP Line. “The congressional race in CD-17 will be too close. We do not want to allow MAGA to confuse voters into voting for someone who isn’t running to represent the district in Congress. That’s why we’re asking people to keep it simple: If you live in congressional district 17, vote on the Democratic up and down the ballot.
“This congressional race between MAGA Republican Mike Lawler and Democrat Mondaire Jones will be extremely close. The votes cast on the Working Families ballot line could very well be the difference. In 2022, Republican Mike Lawler won by just 1,820 votes (less than 1%). Usually, the Working Families ballot line gets between 4% to 6% of the vote in this district. By stealing the line, Lawler and his MAGA radicals hope to confuse WFP voters and stifle the will of the district. The only way to fight this is to make sure that every voter knows that the candidate appearing on the WFP line is a MAGA spoiler, and not a real candidate for Congress. If you believe that our leaders should prioritize the needs of working families, we urge you to vote on the Democratic line in NY-17 in 2024.”
“Yes. The Working Families Party has had to fight tooth and nail to continue to have a ballot line so that voters can have an opportunity to express their values by voting WFP. Normally, we encourage voters to vote on the Working Families line in every general election. But this year we are asking voters in congressional district 17 to put country above party and vote on the Democratic line instead.
“The website also claims that supporters of Lawler are behind the effort. “Lawler has been enthusiastically cheerleading Frascone’s efforts to confuse voters and steal the line. What evidence do we have? During the June primary, the Lawler campaign sent two mail pieces to WFP registrants, highlighting a political disagreement between the Working Families Party and Mondaire Jones. The attack mail that Lawler’s campaign paid for copied the WFP visual style to imply they were WFP communications. It is extremely unusual for a Republican candidate to spend money sending expensive mailers to Working Families Party registrants. This was done to discourage real WFP voters from voting for Mondaire in the primary. It seems like Lawler’s team is not confident that he can win a fair election, so they’re resorting to dirty tricks to confuse voters!”
We spoke to Ana María Archila, New York Working Families Party Co-Director about the effort. “There’s a lot of confusion, but the basic facts are Frascone and his associates, who we don’t know who they are, registered voters WFP so they could sign petitions to put Frascone as a WFP candidate for congress.
“The way they did it, by turning in registration cards at the last minute, had the intent of hiding what was really happening. It was a dirty trick to siphon votes normally going to the Democratic candidate. We tend to endorse Democrats based on their support of the issues we believe in. They encouraged our voters not to vote for Mondaire,” said Archila.
In order to hold onto their automatic ballot status in New York State, the WFP needs to get at least 2% of the vote for President. By urging progressive democrats not to vote for Frascone and vote for Jones, will that impact their ability to meet that number?
“It is not a given,” said Archila, about WFP getting 2% of the vote on Nov. 5 in NY. “But it is more important not to allow these dirty tricks to impact the outcome. We want to make sure voters aren’t fooled.”
The Lawler campaign relished the confusion, and the attempted lawsuit to remove Frascone from the ballot.
“Mondaire Jones and his allies know he can’t win on the issues, so they’re resorting to dirty tricks to try and kick a primary-winning candidate off the ballot,” said Chris Russell, spokesman for the Lawler campaign. “In this effort, they’ve turned to Democrats on the courts to salvage what has been a train wreck of a campaign.”
“The argument they’re making would have catastrophic impacts on election law for New York State – if the judge rules in Jones’ favor, it will establish that any candidate, at any time, can sue any other candidate that has won a primary to kick them off the ballot,” concluded Russell. “If that’s not election denialism, I don’t know what is.”
Archila added, “I think that voters in the district who were considering voting for Lawler don’t like what they are trying to do here. It’s not too much to ask to respect the votes of democracy.”
Among those voters is this reporter. I live in the district, and I am a registered independent. I don’t want the outcome of my congressional election to be determined by confusion. I want a fair and square election, no games, and no tricks. It’s too important for our country.
Editor’s Note: Nobody has been able to find a photo of Frascone…until now. We were able to find a photo of him dating back a few years, taken by a professional photographer at a real estate event in New York City.
We can confirm that this is the same Anthony Frascone because of the nametag he is wearing, Anthony Frascone Alpha Omega Building. Alpha Omega Building is the name of his company which got him indicted by the Rockland County District Attorney in 2022 for “providing false information to acquire legally required workers’ compensation insurance for his employees.
The Rockland DA’s Press Release states, “Anthony Frascone, 51, of Congers, NY and owner of Alpha-Omega, was indicted by a Rockland County Grand Jury for Grand Larceny 1st, Grand Larceny 2nd, and Insurance Fraud 1st. .Anthony P. Frascone, as owner and principal of Alpha-Omega, performed general contracting and multilevel building construction projects in the New York area. As required by law, and to be considered for any construction contract, all contractors are required to carry workers’ compensation insurance for their employees.
“Frascone applied for and received binding coverage from Travelers Insurance Company based upon information he supplied that he was operating a real estate business with a single employee and only $40,000 in Workers’ Compensation payroll and was given an active workers’ compensation policy with a premium of $403.
“After a thorough investigation, it was uncovered the true number of employees and payroll records for
the time period. It indicated the defendant employed over 90 individuals and had a workers’
compensation payroll in excess of $8,000,000 for construction, not real estate work as stated on the
policy. Based upon the true and accurate rate for the workers compensation policy, the defendant
should have properly paid $1,498,748 in insurance premiums to Travelers Insurance Company during
that period.
After having his company’s workers comp insurance canceled by Travelers, Frascone committed the same fraud with The Hartford, according to the DA.
“Frascone was arraigned in Rockland County Court by the Honorable Judge Larry J. Schwartz,
bail was set at $10,000 cash/ $100,000 bond/ $100,000 partially secured bond at 5%. As further bail
conditions, the defendant was required to surrender his passport and will require the court’s permission
to leave New York state.”
We paid for the rights to the photo and have placed it on a milk box carton. Anthony Frascone is missing from the race for Congress in NY-17. Anyone with information can contact us at dmurphy@risingmediagroup.com, or contact the NY-WFP.
