Mondaire Jones is running for Congress again. Will he win his old district back?

Out former Congressmember Mondaire Jones (D) announced that he’s running for Congress again in New York’s 17th Congressional District, which includes areas north of New York City, including Rockland and Putnam Counties.

“I’m running for Congress because, for me, policy is still personal,” he told the HuffPost, saying that he was a “pragmatic progressive member of Congress.”

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Of course Jen Psaki was ready with a clapback.

Jones was first elected to Congress in New York’s 17th Congressional District in the 2020 election. He and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) were the two first Black, gay members of Congress, and Jones was named the Freshman Representative to House Leadership.

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He stood out in his first term, calling out Republicans for their “racist trash” arguments against D.C. statehood and helping lead the charge for for then-President Donald Trump’s second impeachment.

But the district changed for the 2022 elections, and gay Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), who was the chair of the powerful Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, decided to run in New York’s 17th Congressional District, where he lived. Maloney had previously represented the 18th Congressional District. Jones ran in New York’s 10th Congressional District, which includes parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn and does not include any parts of his former district.

Jones lost in the primary to Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY). Maloney lost in the general election to Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, even though the district has consistently voted Democratic in presidential elections. In 2020, President Joe Biden got 60% of the district’s vote in 2020.

Jones told LGBTQ Nation in January that LGBTQ+ people “have won public opinion over the past decade when it comes to the community’s entitlement to the same rights and liberties that our cisgender, heterosexual counterparts enjoy,” but Republicans still have outsized power in the system.

“We have to continue to build and renew the movement for liberation through organizing at the grassroots level and defeating those who are hostile to the humanity of our community,” he said.

He also cited 303 Creative LLC. v. Elenis as “a case that will undermine the ability of same-sex couples not to be discriminated against in the marketplace” months before the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in the case.

“We know that the Court is going to come for marriage equality,” he said. “As proud as I am of having introduced legislation with Jerry Nadler that passed last year called the Respect for Marriage Act, it’s not lost on me that the Respect for Marriage Act still would not ensure marriage equality in every state in the union for same-sex couples.”