Former Rep. Mondaire Jones (D., N.Y) rebuked party leaders’ calls for unity following Saturday’s assassination attempt and vowed to continue calling former president Donald Trump and his vice presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio), "threats to democracy."
"I won’t be gaslit into not calling Trump and Vance threats to democracy," Jones wrote Thursday. "Trump says he wants to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. Vance says he would’ve overturned the 2020 election."
Bucking party leadership may be Jones’s attempt at an olive branch to the progressive flank. After criticizing Rep. Jamaal Bowman's (D., N.Y.) anti-Israel position, Jones endorsed challenger George Latimer (D., N.Y.). The Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC and the Working Families Party of New York quickly withdrew their financial and organizational support for Jones.
Bowman’s fellow "Squad" members Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) also criticized Jones’s endorsement.
Jones’s Thursday post on X, formerly Twitter, reiterated comments he made during a Monday campaign event.
"Are we supposed to stop calling these people threats to democracy? Hell no," Jones told supporters, LoHud reported. "We have to be clear-eyed about the stakes in this election and about who is standing with the twice-impeached—and now criminally convicted—former president, and who is standing up for reproductive freedom, for our seniors, for our democracy, for affordable housing, and for everybody, regardless of who they love and how they look."
The New York Democrat said he would continue this rhetoric despite top party figures, including President Biden and former president Obama, calling for less divisive language after Trump’s near assassination, LoHud reported.
"Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is more important than that right now," Biden wrote Sunday, though he also said he never used inflammatory language toward Trump. "We'll debate and we'll disagree, but we must unite as one nation to demonstrate who we are as Americans."
The country must "use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics," Obama wrote Saturday.
Jones fell out of grace with progressives in June after he endorsed Latimer, who ultimately beat Bowman. Jayapal, his former colleague and Progressive Caucus chair, called Jones’s decision "horrific," NBC News reported. Ocasio-Cortez called it a "profound disappointment."
Jones also lost a bid in June to run under the Working Families Party line. A victory would have allowed his name to appear on the ballot as both a Democrat and as a third-party candidate. In his successful 2020 election, Jones received 13,000 votes under the WFP line, the New York Post reported.
A former member of the progressive caucus, Jones previously allied with Bowman, making his endorsement of Latimer particularly devastating. In 2020, Jones said "we need more people like myself and Mr. Bowman in Congress."
Bowman leaned into anti-Israel groups supporting him during his primary race. While endorsing Latimer, Jones said Bowman’s denial that Hamas sexually assaulted Israeli women "horrified" him and that the congressman had sown "pain and anxiety" among Jewish New Yorkers.
While Jones doubled down on aggressive rhetoric toward Trump, his opponent, Rep. Mike Lawler (R., N.Y.), introduced bipartisan legislation with fellow New York Rep. Ritchie Torres (D.) to provide enhanced protection to all presidential candidates, including Trump, Biden, and Robert Kennedy Jr.
"What happened yesterday should shock our conscience to its core," Lawler wrote Sunday. "@RepRitchie and I will work together to ensure every major candidate for President—including Trump; Biden, and RFK, Jr.—has enhanced USSS protection. Their security is paramount to the security of our nation and our democracy."
Fellow Democrats, especially Biden, find themselves in a hostile environment in the Empire State, suggesting trouble for Jones. In a June Siena College poll, Biden led Trump by 8 points, a sizable decrease from a February poll that had the president up 12 points. A private poll reported by Politico in July found Trump leading Biden by 1 point.
Jones survived a short-lived primary challenge from Liz Whitmer Gereghty, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D., Mich.) sister. Gereghty dropped out in November after facing criticism for being a New York outsider and for courting support from Michigan’s congressional delegation. She endorsed Jones after ending her bid.
Jones successfully campaigned on a progressive platform in 2020, calling to defund the police, abolish cash bail, and enact Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. In a Teen Vogue op-ed that year, Jones wrote that America must "dismantle white supremacy in all aspects of our society, and that means moving funding away from police departments."
After congressional redistricting, Jones chose not to run for reelection in his home district against Democratic Congressional Campaign chair Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in 2022. Instead, he ran in an open primary in New York’s 10th Congressional District, where he came in third.
Lawler beat Maloney in the general election that year.
Jones did not return a request for comment. He’ll face Lawler at the ballot box in November.