By Kieran M. Lalor
Dutchess County Executive and candidate for the 19th Congressional District Marc Molinaro and I have always hailed from different wings of the Republican Party. I’m an independent conservative Republican. He is a moderate-to-liberal establishment Republican. Over the years we have clashed. For example, when Molinaro slapped a 3.75 percent county surcharge on home energy bills, I vocally opposed him.
I did however, support Molinaro in his failed 2018 race for Governor because he would certainly have been better for New York than Andrew Cuomo. Likewise, when Molinaro was going to be challenged on the Conservative Party line for Dutchess County Executive in 2019 by an unqualified nuisance candidate, I put out a video expressing support for Molinaro at his request.
In short, Molinaro was never my kind of Republican but as a candidate for executive positions, control of one branch of government was at stake and he was better than a terrible alternative.
The dynamic is different in Molinaro’s latest run for Congress. There is widespread agreement that Republicans are going to take back the House. The latest Fox News Power Ranking predicts the GOP will win 236 seats to the Democrats 199. Still Molinaro is trying to convince donors and voters that a Republican majority depends on his success in New York’s 19th Congressional District, but that is highly improbable.
What is certain is that Molinaro is the only Republican U.S. House candidate in the entire country who knelt at a George Floyd rally. Molinaro’s participation in that BLM rally crossed a line. It was an unforgivable betrayal of Republican and independent voters. He claims that he attended the rally to keep it peaceful. But he is a politician, not Jesus. Despite his narcissism, Molinaro’s presence had no impact on the tenor of the rally. A very robust, well-organized and professional police presence kept the rally from turning violent not the politician trying to score political points.
As bad as his marching and kneeling at the BLM rally was, Molinaro’s speech was far worse. You can watch the video for yourself here.
He pandered into the megaphone, “My nieces and nephews live in the city of Richmond and they are taught to keep their eyes down and to stay forward when the police come. They are young men and women of color. I have never had to teach my boys that. They are privileged because of their very existence and that needs to end."
Molinaro is parroting the leftist lie that the police target people of color for abuse and murder. Disgracefully, Molinaro said this at the height of the pandemic when law enforcement was taking on even greater to risk to their safety to help others.
Molinaro also told the crowd, “I will never know what it is like to be a person of color in America, and I will not pretend to. But I have the utmost respect for my need, my need as a white American to kneel and listen to you.” This is far left Critical Race Theory nonsense. People owe each other mutual respect. That has nothing to do with skin color.
Molinaro encouraged the BLM marchers, saying “As you shout today and as you protest today, I need to ask you please, turn the passion you have in to purpose. Use it to change the outcome of policy, the outcome of elections.”
What policy changes did Molinaro want the George Floyd rally to push? Who did he want the people at the BLM rally to help elect? Of course, these rallies helped lead to the election of the Democrat majority in Congress and Joe Biden to the presidency, the very architects of the public safety catastrophe we are currently suffering through. Molinaro knows this. His campaign put out an ad titled “Criminals and Coddlers” explicitly drawing the connection between the BLM marches and the crime wave. It even uses footage from the Poughkeepsie BLM rally to tar his special election opponent who attended the rally on Molinaro's invitation.
Very few Republicans or moderates in the Hudson Valley agree with the divisive tenants of CRT that Molinaro embraced in his BLM speech. Still the GOP establishment nominated Molinaro twice for Congress since he took a knee and gave that speech. Rank and file Republican voters should feel no need to ratify the bad decision of the Republican party bosses. Indeed, Molinaro never felt loyalty to Republican candidates running for office.
Molinaro is tight with Congressman Sean Maloney, the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee chair. As a result of this close relationship, Molinaro refused to meaningfully support good Republican candidates for Congress when they challenged Maloney for his seat. Molinaro also didn’t support Donald Trump the Republican candidate for president in 2016 and 2020. With this track record of disloyalty, Molinaro should never benefit from reflexive party loyalty.
Molinaro’s campaign mantra insists that he will bring checks and balances to Washington. But when he had a real chance to check BLM’s radicalism in his own backyard, he groveled and knelt before it, embracing its most extreme ideas.
Curiously, Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro is running in the 19th Congressional District which doesn’t include any of Dutchess County. As a result of this carpetbagging, he won’t be on my ballot or the ballots of anyone else in Dutchess County. If Molinaro was on my ballot, I’d turn out and enthusiastically vote for Lee Zeldin for Governor, but I’d leave blank the part of the ballot for US Congress.
Your vote is too precious to waste on a candidate like Marc Molinaro who shamelessly sided with BLM when he thought it was politically advantageous to do so.
Kieran M. Lalor (R) is an attorney and a Marine Corps veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he represents Dutchess County in the New York State Assembly.
------
Hudson Power Broker
Hudson Power Broker provides political news and opinion with an emphasis on the Hudson Valley. Hudson Power Broker was established because the newspapers in the Hudson Valley are either lacking in political coverage, have a liberal bias or both. Hudson Power Broker is an aggregator and the source of original news and opinion pieces.
Comments