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With a slender margin of only eight representatives separating Republicans from Democrats, it is safe to say that every race that is up for grabs in the US House of Representatives will be critical in determining the make-up of Congress and its course of action for the next two years. One district that may be a toss-up is the New York 18th in Orange, Dutchess and Ulster Counties, currently represented by Democrat Pat Ryan. Former NYPD Deputy Inspector Alison Esposito, who ran as Lee Zeldin’s lieutenant governor in his bid to topple Governor Hochul two years ago, believes she offers voters in the Lower Hudson Valley a better option. She appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to discuss the mood in the 18th as Election Day creeps nearer.
“I believe that New Yorkers and Americans are fed up with the direction that our country is going,” Esposito told Riedel and Larry Mendte, filling in for Berman. “They are sick of weak leadership. They are sick of the failure on the world stage. They are sick of the Biden-Harris administration putting everyone around the world before Americans, and they’re sick of the House of Representatives, on the Democrat side, that have been rubber-stamping their policies. The American people are done; New Yorkers are done with this. We want to leave in a freer, cheaper safer state… and if you look at my district in the Hudson Valley. Lee and I won that district by three full points [in 2022], so we feel like it was a seat that got left on the table.”
Esposito expanded on that theme, saying the wave Democrats are riding now with Kamala Harris will subside by Election Day. “Right now, Kamala Harris has excitement behind her, but she is the Biden-Harris administration, all of these failed policies. And to be honest with you, there’s a lot of excitement because Joe Biden is off the ticket. Now we don’t have somebody who’s not cognitively fit to lead the free world who’s going to be put forth. But you have an individual who is so much farther left than he is. And once she opens her mouth… the American public are going to be like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right. That’s who she is; she’s not any more competent.’”
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