NY-17 is a Hudson Valley swing district with a D+1 PVA in a mostly suburban district that encompasses much of Northern Westchester County, all of Rockland County and Putnam counties and a silver of Dutchess County. Because of terribly flawed candidates in 2022 and 2024, the district got stuck with Trump lackey Mike Lawler. Biden won the district by 10 points and even Kamala managed to squeeze off a win (albeit by just one point). It’s crucial for the Democrats to nominate a winning candidate next year— and that candidate is Mike Sacks in a crowded field with 7 other Democrats.
Blue America is very proud to endorse Mike today and to urge you to read his guest post below, watch his announcement video at the top of the page and, if you can, contribute to his campaign here. You can read more about him and why he decided to run, here.
Let's Build a New House
I am running for Congress to build a New House from the rubble of the wreckage that Donald Trump and his MAGA minions like Mike Lawler will have left us.
My story begins on the Supreme Court's sidewalk on September 9, 2009. I was a law student camping out overnight to be first in line for the Citizens United reargument. Everyone knew Chief Justice John Roberts and his fellow Republican justices were going to override Congress and flood our campaigns with corporate cash. But I wanted to see the justices set the stage myself.
That experience inspired my career as a lawyer, journalist, and Roberts Court watchdog, just as the Citizens United decision kicked off a right-wing resurgence that resulted in billionaires like Elon Musk buying Trump's Presidency and Lawler's seat.
Come January 3, 2027, we will have the chance to reorient our politics back to we, the people— in the People's House. But that can only happen if we send people to Congress who understand how we got to this point, and have the vision to get us out of it.
Name anything that's been in the news during Trump 2.0, and I've worked to cover it, expose it, and fight it. Here's just a sampling:
ICE's masked raids: I covered the Senate Republican filibuster of comprehensive immigration reform a dozen years ago that gave rise to Trump's fascist cruelty.
Trump's tax and tariff policies: I was the first reporter to put a microphone in front of Trump's face during his first term and call him out for his false claims about the tax cuts for the rich that Mike Lawler and his fellow Republicans just voted to make permanent by stealing health care and SNAP benefits from the vulnerable.
Texas's hardcore gerrymandering at Trump's behest: I covered the Roberts Court's greenlighting that kind of cheating, and have led campaigns to fight the Republican justices' continued assault on our democracy, from destroying the Voting Rights Act to enabling Trump's autocratic agenda.
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell: I was there for their indictments and arraignments, witnessed Epstein's survivors bravely deliver their victim impact statements in court after he died, and reported from Maxwell's trial through her guilty verdict.
From Citizens United to January 6th and beyond, I had a front-row seat, quite literally at times, to Trump's rise and the billionaire capture of our federal government.
And it will be the work of the 120th Congress to expose and fight Trump's criminality and corruption, while showing the American public what we can achieve when we're all in it together.
After all, when Republicans hold power, they hurt people, tank the economy, and then distort our democracy to preserve their power because hurting people and tanking the economy is unpopular.
This administration is making that plain every single day, and Mike Lawler's tied himself to Trump's mast. No longer can Lawler pretend to be moderate up here in NY-17 while voting MAGA in D.C. He now has a record, and we are calling him out on his lies. He was just on CNN saying "Job growth is up. GDP is up. Consumer Price Index is down." Except job growth is down, Trump's tariffs will shrink the GDP by $120 billion annually, and the CPI is going back up.
Trump and Lawler lied to us about lowering prices in 2024 so they could line the pockets of billionaires at our expense, and now Lawler is quite literally telling us up is down and down is up here in Trump's Orwellian America.
But I've always lived by this idea: the truth isn't dead if we don't let it die.
And here's the truth: progressive policies that help people are popular. Social Security. Medicaid. Medicare. The Civil Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act. The Fair Housing Act. From the New Deal to the Great Society, and even Obamacare, Republicans know they repeal transformative laws at their electoral peril.
That's why the right wing instead works to kill such bills in the cradle. Their anti-democratic weapons of choice? Corporate campaign cash. Extreme partisan gerrymandering. The Senate filibuster. The Electoral College. And as a final failsafe, they captured our Supreme Court so life-tenured and unaccountable political operatives can do their elected co-partisans' dirty work by making up new rules to strike down good and perfectly constitutional policies that do manage to become law.
This system has taken a wrecking ball to American democracy. Our campaign aims to recover our country's silenced voices, picked pockets, hurt families, and stolen freedoms from the rubble— and build a New House that stands for all of us.
Yet simply winning back the House with legislative promises will not be enough to save us if we give up the moment the billionaire-bought system designed to block us does just that. That's how we've lost voters. That's how we've lost elections. That's how Trump came back. In the 120th Congress, we must stop at nothing to show the people that we work for them.
That means aggressive oversight that hauls before the House the criminals, the corrupt, the clowns, the incompetents, and the cronies of Trump 2.0 so the American people can see who has hurt us, tanked our economy, and distorted our democracy to preserve their power no matter the people's will.
That means passing our own One Big Beautiful Bill to safeguard our democracy, restore reproductive freedom, improve the lives of working Americans, strengthen our safety net, fix our immigration system, save our planet, care for our children, and protect the LGBTQ community.
That means not shutting up and moving on when Senate Republicans kill the bill, but rather spending every single day of the rest of the 120th Congress reminding voters that the reason they aren't getting all the rights, freedoms, and good stuff they voted for is because the bad guys we hauled in for oversight bought the Senators who blocked it at Daddy Trump's command.
By returning the House to the center of our political imagination, we can build momentum towards winning the White House and Senate on the promise of our popular policy agenda, get the public geared up to end the filibuster should a Republican minority stand in the way of the agenda's enactment, and dare the Roberts Court to risk disempowerment should it declare good and perfectly constitutional Acts of Congress unconstitutional simply because Democratic majorities passed them.
This is how we vanquish MAGA and break free from the billionaires. The vision will not be realized in just one election cycle. But rescuing our republic from a would-be autocrat requires no less. And what better place to begin than the only place it can: in the People's House.
