This is our Congressman, Marcus Molinaro, answering a reporter about his recent vote for Speaker of the House: Ohio Representative Jim Jordan. After a tenure marked by chronic infighting, in some cases literally throwing hands on the floor of the House, Republicans ousted their own Speaker in October of 2023, offering up Jordan as their latest champion. Jordan had built his reputation as one of the most far-right and extremist members of the Republican party, and Trump’s biggest ally in Congress. He is also alleged to have been complicit in the sexual abuse of college athletes while he was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State. Asked how he could justify voting for someone so repugnant to the majority of Americans, Molinaro dropped this gem:
“And as I’ve told most people, I think most of the people I represent wouldn’t know the speaker of the house if they backed over him with a pickup truck”
He didn’t say something like “I think Jim Jordan is a quality candidate and will make a great Speaker” or “I have some concerns but I think he is the best of the choices we have” or even “No comment”. He essentially admitted, “I know he’s awful but the people I represent are too stupid to know what I’m actually doing in Washington, so who cares?” Not only that, but he said “pickup truck” for a reason. “Dumb hillbillies” is what that’s a translation for, that’s what people like him think about those of us who grew up in rural, upstate towns like my hometown of Gilboa. We’re smart enough to read between the lines, congressman.
I almost can’t believe he actually said this, that he would go out of his way to say something not only so offensive but also so detrimental to his reelection chances. Unlike many of his peers in this new MAGA Republican Party, Congressman Molinaro is quite intelligent. He knows how to work a room, is well-versed in doublespeak, and is very strategic and disciplined when it comes to manipulating the local media. He takes credit for things the previous Democratic congress enacted like funding for local services, and routinely says he supports the opposite of what he votes for. That’s why it’s so shocking that he would let his inner voice slip like that on camera. It was almost as if he had a tell-tale heart moment where he just couldn’t keep it in and the thin veneer of BS could hold no longer:
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!”
I think beyond this specific vote, Molinaro’s admission is essential to understanding everything that our congressman and his party have been up to since taking office last year. When he’s in our district he says one thing, but when he gets to Washington, his voting record tells a starkly different story. For someone in such a 50-50 district, he votes like he represents deep red Mississippi. Going through everything that he’s voted on, I was shocked at how far along he went with the most extreme members of Congress, voting for incredibly unpopular and divisive bills over and over again. I would ask myself, why on Earth would he vote for this nonsense when he knows he’s in such a tight district? And that quote kept coming back to me: “most of the people I represent wouldn’t know the speaker of the house if they backed over him with a pickup truck” in other words, “they’re too ignorant to hold me accountable”. So with receipts in hand, I want to go over exactly what our Congressman voted on during his term, and what the future would look like if MAGA Republicans gain control of Washington again:
- Voted to make it easier to commit unemployment insurance fraud, while defunding the Department of Labor and giving handouts to private companies (H.R.1163)
- Voted for a resolution that would prevent the EPA from reducing pollution (S.J.Res.11)
- Voted against fighting climate change and clean energy (H.Amdt.186 to H.R.1615), (H.Amdt.237 to H.R.2670), (H.Amdt.255 to H.R.2670), (H.Amdt.302 to H.R.4366), (H.Amdt.303 to H.R.4366), (H.Amdt.350 to H.R.4368), (H.Amdt.520 to H.R.4394), (H.Amdt.722 to H.R.4664), (H.Amdt.671 to H.R.4664)
- Voted for a bill that would intentionally overload government agencies to prevent them from enforcing laws like environmental regulations (H.R.288)
- Voted to ban abortions for women in the military (H.Amdt.222 to H.R.2670)
- Voted to ban certain medical care for trans service members (H.Amdt.223 to H.R.2670), (H.Amdt.224 to H.R.2670)
- Voted to ban equality protections in the military (H.Amdt.232 to H.R.2670), (H.Amdt.234 to H.R.2670), (H.Amdt.235 to H.R.2670), (H.Amdt.247 to H.R.2670), (H.Amdt.253 to H.R.2670), (H.Amdt.254 to H.R.2670)
- Voted to transfer weapons of war from the military to the police with no training (H.Amdt.239 to H.R.2670)
- Voted for book bans (H.Amdt.237 to H.R.2670)
- Voted to remove animals from the Endangered Species Act (S.J.Res.24), (S.J.Res.9)
- Voted to ban states from passing their own emissions standards (H.R.1435)
- Voted for anti-vaccine culture war bills (H.Amdt.270 to H.R.3935), (H.Amdt.299 to H.R.4366), (H.Amdt.300 to H.R.4366), (H.R.497)
- Voted to reduce the salary of federal officials to $1 (H.Amdt.363 to H.R.4365), (H.Amdt.675 to H.R.4664), (H.Amdt.643 to H.R.4820), (H.Amdt.645 to H.R.4820), (H.Amdt.521 to H.R.4374), (H.Amdt.595 to H.R.4821), (H.Amdt.582 to H.R.4821)
- Voted against racial understanding programs (H.Amdt.348 to H.R.4368)
- Voted to destroy a National Historical Park so oil companies could drill there (H.Amdt.568 to H.R.4821)
- Voted for Jim Jordan as House Speaker
- Voted for Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker
- Voted for Mike Johnson as House Speaker
- Voted for a bill banning certain types of speech (H.Amdt.716 to H.R.4664)
- Voted against reducing firearm violence (H.Amdt.713 to H.R.4664)
- Voted against equity for women (H.Amdt.691 to H.R.4664)
- Voted to deny aid to small businesses (H.Amdt.672 to H.R.4664), (S.J.Res.32)
- Voted to censure his colleagues (H.Res.845), (H.Res.914)
- Voted against equality programs ((H.Amdt.647 to H.R.4820)
- Voted against equality protections in housing (H.Amdt.621 to H.R.4820)
- Voted to defund medical research (H.Amdt.739 to H.R.5894)
- Voted to make our air more polluted (H.R.4468)
- Voted for an impeach inquiry against President Biden, but did not provide a reason or evidence of wrongdoing (H.Res.918)
- Voted for an anti-labor resolution that exploits workers (H.J.Res.98)
- Voted for a bill that would send public money to business so they can spread anti-abortion propaganda (H.R.6978)
- Voted for a bill that would force college campuses to distribute anti-abortion propaganda to students (H.R.6914)
- Voted for a bill that would give public lands to oil companies, including by destroying National Forest System lands (H.R.21)
- Voted for an anti-work from home bill, where such workers were referred to as “lazy” (H.R.139)
- Voted against student loan forgiveness (H.J.Res.45)
- Voted for oil and gas drilling in the North Atlantic (H.Amdt.3 to H.R.21)
- Voted for oil and gas drilling off the coast of Virginia (H.Amdt.15 to H.R.21)
- Voted for oil and gas drilling in the Washington/Oregon area (H.Amdt.24 to H.R.21)
- Voted for oil and gas drilling in Southern California (H.Amdt.23 to H.R.21)
- Voted to allow oil and gas companies to abuse Tribal lands without consent (H.Amdt.27 to H.R.21)
- Voted against an amendment that would protect communities from oil and gas drilling (H.Amdt.28 to H.R.21)
- Voted to explicitly allow oil companies to harm poor people and people of color (H.Amdt.38 to H.R.21)
- Voted to allow oil and gas drilling in the Big Cypress National Reserve (H.Amdt.51 to H.R.21)
- Voted against making oil companies pay what they owe in taxes (H.Amdt.137 to H.R.21)
- Voted for a bill that would deny funds to public schools unless they impose new Republican anti-trans rules (H.R.5)
- Voted against upholding American commitments to the Paris Climate Accords (H.Amdt.7 to H.R.21)
- Voted for a bill that declares abortion is murder and that anyone who disagrees is “anti-life” (H.Con.Res.3)
- Voted to make it more expensive to buy a home in order to enrich mortgage lenders (H.R.3564)
- Voted for a bill that allow unregulated insurance plans to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions (H.R.3799)
- Voted for H.R.2, an anti-immigrant bill that would:
- Force the U.S. to effectively end asylum, in direct violation of international law
- End work authorization so asylum seekers can’t work legally
- Establish for-profit detention camps for unaccompanied children
- Force the government to collect the DNA of migrants
- Bans private groups like charitable organizations from helping asylum seekers
- Forces the U.S. to spend billions on an ineffective border wall that we were told Mexico would pay for
- Threatened to default on the U.S. debt unless Democrats agreed to H.R.2811, a bill that would
- Ban student loan forgiveness
- Kick families off anti-poverty programs like SNAP and TANF
- Undo efforts to fight climate change
- Give taxpayer handouts to oil companies
- Destroy public lands and Tribal lands
- Poison our air and water
- Cut infrastructure spending (roads, bridges, public transit, water and sewage systems…)
- Cut funding to the IRS to allow rich people to cheat on their taxes
- Kick people off Medicaid
- Threatened to default on the U.S. debt again unless Democrats agreed to H.R.5525, a bill that would
- Pass most of the provision in the anti-immigrant H.R.2 bill
- Create a commission intended to cut and eventually abolish Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
- Cut 30% of social spending including education, fuel assistance, anti-poverty programs including SNAP and TANF, air traffic safety, and cancer research amongst many other programs.
- Voted to cut Social Security (H.R.82 without an accompanying tax on the rich would lower everyone’s benefits)
The only reason that these bills did not become law is because we had a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president that prevented it. If Congressman Molinaro and his party keep the House and retake the Senate and the White House, this is the agenda. This is what they are trying to accomplish.
A vote for Molinaro and a Republican majority is a vote for a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions, an increase in poverty, an increase in crime including firearm violence, more monopolies, higher rent and increased homelessness, a permanent border crisis, more expensive and lower quality healthcare, vastly accelerated climate change, more corruption, the eventual death of social security, and the further dissolution of worker’s rights. Despite the script that politicians are supposed to say, Congressman Molinaro is not a reasonable person with whom I just happen to have a disagreement on how to make life better for all of us. He is actively working against the interests of myself and the vast majority of Americans. He knows he’s lying, says out loud he’s lying, tells Washington reporters he’s lying, and then puts on his best used car salesman routine on the rare occurrences that he’s actually in this district. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
Now, you still might be wondering, what does Congressman Molinaro have to gain from voting for all this? Even if he doesn’t have to fear accountability from voters, how does he benefit from going along with all this craziness? Why bother even taking the risk? We need not wonder about his motivation because Molinaro has told us exactly what got him into politics, going all the way back to 1995:
“Eventually, I would like to be in position to run for president, that would mean I would have to be a senator or governor.”
He has been planning this since before I was even born. He tried to make good on this plan when he ran for governor in 2018, somehow making Andrew Cuomo look like the lesser of two evils (and that’s quite a feat). The votes he takes, the statements he makes, are all born out of cold political calculation, whatever is going to enrich himself and help him move up that political ladder. This is in contrast to some of the other members of his party. There are some representatives, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Lauren Boebert, and Ronny Jackson who are true believers. They have drank the Trump Kool-Aid and are all in on everything the MAGA movement is trying to accomplish, ready for their marching orders to initiate the next insurrection. And then there are folks like Marc Molinaro who know better, but grift off the movement because it gets them closer to power. Molinaro knows the election wasn’t stolen, he deep down despises Trump, admits that he didn’t vote for him in 2016, but knows better than to bite the hand that feeds him. He knows how quickly and forcefully he would get dropped from the GOP if he even mildly critiqued Trump today.
The political calculation behind not voting for popular bills like stopping oil companies from price gouging is obvious when you look at who funds his campaign (big numbers from the “American Petroleum Institute”), but why vote for book bans? Why vote to harass transgender children or against equality programs? Why vote for obviously trolling proposals like reducing someone’s salary to $1? Or any one of these wild proposals by the far-right? Especially when there was zero chance that any of this was going to become law with the current makeup of Congress? The only strategy that makes sense to me is that Molinaro is trying to get the attention of big-money donors so that they back him when he inevitably runs for another higher office (I would guess that he is eyeing another run for governor based on how often he attacks Governor Hochul). He wants to prove that he is a loyal foot soldier for the far-right elements of his party, someone who is not going to cause a fuss when one of those donors calls him up and asks for a favor.
Self-enrichment and bowing down to the far-right has been a part of the Marc Molinaro story for his entire career. While Dutchess County executive, Molinaro was under investigation for funneling thousands of tax-payer dollars to his wife’s company, who then donated to his campaign. In essence, he lined his own pockets as well as his campaign with taxpayer dollars, stealing from his community to give to himself. He spent hundreds of thousands on brand new Jeeps, and gave himself a yearly raise over and over again. Instead of investing in education, reducing poverty, or providing childcare, Molinaro wasted $130 million on a prison, despite there ultimately being no need for one. He has spent decades treating public office as though it belonged solely to him. It’s no wonder that his own community rejected him in his first Congressional run, and had to flee to our district to try selling his snake oil here.
The corruption alone would be enough to disqualify this candidate, but Molinaro’s legislative history ranges from the bizarre and creepy, to the outright cruel. The anti-choice and anti-LGBT votes for example are nothing new. He voted 3 times to ban gay marriage in the NY Assembly, has donated thousands to anti-choice groups, and repeatedly banned Medicaid from being used for abortions. “Only poor people end up getting abortions without doctors” says our Congressman. This is a man who voted to shackle imprisoned pregnant women when giving birth! Other than WTF I have no idea what to even say about that! It’s cruel and stupid. He’s also voted to let violent domestic abusers possess firearms, voted against free and reduced school meals for children, and has expressed his desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He explicitly said he would open up fracking in the Southern Tier, voted against minimum wage for tipped workers, and refused to hold criminals accountable for wage theft. He’ll tell you that climate change is real and manmade and that racism is real, but then consistently vote against efforts to fix these problems.
For folks like Marc Molinaro, politics is a game. In his mind he dissociates himself from the consequences of his votes and positions, never stopping to share any remorse for the harm it might actually cause. Just say the right thing at the right time, vote how the donors tell you to vote, and you can keep climbing that political ladder.
But this is not a game. What folks like President Obama and Vice-President Biden did in 2010 saved my life. The Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’) made it illegal for insurance companies to kick people off their coverage for having something called a “preexisting condition” which can mean anything from diabetes, to pregnancy, to really anything that the insurance company did not want to cover. That includes my genetic illness. An illness that requires multiple specialists, complicated treatment, and lifetime care. Every single Republican voted against that bill in 2010. Every. Single. One. And a lot of Democrats that year knew that signing that bill likely meant that they were going to lose their election, and they accepted that outcome because they decided it was worth it. They fought for me. The Democratic party, for all its faults, is the reason I’m even still alive today. The same goes for the men and women of the labor movement who marched, and bled, and died over a hundred years ago so that I could get health insurance through my father’s IBEW union, and the Teamster health insurance I have today. Not only that, but the ACA made it so I could stay on that IBEW health insurance until I was 26, another crucial reason why I am here.
This is why you should get into politics. This is what makes all the time, the effort, the sacrifice, all worth it. To help people. To save lives. To step up when morality demands courage. Not because you “want to be president one day”. And then what? You get your face in a history textbook? Is that worth condemning the sick to die of negligence? To deny the poor food and housing? To allow our air, food, and water to be poisoned by industrial pollutants? To deny women, trans people, people of color, and immigrants basic equality in society? Treat them like they’re less than? That’s your legacy?
So Congressman Molinaro, I’m not going to mince words, this is personal. You’ve called me and the people I grew up with stupid, lied and abused your way up the political ladder, stole from your own friends and neighbors, and if you and your party return to power, it could mean the end of the healthcare I rely on to live. I respect the political prowess you possess, and the fact that you had to work much harder than most of your colleagues in your party to get to where you are today. I respect your intelligence. But that is where the respect ends. The journey here has left you morally bankrupt, and you have only achieved what you have achieved by hurting others. As a supposed representative of this district, I don’t respect you. For the way you debase yourself to those you think are above you, and step on those you think are beneath you, I don’t respect you. You’ve proven yourself to be a spineless, bootlicking, sycophant, so man to man I don’t respect you. Your ego and childhood fantasies should not be put before mine or anyone else’s right to live. I’m not looking to eke out a victory against you by a few hundred votes. No, I want this to be a landslide. I want this election to be a staggering rejection of the politics of corruption, hate, and exploitation, and an embracement of love, liberty, and happiness. I know you think you’re untouchable, that you’re far too clever to be voted out by the country bumpkins of upstate New York, but I will put my heart and soul into proving you wrong.
I’ll see you in November, Congressman.