Regarding "Matt Richter: Conley came out swinging. But Lawler still won first debate | Opinion," lohud.com, Sept. 30:
When Rep. Mike Lawler first ran for Congress, he promised to tackle inflation, lower costs and make life more affordable. Because I thought I could take him at his word, I voted for him. That was a mistake.
I’m a lifelong Hudson Valley resident, born and raised in Rockland County. I went to Suffern High School and graduated the same year as Lawler. I can’t say we were close friends — I enlisted in the Air Force after high school while he went straight into politics — but I remember passing him in the hallway.
After being honorably discharged in 2011, I came back home and met my wife, Marisa. We got married in 2024 and had our daughter,
Charlotte, the following year.
Life in the Hudson Valley is becoming more expensive every day
Marisa is a nurse and I work in emergency services with local law enforcement. We don’t lead a lavish life. All we want is to live comfortably in the place I’ve always called home, save enough money to send Charlotte to college and, maybe, be able to retire some day.
That future is feeling increasingly uncertain as it becomes harder and harder to make ends meet here in Rockland.
Take our weekly trip to the grocery store. Last September, we spent $363 at the ShopRite in Pearl River to feed our family of three. Last week, we spent $455.
And don’t even get me started on the price of gas. It cost me $72 to fill up my truck last week. It used to cost me no more than $50.
All of these costs add up and take a toll on a family like ours. Marisa and I are being forced to have tough conversations about which purchases to put off and which bills to pay. That shouldn’t be the case for two hardworking people with full-time jobs.
Mike Lawler’s loyalty to Donald Trump is driving up costs
The worst part is that our congressman, Lawler, can be blamed for these soaring prices. He votes with President Donald Trump nearly 100% of the time, even when it hurts all of us.
Lawler voted eight times for Trump’s tariffs. Those tariffs are costing households across the Hudson Valley $4,200 more — a burden he shrugged off as “a little bit of short-term pain.” $4,200 may not mean a lot to you, Mike, but to a family like mine that loss is real and we feel it.
Lawler voted six times for Trump’s war with Iran that has sent gas prices through the roof. He claimed that gas prices would come down by now, that they’d be “right around three or just below it” by the upcoming midterm elections. We’re at nearly $4.50 a gallon!
Lawler was a deciding vote on Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which paid for tax breaks for billionaires and many of his own corporate donors by kicking nearly half a million New Yorkers off their healthcare and raising healthcare costs for hundreds of thousands more.
Lawler has also voted to raise our energy costs and utility bills, to give $80 billion in tax breaks to data center developers after taking hundreds of thousands from Big Tech, to give his Big Pharma donors a $9 billion windfall and foot seniors with the bill — the list goes on and on.
At the end of the day, actions have consequences. Lawler’s allegiance to Trump has raised my cost-of-living, and cost him my vote.
Cait Conley will create the affordable future working families deserve
With Lawler in office, life here in the Hudson Valley has only gotten harder and more expensive. Conley is running to fix that.
Conley is the daughter of a construction worker and a postal worker whose family has called the Hudson Valley home for four generations. She actually understands the value of a dollar. She would never write off $4,200 as “a little bit of short-term pain.”
Conley also understands the meaning of service. Like me, she served this country proudly — and I won’t hold it against her that she chose the Army. A graduate of West Point who served 16 years and did six tours overseas under both Republican and Democratic presidents, her loyalty to our country is unquestionable.
Conley has vowed to take on corruption so politicians can’t keep lining their pockets at the taxpayers’ expense. She wants to ban stock trading by members of Congress. She’ll work to lower middle-class taxes and hold monopoly utility companies and Big Pharma accountable to lower costs. I believe her.
Because unlike Lawler, a former utility lobbyist, Conley doesn’t take any corporate PAC money and isn’t raking in tens of millions from Donald Trump, Elon Musk and more. That means she’s accountable to us, not corporations and special interests.
I’m going to end this piece like my grandfather, a prolific correspondent to the Pearl River Our Town newspaper, would — by asking a series of questions:
This November, will you choose the candidate who wants to end the corruption in Washington, who will bring down our costs and fight for us?
Or will you pick the one who votes with Trump to make everything in your life more expensive?
If you want a more affordable future, I encourage you to join me in voting for Cait Conley.
Mike Monroe is a resident of Rockland County.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: I voted for Mike Lawler. This November, I’m with Cait Conley | Opinion
