U.S. Representative Pat Ryan, a Gardiner resident, is no stranger to the electoral process. On November 5, he’ll face the voters of the 18th Congressional District in what will be his sixth run for office since 2018. Those elections included a Democratic congressional primary, a special election for Ulster County executive, followed in the same year by a general election for county executive. In May 2022, he defeated Marc Molinaro in a special election for U.S. Congress, and then ran again that November for the redrawn congressional seat he holds now
We now come to 2024, with Ryan running his sixth campaign in these seven years, this one for his 18th Congressional District seat with new lines again drawn, this time against Trump-endorsed Republican Alison Esposito.
With a month to go and all pedals floored, we sat down and talked over the phone.
Pat Ryan: Hey. Brian, long time no see…
Brian Hollander: I remember I actually first met you when I moderated a seven-person debate in Woodstock…
PR: …Where we talked about the filtration avoidance determination, and I didn’t know anything about it at the time. I was the only one who admitted I didn’t know anything about it — and now I know a lot about it. Everyone else bullshitted their way through that, if you recall.
BH: Have you had dealings regarding the New York City watershed lately?
PR: Way more when I was county executive, obviously. What’s been cool in this job [Congress] is I’m on the Transportation Infrastructure Committee, and we’ve been looking at a bunch of funding for the state and the city in terms of maintenance and support for the overall system. And we’re working on a really specific project where we connect five municipalities in Orange County into the Catskill Aqueduct so that they can move their whole towns — huge towns, several hundred thousand people — on line, which is exciting.
BH: What have the last few weeks been like for you?
PR: Busy [he laughs] in a good way. We’ve been getting out there and campaigning, talking to as many people as we possibly can, we’ve been knocking on doors. We also have a busy session in Congress, as well, working to make sure we at least avert a shutdown for the third time. So that’s been exciting. And two- and five-year-old kids keep us busy on the home front, getting ready for Halloween. So definitely an exciting time.
I love this part of how it goes, just don’t sleep for the next 33 days.
Maybe I’m getting too old for this [Ryan is 42].
BH: What are we going to do about these wars?
PR: One of the main reasons I ran for Congress in the first place is my experience serving 27 months in combat in Iraq, in a war that basically I was on the receiving end of a lot of bad foreign policy.
And I want to be in a position here in Congress to be making better foreign policy and better national security decisions that understand the human consequences of sending our men and women into war. So this has been a major focus area for me — doing everything we can to prevent and avoid war.
Unfortunately, we’re seeing — although thankfully not directly involving U.S. troops — two major conflicts in two theaters. I think the key, of course, is to try to prevent any further violence and conflicts. I’ve been working really hard on that for the last two years in Congress.
BH: Any hope in sight for ceasefire?
PR: I think in Ukraine, given the resources we were finally able to get to send to our allies, there is a moment and an opportunity to put Putin on his heels and ensure that our allies in Ukraine are able to maintain their sovereignty. When president Zelensky was here two weeks ago for the UN, he laid out his plan for victory, and I think there’s a real opportunity there, and we have to press that advantage where we have it.
In the Middle East, and specifically now between Israel and Gaza and on the northern border, I think what’s really clear is we have to help Israel re-establish deterrence to prevent Iran and its proxies now on two fronts from attempting to do what they’ve made their stated mission in their national founding documents — which is, as stated explicitly, to destroy the Jewish state and the Jewish people.
We can’t allow that to happen. So that’s very front and center given now a second very aggressive attack from Iran using ballistic missiles and other capabilities into Israeli territory. Not the best way to start the New Year, certainly. [The interview took place on Rosh Hashanah.]
But I do think, it really requires a careful, careful balance, of diplomatic efforts backed up by the strength and credibility of our military. I think we’ve played a key role in doing everything we can to minimize the escalation. We have to continue to do that.
BH: The cost of living, seems to be on people’s minds. How do we wrestle this to the ground?
PR: To be very clear, the cost of living and the affordability crisis, is the number-one issue in the district. As I’m talking to folks, I’m just seeing how they are struggling now and the pressure they are feeling economically. The way I’m thinking about it, I’m working aggressively to bring down that pressure, bring down the cost of housing. For example, we’ve just outlined a comprehensive housing agenda that includes lowering mortgage rates, includes pushing very hard to speed up the approval process to build more housing for seniors, for veterans, workforce housing. To bring down the costs and also hold accountable Wall Street speculators who have come in and bought up a lot of our housing and are jacking up the prices.
Healthcare costs — I introduced a bill called Stopping Pharma Ripoffs and Drug Savings Act, it’s a long name but an important bill to bring down prescription drug costs and healthcare costs.
Groceries, we know and food costs, I introduced, actually with Marc Molinaro, a bipartisan bill called the Lower Grocery Prices Act, to bring down food costs. We know gas prices are down, but still the cost of transportation is high for folks.
We’re doing everything we can, the SALT [State and Local Taxes] tax cap, eliminating that, so we don’t have double taxation.
Focusing on affordability and lowering costs is my number-one priority.
BH: Did you see the vice-presidential debate?
PR: I caught about half of it. I was putting kids to bed, so I did not watch it from beginning to end.
I think there’s a stark, clear choice here between Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance. I did see that on clear display in terms of Vance’s unwillingness to acknowledge the traitorous actions of January 6 and continued focus on negativity and divisive policies and rhetoric — while vice-president Harris and Tim Walz are focused on the future. They’re focused on an optimistic and hopeful view looking forward for the country. That’s what’s needed and what people will end up choosing…
BH: Are the threats to the Affordable Care Act real? [Ryan had spoken earlier in the week at Protect Our Care’s “Lower Costs, Better Care” Bus Tour aimed at highlighting lower healthcare costs for New Yorkers.]
PR: We talked about it at the event, was that this week? We know there are direct threats to the Affordable Care Act as now documented in Project 2025 and other statements both verbally and in writing from Trump and Vance. By the way, Vance wrote the foreword to Project 2025, so it’s very clearly the plan of their potential administration.
The other thing they’ve been direct about, is the threat to Social Security and Medicare. We know how many people rely on Medicare, and we’ve been working to bring down prescription drug costs as part of the Inflation Reduction Act — and they want to repeal that on day one, driving up prescription drug costs.
And they’ve been very clear that they want to raise the age and privatize Social Security, and that would be devastating for everybody across the country that worked their whole lives to earn that benefit. These are very real, serious threats to the economic security of people of all ages across the district, so we’ve got to stop and prevent that kind of dangerous policy.
BH: Has the federal government acted quickly enough to the Hurricane damage in, for instance, North Carolina?
PR: I’m certainly not on the ground in North Carolina, but from what I’ve seen and heard there’s been an immediate and comprehensive response from both the president and the vice-president — and not just for that disaster but for the unfortunately increasing frequent climate disasters and national disasters we’ve been having.
I can certainly speak firsthand to the storm we had about a year ago in Orange County, which had devastating floods and a fatality and many dozens of folks with their homes destroyed. We worked really hard with the Biden administration. They immediately declared a state of emergency, we’ve been getting funding flowing.
This is actually part of my responsibility on the Transportation Infrastructure Committee, we oversee a lot of this, and have questioned the FEMA administrator multiple times, to be pressing the administration on behalf of my constituents and our district as it relates to that Orange County storm. Clearly, we need to provide the necessary funding for the folks in North Carolina and Georgia and elsewhere to get back on their feet.
BH: How’s the fundraising going?
PR: We’ve raised over seven million dollars of grassroots support from across the district .… All the folks we’ve received money from is out there publicly. What I’m proud of, is 80 percent of our donations are from small-dollar donors and contributors showing the grassroots support we have. Anybody can look at all the individuals who supported our campaign.
We’ve outraised my opponent, I think, five times more support on hand as of the last filing, and that differential continues to grow. So I’m proud of all the support we’ve earned.
BH: Any last comments?
PR: I’m excited about continuing to serve this community where I was born and raised, and now where we are raising our two boys and where I graduated college at West Point. It’s an incredible community.
We’ve been working really hard to serve the community for the last two years, delivering many millions of dollars of support to individuals and great organizations across the district, doing great constituent work with our mobile Cares Van, where we’ve been to all our municipalities.
I think at the end of the day this election is about freedom .… I’ve centered our campaign around protecting and expanding freedom for all my constituents. That’s reproductive freedom, economic freedom that we talked about in terms of lowering costs and making sure that the billionaires and big corporations in our country don’t need any more money or power.
We need to level the playing field and provide economic freedom for everyone in our country. Freedom to breathe clean air and have clean water, freedom from the gun violence that’s been plaguing our country and our community. So I’m very confident at the end of the day, come November 5, my campaign which is about protecting and expanding freedom while my opponent and Donald Trump in Project 2025 and in many other statements are about taking freedom away from Americans. if you want to piss off the American people, take away their freedom. I think we’ll see the response to that in this election just as we did two years ago.
[An interview with Ryan’s opponent, Alison Esposito, was published in the September 18 edition of Hudson Valley One. You can find it online at:Voter registration until October 26
In 2022, New York’s congressional district maps changed based on the results of the U.S. Census. In 2024, some towns will switch districts between NY18 and NY19.
In the 18th Congressional District this November 5, Pat Ryan is the Democratic candidate on the ballot and Alison Esposito the Republican candidate.
In the 19th Congressional District, Marc Molinaro is the Republican candidate and Josh Riley the Democratic candidate on the ballot.
Under the different boundaries of the 2022 general election for the 18th Congressional District, Pat Ryan received 135,245 votes and his GOP opponent Colin Schmitt 131,653 votes.
In the 2022 special election for the 19th Congressional District, Pat Ryan got 66,088 votes to Marc Molinaro’s 63,010.
According to Ulster County elections commissioner Ashley Torres, the county has seen an upward trend in voter registration in the past four years. As of October 2, 2024, the Democrats had 54,172 active voters, the Republicans 28,844. Those registered voters who belong to no party numbered 36,365, and the small parties 8944.
Historically, the rate of new voter registration has always been highest in the month of October. Voter registration is open until October 26, 2024.
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