Republican Chele Farley is launching another bid for public office — this time for a congressional seat in Hudson Valley to take on incumbent Sean Patrick Maloney and the Democratic Party’s lurch toward the left.
Last year, Farley challenged Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
Though she lost by a two-to-one margin, Farley scored points by getting Gillibrand to pledge to serve out her six-year term after accusing the senator of plotting a run for president.
Shortly after her re-election, Gillibrand announced her candidacy for the White House — proving Farley’s claim.
“The people of the Hudson Valley need a new voice in Washington who will fight for our values of hard work and living within our means. We need a representative who has the determination to put a stop to the wave of socialism that is sweeping Washington,” Farley said in a letter to supporters .
Farley will run with President Trump at the top of the ticket.
During her Senate campaign last year, Farley backed the president’s immigration crackdown but called the new federal cap on state and local tax deductions a “bad deal” for New York.
Farley wasted no time trying to link Maloney to the left-wing politics of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Earlier this year my opponent, Sean Patrick Maloney, embraced Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. Their $93 trillion plan to reshape our country’s economy will wind up costing every New York family $600,000. If they get their way, they will destroy our health-care system and drive up our energy costs which are already the highest in the nation,” Farley said.
The 18th congressional district includes all of Orange and Putnam counties and portions of Dutchess and Westchester.
After graduating from Stanford University with two engineering degrees, Farley worked for UBS Capital and Goldman Sachs before founding Mistral Capital International, a private equity investment firm.
But Maloney, a fourth-term incumbent, will be difficult to topple.
A prodigious fundraiser, he won re-election last year, defeating Republican James O’Donnell 55 to 45 percent.
A former senior adviser to Bill Clinton, he served in the administrations of Govs. Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson.
He also ran for attorney general last year, coming in third in the Democratic primary behind Letitia James and Zephyr Teachout. He then ran for re-election to Congress.
The first openly gay New Yorker elected to Congress, Maloney resides with his husband, Randy Flork and three children, in Cold Spring.
Farley lives in Tuxedo, N.Y.