First Lady Jill Biden headlined a fundraising event Sunday afternoon for Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, D-New York, at the home of Hal and Nina Fetner on a hillside in the Westchester County village of Mount Kisco.
The minimum donation to Maloney’s campaign committee was $100, with about 150 attendees listening to Jill Biden’s remarks on the Fetner’s backyard patio.
First Lady Jill Biden urged those attending to support the five-term incumbent, who serves as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Maloney faces faced tough opposition from his Republican opponent, and a flood of money into the campaign from national Republican groups.
“Sean, you’ve been such an incredible leader for the Hudson Valley and our party,” she said. “We’re all here, every single one of us, because we are going to fight to send you back.”
Biden said she has traveled to more than 40 states as First Lady, and learned that there’s a yearning across the country for similar goals.
“They really do want the same things that they’ve always wanted, and that’s a chance to work hard, and build a good life for their families,” she said.
The US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion, reminded Jill Biden of an incident in the late 1960s when she was a teenager in Pennsylvania. That was before Roe was the law of the land.
A 17-year-old friend of hers had become pregnant, a story she keeps telling at the fundraisers across the country. She recalled that her friend needed a psychiatric evaluation declaring her mentally unfit before the doctor would perform the procedure. Biden visited her in the hospital, and later asked her mother if her friend could stay with them after her discharge because she couldn’t go home.
Her mother agreed.
“My Mom and I never spoke about it again,” said Biden. “Secrecy, silence, danger, and even death. That’s what defines that time for so many women. So I was shocked when the Dobbs decision came out. It was devastating.”
Biden said that Congressman Maloney has a reputation for delivering in Congress, noting his work to back legislation that sent billions of dollars in aid for small businesses, public schools, mass transportation, as well as his support for legislation that capped prescription drug costs for seniors.
“He has been out front, leading Democrats in Congress against an extremist Republican agenda,” she said. “He has delivered results again and again.”
She urged Maloney’s supporters to do whatever they could over the next nine days to help him win a sixth term.
“This is an enormous race, but it comes down to those small moments,” she said. “One phone call to a neighbor who forgot to vote, one ride offered to the polling place. Again and again, each action adds up. And suddenly we see what can be done.”
She reminded Maloney’s supporters that every vote counts in a competitive race.
“One vote can swing a precinct, one precinct can decide a district, one district can win a state,” she said. “It starts with you. It starts with all of us, digging a little bit deeper, working a little bit harder, believing that together, all of us with re-elect Sean Patrick Maloney.”
