NAN HAYWORTH: Don’t Count Mike Lawler Out After His SALT Stand

Call him “The SALT Shaker.”

As a Congressional predecessor, constituent, and supporter of the Member of the House for New York’s 17th District, Mike Lawler, I’m pretty certain he wouldn’t reject this moniker. Ever since his 2022 upset victory over then-DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) chair and five-term incumbent Sean Patrick Maloney—fortified by holding the redistricted seat in 2024–he’s been shaking things up.

The successful political bet that first brought Mr. Lawler to Washington was so stunningly audacious that he rocketed to the forefront of media attention, and he’s used that prominence resourcefully and well. He’s adroitly managed the politics of a suburban swing district with majority Democrat registration in deep-blue New York by diverging just enough from the House GOP Party line to be credibly independent, while remaining a majority-making Republican worthy of defending. His vote against the 2023 “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” which raised concerns among his transgender-supporting constituents–even as he’d been a co-sponsor of the bill!–is but one illustration of how Lawler manages to make himself the Schrödinger’s cat of New York politics.

And, like a cat, Mr. Lawler appears thus far to have an ample supply of lives — not that he’s lost any of them yet, but he evinces no fear treading agilely along narrow ledges and jumping from one high-risk perch to the next. It takes a particular combination of intellectual wherewithal and calculating sangfroid to survive in this urban/suburban jungle, and Mike Lawler shows all evidence of possessing both in his latest and highest-profile endeavor: to raise the deduction from federal taxes for state and local taxes, a.k.a. SALT.