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With Election day just two months away, affordability is front and center in the race for New York’s 22nd Congressional District.
NY-22 Congressman John Mannion, a first-term Democrat from Geddes, NY, is facing Republican challenger Kailee Buller in a district that experts say is shifting from a national battleground into a Democratic stronghold. Buller has worked for over a decade in the food industry both as a lobbyist and as a senior official in the U.S. Department of Agriculture in both of President Donald Trump’s administrations. Buller in February left her role as chief of staff for USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins to move back to her native Auburn and challenge Mannion.
After recent redistricting efforts from state Democrats gave the party a majority of registered voters in the district, national election think tanks dubbed the district solidly blue, predicting an easy path to victory for Mannion.
Buller, though, has said from the start of her campaign that she believes her focus on affordability can win over both disaffected Democrats and the lion’s share of the district’s more than 100,000 registered independent voters. Having lobbied for biofuel and food issues with past Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and worked under Trump, Buller believes she is the right fit to find bipartisan solutions that ease costs of living for NY-22 voters.
Luke Perry, a professor of political science at Utica University, believes Trump’s influence, paired with the new Democratic advantage within the district, will block Buller from defeating Mannion. Perry in the Spring predicted Buller would not be able to overcome her association with Trump, under whom costs of living have continued to rise despite Trump’s campaign promises to increase affordability across the board.
Trump and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson recently endorsed Buller, while Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman — who is running against New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for that office — in August campaigned with Buller.
In an interview with Central Current, Perry doubled down on his previous negative forecast for Buller. Perry said he believed the political landscape has worsened for Republicans in recent months, in part due to Trump’s ongoing war with Iran, which has driven gas prices by 37% since the start of the conflict.
“President Trump’s popularity has fallen from roughly the mid to low 40% approval range to mid to high 30% range, which, historically speaking, is quite low,” Perry said. “So for any Republican running for office this cycle, those two trends are very difficult and pose big obstacles in districts that are either competitive, or Democrats have a registered voter advantage.”
The affordability crisis squeezing Americans is multifaceted: The Associated Press in June reported that grocery prices had spiked 33% from 2019 to 2026, the largest increase in the past 50 years; utility prices have risen for years with no end in sight; and steadily rising housing costs reached historic levels in recent years.
Mannion acknowledged that the Covid-19 pandemic led the country into difficult financial straits, and said that pandemic-related inflation is a long-term issue that can’t be immediately reversed. But, Mannion said, inflation can’t account for all of the country’s current financial woes.
“The administration’s actions in a number of ways I think have only made things worse, and that’s glaringly apparent to the American people,” Mannion said.
Mannion critiqued the president’s on-again, off-again tariff wars with Canada and other international allies and foes alike, saying those volatile trade policies exacerbated affordability at the grocery store.
“If we’re talking about grocery costs, these chaotic tariffs that come on and off are number one. Tariffs are going to drive up costs. I talk to farmers very frequently. The input costs, the machinery, and the fertilizer are increased,” Mannion said. “The war with Iran is destabilizing the entire world’s economy.”
Beyond other kitchen table issues, Mannion said, lowering exorbitant healthcare costs should be one of Congress’s top priorities.
Though Mannion placed the blame for much of these costs on Republican leadership in Congress and the White House, he touted a housing reform package that Congress passed this summer as an example of the sort of bipartisan solution that is necessary for the American government to ease the economic strain on its citizens.
Buller cited utility bills and taxes, as the main concerns shared by the voters she has spoken to across the district. She attributed the affordability crisis to the long-term impacts of the pandemic, and said the Biden administration intensified pandemic-related inflation.
But Buller also pointed to international supply chains, particularly for energy and technology, as another force driving up consumer costs. She wants the federal government to focus on building domestic supply chains to prevent reliance on allies or adversaries for critical resources.
“When you rely on other countries for energy, for chips, for technology, for food, and you’re in this COVID situation or some other crisis that happens, things are going to get more expensive,” Buller said. “And so there’s a lot of different reasons that we’re in the affordability crisis, and I do believe at the federal level, it’s tamed. It’s not fixed.”
Like Mannion, Buller made overtures to finding bipartisan solutions to lower costs for Americans. Buller said that her experience working for Trump does not mean she would be a rubber stamp in Congress, and said she was opposed to Trump’s war on Iran and his administration’s approach to immigration enforcement. Buller said she would be happy to collaborate with Democrats if she thinks they have viable solutions to achieve affordability, and praised Hochul for enacting a statewide data center moratorium and regulating auto insurance.
“Yes, I care about food stamps. Yes, I care about public housing. Yeah, I care about all these things because there’s people who really need it, and we’re a generous population who wants to help people who need it,” Buller said. “So I do think there’s an opportunity with the next generation of leaders to work across the aisle.”
The candidates both agreed that investing in American energy is critical to addressing rising utility costs, which will only grow alongside increasing energy demands from the technology industry, and artificial intelligence data centers in particular. Buller believes in an “all of the above approach,” championing solar and wind energy while advocating for New York to unleash nuclear investment.
“This is exactly what Pennsylvania has done. They are fracking. We are buying over 80% of our natural gas from Pennsylvania,” Buller said. “We have the ability to do those same things here, and so we just need to broaden the options available to us, and it will lower costs for consumers.”
Despite Buller’s appetite for bipartisan solutions and focus on costs of living that affect all voters, her top endorsement from the president who has presided over surging costs may be difficult to disconnect from, Perry said.
Buller has to simultaneously lean into her Republican endorsements in order to prime her party’s voters for the biggest possible turnout, while simultaneously distancing herself from the leaders issuing those endorsements, Perry said.
Buller is positioning herself as a moderate Republican who worked in the Trump administration, not someone who embraces the title of MAGA, Perry said.
“I think that’s politically necessary in our district,” Perry said. “The question that emerges is whether those two things can be done simultaneously, and whether independents and moderate Democrats will go in a Republican direction, given everything going on at this political moment.”
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