Rep. Marc Molinaro said Monday he supports a woman’s right to an abortion and opposes a national ban on abortion.
“My position is this,” Molinaro said in a meeting with the Cortland Standard editorial board. “I believe the decision to have an abortion should be the woman’s and her physician’s.”
So what about advertisements saying he voted against abortion rights? “The 13 votes are a lie, just a lie. They were procedural votes.”
Molinaro, a Catskill Republican, seeks re-election to a second term in Congress, facing a challenge — for the second time — from Democrat Josh Riley of Ithaca. The 19th District stretches from Tompkins County to the Massachusetts border and includes the southern portion of Cortland County.
“I led the bipartisan commission to fund the expansion of access to women’s healthcare,” Molinaro said, adding he was the only Republican to support codification of invitro fertilization in federal law.
Half the votes where he’s on the record opposing access to abortion were bills where the language was inserted into bills on a different topic. The other half, he said, were to maintain the existing standard of access, which is that federal money does not fund abortions.
Molinaro is completing his first term in Congress. Before that, he was the Dutchess County executive from 2012 to 2023, an Assembly member from 2007 to 2011, a Dutchess County legislator from 2001 to 2006 and the mayor of Tivoli from 1995 to 2007. He said he hopes to keep his seats on the Agriculture and Transportation committees, and add to that a seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee.
Riley was on the staff of former Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota and of the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee. He was an assistant to former Rep. Maurice Hinchey of Saugerties, a policy analyst with the U.S. Labor Department and a clerk on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Here’s some of what Molinaro said:
On economic development: “We are going to see a wave of development and you are not ready for it,” Molinaro said.
The federal government has designated two technology corridors sandwiching the greater Cortland area: semiconductors based around Micron in Central New York and battery technology based around research at Binghamton University in the Southern Tier. Micron’s investment would create 50,000 jobs, 20,000 of them directly, and estimates of 125,000 new residents.
To get ready, communities must prepare zoning and land-use policies, to regulate where businesses may build, Molinaro said. “And they need to include housing,” he said.
Communities must also improve their infrastructure, from water and sewer services to high-speed internet. He was careful to use “high-speed” rather than “broadband.”
“It could come from satellite; it could come from cellular,” Molinaro said. “It could even come from radio waves.”
Communities will also need more child-care, and Molinaro said he’d prefer that major employers make that investment. “Micron has included a massive investment in day-care,” he said. “I think there should be a social contract.”
He’d suggest tying federal aid for corporations to support for day-care, and said he would negotiate federal funding for Temporary Aid to Needy Families and Medicaid to focus that money to approved daycare agencies, rather than simply giving families money for the cost.
On immigration and border security: “We voted for a border security bill” that would include both physical and technological barriers to entry to the United States. “Our bill would treat asylum at the border and treat children humanely,” Molinaro said.
In particular, it would add money to the asylum-seeking process, Molinaro said. “For us, shut the border and enhance the asylum process.”
On tariffs: “I think targeted use of tax benefits and tariffs is an appropriate use,” he said. He supported President Joe Biden’s use of tariffs on solar materials to keep jobs in America, for example.
