There’s a new twist in the competitive race to represent a Hudson Valley congressional district that involves a mysterious candidate and a sudden influx of newly-registered third-party voters.

Democratic former Rep. Mondaire Jones is poised to lose the Working Families Party nomination – which could also mean losing a crucial block of votes in November in what is widely considered a swing district. His team believes that the man in line to win it is a Republican plant. As of Friday morning, a so-called “mystery candidate,” the relatively unknown Anthony Frascone, led Jones in the third-party primary 185 to 153 votes, according to the state’s unofficial results.

Within 10 days before the voter registration deadline and the start of early voting for Tuesday’s primary, nearly 200 new voters joined the Working Families Party in Rockland County, according to county Board of Elections enrollment data. That’s also where the highest turnout was out of all four counties that make up parts of the 17th Congressional District in this under-the-radar race.

The surge is significant when membership numbers in the whole district are just over 1,900. Rockland County is also home to incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who stands to run a competitive race against Jones. The Cook Political Report has labeled their race a “toss up.”

A third-party spoiler candidate could tip the outcome.

“The GOP knows that their best shot of winning, of retaining their seat is by hijacking a third-party line and undermining the democratic process,” said Ravi Mangala, national press secretary for the Working Families Party.

Though Frascone appears likely to win the Working Families Party line, the party refused to claim him as one of their own.

Frascone did not respond to multiple calls seeking comment.

Board of Elections records show that Frascone was a registered Republican for nearly two decades before registering with the Working Families Party in 2012. And records show he is still close with Republican leaders in the district.

Under New York’s closed primary system, a candidate must be a registered party member and only voters registered in the same party can cast a ballot. In the general election, candidates running as a Democrat or Republican can also collect votes if their name appears on a minor party line, like the Conservative or Working Families Party. There are rarely primaries for those third-party lines.

Many Democratic candidates assume that they will also secure the Working Families Party line, giving a broader swath of left-leaning voters a chance to support them. While Jones has had the party’s support in the past, he already lost the party’s commitment to help organize on his behalf when he endorsed Westchester County Executive George Latimer over his former colleague Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the neighboring 16th Congressional District.

But losing Working Families Party resources to campaign is different than having another candidate who could pull votes away in a general election. And long before Jones made his endorsement, Republicans were working to get Frascone on the Working Families Party primary ballot.

All candidates need to file petitions with the signatures of other registered party voters along with a cover sheet that includes a contact person for the candidate to the state Board of Elections in order to appear on the ballot. Those documents are due nearly three months before the primary. Frascone’s lists a contact person named Brett Yagel on his cover sheet.

Yagel is a registered Republican who ran unsuccessfully for New York State Assembly in 2022. He has not yet responded to Gothamist’s calls or texts requesting comment.

“Working with other Republicans and building a coalition with the religious community in the town of Ramapo, [the Lawler campaign] enrolled a number of people within the [WFP] party. They mobilized those people to vote and they won the line for a third candidate to divide the anti-Lawler vote,” said Evan Stavisky, president of the New York-based Democratic consulting firm the Parkside Group. Stavisky lives in Rockland.

Almost all of the nearly 200 new Working Families Party voters who registered between June 6th and 15th were from Monsey and Spring Valley in Ramapo, both areas with large communities of Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish voters who frequently vote as a block.

In past elections, votes cast for the Democrat on the Working Families Party line have propelled a candidate to victory, especially in close races. Rep. Pat Ryan secured a win in a special election in August 2022 beating the popular Republican Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro by 3,837 votes. More than 10,000 of Ryan’s votes came on the third-party’s line.

“MAGA Republicans are trying to steal the Working Families Party line in order to elect Mike Lawler,” said Shannon Geison, a spokesperson for the Jones campaign.

A spokesperson for Lawler’s campaign said Jones was just trying to escape the blame for the primary outcome.

“From the GOP to Jewish voters in Ramapo to progressive activists in [the] district, no one is safe from his efforts to save face after an embarrassing loss,” said Chris Russell, spokesperson for the Lawler campaign.

It’s unclear how close Frascone was with the leader of the Rockland County Republican party, but court records raise the question of whether there was an attorney-client relationship.

In 2022, Lawrence Garvey, an attorney and the head of the Rockland County Republicans, represented an Anthony Frascone when he was sued by the state of New York in Rockland County for allegedly stealing workers compensation benefit premiums from two insurance companies. The case was dismissed later that year.

Garvey did not respond to multiple requests for comment about whether the candidate Anthony Frascone was the same person, or related to, his client Anthony Frascone.

The Jones’ campaign, down just 32 votes, is still waiting for the election results to be finalized. Geison stressed that there are still outstanding Working Families Party ballots to be counted in the primary but said the campaign remained focused on defeating Lawler for his “votes against access to abortion and Medicare and Social Security.”

But Lawler’s campaign is still calling it all a distraction.

“I hope this temper tantrum isn’t a preview of how he’ll react in November,” said Russell. “If he can’t accept the results of an election now and concede, then how can anyone expect him to concede gracefully in November?”