Our 2024 Democratic Candidates
Chrissy Knapp
Chrissy Knapp is a Democrat running for the Orangetown Town board with strong ties to the Orangetown Community. Both of her parents were raised in Pearl River and Chrissy attended Suffern elementary schools until her family relocated to Orange County. After completing high school, and her Bachelor’s degree at UCONN, Chrissy returned to her roots in Rockland by settling in Nyack where she has resided since 2002.
A mother of four girls, Chrissy has spent many years as a community volunteer. She has served on the Village of Nyack Parks Commission, she is a Cornell Cooperative Extension Certified Master Gardener, where she helped establish school garden programs in Rockland county elementary schools. She is a Girl Scout Leader, a former PTA Vice President, a 2018 graduate of Leadership Rockland, and has served as President of the Nyack Park Conservancy (NPC) since 2016. During her tenure with the NPC, she worked tirelessly to raise private donations and to secure grants to help the Village of Nyack implement Memorial Park's comprehensive Master Plan. In 2016 she led an initiative to build a splash pad in Nyack’s Memorial Park and helped to secure project funding from the NYS Thruway Authority.
In her professional career, Chrissy has worked for over 20 years at various banks and brokers. She is an experienced Program Manager with a proven track record of implementing large scale regulatory programs within Tax Operations. Chrissy is well respected by her peers as a leader, a fiscally responsible change agent and someone who is dedicated to finding and delivering solutions to complex challenges.
Chrissy is running for the Orangetown board where she hopes to bring her experience as a community advocate and as a program manager to address complex issues in our community. There is a diverse and growing population in Orangetown that deserves representation in the form of a diverse electorate that will represent the needs, wants and rights of all of the community members. Increasing residents' quality of life, focus on environmental stewardship, increasing recreation opportunities, working to evolve policy in response to change and providing greater transparency into the governmental process is an obligation she takes very seriously, and she hopes to serve her community in this role.
Elijah Reichlin-Melnick
Elijah Reichlin-Melnick was born and raised in Nyack, NY and has lived in Rockland County for almost his whole life.
Elected to the New York State Senate in 2020, during his two year term in the senate, Elijah was the most productive first term Senator of either party, introducing and passing 90 bills, more than any of his freshman colleagues. Among the legislation he introduced and passed were bills to keep kids safe from gun violence at school, protect them from lead exposure, and require insurance companies to provide funding for crucial “early intervention” services for children. He also restored vital oversight of state contracts worth billions of dollars, and provided a 10% property tax credit for volunteer fire and EMS workers.
After years of hearing politicians talk about tax relief in Albany, Elijah made tax relief a priority and voted to reduce income taxes for middle class families, pass along over $3 billion in property tax relief to middle class and working families, and made major strides in providing an equitable amount of funding for public schools, helping kids get the education they deserve and allowing school districts to maintain programs and services without hiking taxes.
Elijah funded local communities, bringing back more than $10 million in state grant funding to Rockland infrastructure projects, parks, playgrounds, law enforcement agencies, non-profit organizations, fire departments, EMS companies, libraries, and more.
Prior to his time in the Senate, Elijah pursued a varied career of public service. After beginning his career as an elementary school teacher in an inner-city school, he subsequently worked for elected officials at the federal, state, and local level, and as a regional planner for a non-profit organization, before getting elected as a Village Trustee in Nyack. He received his bachelor's from Cornell University and holds a Masters of City & Regional Planning from Rutgers University.
Outside of work, Elijah is an avid nature photographer, hiker, and amateur pianist. He lives in Nyack with his wife Shelley and daughter Sophie, who arrived in June, 2022.
Mondaire Jones
Mondaire was raised in Section 8 housing in Spring Valley by a single mom who struggled with mental illness and worked multiple jobs to provide for their family. Their family sometimes needed food stamps to get by, and when child care was too expensive, Mondaire’s grandmother took him to work with her cleaning homes in Hillcrest and Congers. Life wasn’t easy, but Mondaire’s mother always encouraged him to dream big despite their circumstances.
Mondaire graduated from East Ramapo public schools and went on to earn his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, work at the Department of Justice during the Obama Administration, and graduate from Harvard Law School. Mondaire worked as a litigator in the Westchester County Attorney’s Office, where he defended correctional officers and took guns away from dangerous people.
In 2020, Mondaire was elected to Congress to represent the Hudson Valley. His colleagues unanimously elected him the youngest member of House leadership, and he was named the most legislatively active freshman in Congress.
Mondaire was part of the most productive Congress in modern history. He took on the pharmaceutical companies, lowering prescription drug prices for thousands of seniors on Medicare in the Lower Hudson Valley. He negotiated passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which is bringing tens of millions of dollars to rebuild our roads and bridges, and passed the American Rescue Plan Act, which kept our small businesses open and brought hundreds of millions of dollars to the Lower Hudson Valley for schools, housing, and health care.
Mondaire also earned a reputation as someone who stood up to the extremes in both parties to deliver results for the Lower Hudson Valley. During his time in Congress, Mondaire delivered record law enforcement funding to support our police officers and keep families safe, built a record as a staunch defender of Israel, and worked to block members of Congress from getting rich off the stock market.
Now Mondaire is running to return to Congress to finish the work he started to lower costs for Lower Hudson Valley residents, defend our democracy, raise wages, and stop Republicans from banning abortion.