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Congressional hopeful Suraj Patel called for ‘a new generation of leaders’ during a heated debate with longtime Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney on Tuesday night – and moments later said he’d support 79-year-old President Joe Biden running for re-election.
The 38-year-old progressive attorney is running against Nadler, 75, and Maloney, 76, for a chance to represent the newly-redrawn bounds of New York’s 12th Congressional District.
The competitive race guarantees that Democrats will lose at least one senior member of their caucus. Maloney chairs the House Oversight Committee and Nadler is the top lawmaker in the House Judiciary.
During their second debate on Tuesday, Patel seemed to contradict himself by calling for fresh faces to lead the country into the future while also knocking Maloney and Nadler for failing to throw support behind a Biden 2024 campaign in their first match-up.
‘The rookie on this stage is the only one who didn’t just spend seven days embarrassing themselves by throwing President Biden under the bus for re-election in 2024,’ Patel said when asked about his political inexperience.
‘I mean, from Tucker Carlson to Sean Hannity, Democrats across the country are being asked about President Biden’s future now, thanks to the comments made by the two people on this stage with decades of experience.’
He knocked his rivals for Democrats’ failure to codify abortion rights before the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
Attorney and former Barack Obama aide Suraj Patel is challenging Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler for New York’s 12th Congressional District
Their last debate made headlines over Nadler and Maloney’s apparent hesitance to support President Joe Biden in 2024
‘After 30 years of time in Washington, the two opponents here failed to codify Roe. They failed to even hold a hearing on it,’ Patel said.
‘We need a new generation of leaders and generational change – generational change, by the way, is nothing to be feared.’
A short while later, the former Barack Obama aide delivered a full-throated argument for why he believes Biden, who is three years older than Maloney and four years older than Nadler, should run for president in 2024.
‘I mean, look, he’s the president. He is the leader of our party. And Joseph Robinette Biden was the only Democrat that was able to beat or is capable of beating Donald Trump two years ago. He’s earned the right to run for office again,’ Patel said.
Listing off Biden’s legislative victories including the recent Senate passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Patel added: ‘This man has accomplished so much in the first two years, why are we asking this question?’
Nadler and Maloney also firmly stood behind Biden – an abrupt change of tune from their first debate earlier this month.
During their August 2 head-to-head, Nadler demurred on the topic and said he’d instead focus on helping Democrats keep the majority in November’s midterm elections.
Nadler, who instead tried to put focus on the 2022 races, now said he ‘absolutely’ believes Biden should run
Maloney, who said ‘I don’t believe he’s running’ last time, now declared: ‘I am supporting Joe Biden. He has announced that he is running, and I am really going to be supporting him this Friday when we vote for the Inflation Reduction Act’
Maloney had drawn particular backlash for flat-out stating she did not believe the president will run again – despite his own insistence he would – and then later restating that belief even while apologizing for it.
‘I am supporting Joe Biden. He has announced that he is running, and I am really going to be supporting him this Friday when we vote for the Inflation Reduction Act,’ the longtime congresswoman said on Tuesday night.
Last time Maloney answered, ‘I don’t believe he’s running for re-election.’
She gave an awkward interview on CNN’s New Day the following morning where she publicly apologized to Biden – but did not seem to change her tune.
‘Mr. President, I apologize. I want you to run. I happen to think you won’t be running, but when you run or if you run I will be there 100 percent,’ Maloney said toward the end of her interview.
‘You are a great president. And thank you for everything you’ve done for my state, and all the states and all the cities, in America. Thank you, Mr. President.’
In his latest answer, Nadler said Biden should ‘absolutely’ run again and defended his previous week’s answer.
‘He should be the Democratic nominee and he should be reelected president. He’s done a magnificent job,’ Nadler said.
‘When I said in the debate last week was not to cast doubt on that. What I said in the debate last week, was that it does not serve the purposes of the Democratic Party to be talking about 2024 until 2022 is over.’
The new 12th Congressional District they are competing for includes 61 percent of Maloney’s old seat and 39 percent of Nadler’s current 10th Congressional District, according to Daily Kos.
Voters there head to the polls on August 23.