Josh Riley is a first term congressman, occupying a seat in the US House of Representatives on behalf of the residents of New York’s 19th congressional district, which stretches from Tompkins County in the west all the way across the Hudson River to Rensselaer County and Columbia County bordering Massachusetts in the East.

This is no time to stop paying attention to politics.

This is a pivotal time in American history. We are facing immense challenges such as disasters catalyzed by anthropogenic climate change and the social and economic disruption caused artificial intelligence. The core issue of our time, however, is the struggle between democracy and fascism.

Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, but he failed to achieve a strong mandate. Trump could not quite achieve 50 percent of the vote. He obtained just 49.8 percent of the popular vote, and Kamala Harris was not far behind that, with 48.3 percent. That’s just a 1.5 percent difference, a very slim margin of victory.

What kind of voters supported Josh Riley in 2024?

The race in New York’s 19th congressional district had a slim margin of victory not much bigger than what we saw in the presidential election.

In the 2024 election, the incumbent congressman, Republican Marc Molinaro, lost to Democrat Josh Riley. Josh Riley won with 192,647 votes, 51.1% of the electorate, while Marc Molinaro had 184,290 votes, 48.9% of ballots. Josh Riley won by only 8,357 votes.

Out of the eleven counties in the 19th congressional district, seven counties voted in favor of the re-election of Marc Molinaro. So, how did Josh Riley manage to win the election?

It wasn’t because of Broome County, where Riley’s margin of victory failed to make up for Molinaro’s edge elsewhere. In Broome County, Riley won by only 1,929 votes, a small margin that was more than made up for with Molinaro’s victory in Chenango by over 5,000 votes.

It was Tompkins County, home to the city of Ithaca, that gave Josh Riley his victory in the 2024 congressional election. In Tompkins County, Josh Riley got 75 percent of the vote, an astounding 50 percent lead over Marc Molinaro. Josh Riley banked 22,924 more votes than Marc Molinaro in Tompkins County. That’s more than Riley’s margin of victory in the other three Democratic-leaning counties of the district combined.

The mathematics of Josh Riley’s 2024 victory are plain and simple. It was Ithaca, New York and Tompkins County that delivered the election to Riley. Without the remarkable achievement of the voters of Tompkins County, Josh Riley would have lost the election.

The Democrats of Ithaca and Tompkins County are not conservative, or even centrist. The Democratic Party voters of Tompkins County are strongly liberal. The same goes for independent voters in the Ithaca area. They’re progressives, not swing voters. Josh Riley was sent to the US Congress by the liberal voters of Ithaca and Tompkins County.

You would think that Josh Riley would act accordingly in his work in the US House of Representatives. You would think that Josh Riley would be one of the most strongly progressive members of Congress.

Unfortunately, in 2025, nothing can be taken for granted. The voters of Ithaca and Tompkins County know that they can’t just sit back and relax, confident that Josh Riley is going to represent their values in Congress. The responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy don’t end on Election Day. We need to track every significant vote made by Congressman Josh Riley.

Josh Riley Watch will help voters in Ithaca and Tompkins County to follow the record of Josh Riley in Congress. We will cover his most significant votes, whether they are positive or negative.

As of the moment that I’m recording this podcast episode, there have already been two significant votes on standalone legislation by Representative Josh Riley. Check back in soon for a summary of that legislation, and what it reveals about the politics of Riley in action.