Jessica Gorman looked into a camera this week and described how a Venezuelan illegal immigrant hunted down her eighteen-year-old daughter on a lakefront sidewalk in Chicago. "He just shot her," she said. "He hunted her down." The thirty-second spot started airing Wednesday morning across New York's 17th Congressional District — endorsing Republican Mike Lawler and ripping the Democratic politicians whose sanctuary policies made the killing possible.
The ad is not subtle. It doesn't need to be.
Sheridan Gorman was a freshman at Loyola University Chicago, an eighteen-year-old from Yorktown, New York, walking with friends near campus on March 19 when Jose Medina — a Venezuelan national in the country illegally who had been detained at the border and released — shot and killed her. She was less than a mile from Loyola's Lake Shore campus. She had been in college for a matter of weeks.
Her father Tom Gorman delivers the line that will define this race. "The sanctuary policies being pushed by Kathy Hochul and Democrats killed our daughter. This has to stop." Her mother Jessica follows: "This is why we choose leaders who choose us." A second ad features Lawler speaking directly to the camera. The campaign has committed seven figures in ad spending over the coming weeks, according to the New York Post.
Lawler's opponent is Cait Conley, a West Point graduate and former DHS official who supports federal legislation preventing county police departments from cooperating with ICE through 287g agreements. During a televised debate, the Gormans called in to question Conley on her sanctuary law support. Jessica Gorman called Conley's answer "cowardly."
Conley's position is that local police shouldn't be doing federal immigration work. The sanctuary law Governor Hochul approved bars local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE entirely. Jose Medina was detained at the border, released, and ended up in Chicago — another sanctuary city — where he killed an eighteen-year-old girl from the very district Conley wants to represent. The policy didn't protect anyone. It sorted the danger from the border to a college sidewalk.
The 17th District covers Rockland, Putnam, and parts of Westchester and Dutchess counties — home to police officers, firefighters, and veterans' families. Lawler is seeking his third term. He brought the Gorman family to the GOP midterm convention in Dallas on September 12, where Jessica described Sheridan as "a child who looked out for classmates who felt isolated" and Tom told the crowd, "This is not about us. It's about preventing the next victim."
Lawler put the question plainly: "How many lives must be lost before Cait Conley and Kathy Hochul get the message?"
The Gormans aren't political operatives. Six months ago they were planning their daughter's spring semester. Now they're in a campaign ad because the people who wrote the laws that released their daughter's killer into the country won't say her name without being forced to.
Sheridan Gorman was eighteen. She'd been at college less than a month. The man charged with her murder had already been in federal custody once.
