As the nation is just one week away from Election Day 2024, the race for the 19th Congressional District is heating up, as Democratic Candidate Josh Riley finds himself going up against a familiar political opponent, Republican Incumbent Marc Molinaro.

A fifth-generation Endicott native, Riley graduated from Union-Endicott High School in 1999. Like many of his classmates, his father, grandparents, and previous generations worked at IBM and Endicott-Johnson. 

Today, Riley is knocking on doors in the same neighborhoods he used to deliver newspapers to as a kid. He says his first exposure to politics was as a student interested in news and current events.

"I would read the newspaper every morning when I was delivering it," Riley said. "Usually I would check for the score, the Whalers or Rangers games. I was a big hockey fan and then I would read the newspapers and I would read the stories about what was happening in our community with job losses, with terrible trade deals that shipped jobs overseas."

However, witnessing the IBM layoffs and shutdown in the 90s made a lasting impact on his career.

"As my generation was coming up, I saw corporate greed and political corruption take those jobs away," Riley said. "We saw the child poverty rate go up. We saw the opioid epidemic ripped through, killed people on this block, and I looked around and realized I didn't know any lawyers."

Riley studied at the College of William and Mary before going to work for the U.S. Department of Labor. After a year with the Department of Labor,  he attended Harvard Law School.

Immediately after graduating, he represented the American Academy for Pediatrics in a landmark civil rights lawsuit, turning down offers from Wall Street.

Riley also fought to help kids who were growing up in poverty and had trouble getting access to healthcare services. 

"A lot of the work I've done throughout my career has been to give a voice to people who don't necessarily have one, people who are, you know, the underdog, frankly, in a lot of cases. So these were little kids who needed somebody to fight for them," Riley said.

As a general counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, he worked on bipartisan legislation to protect domestic abuse survivors and combat the opioid epidemic before working in the private sector.

After a career in law and public service, Riley made his political career just 2 years ago. He wanted his campaign to represent communities like Endicott, refusing Corporate PAC donations.

"I'm pushing for term limits. I want to ban the politicians from trading stock when they're in office," Riley said. "We've got to we've got to have some sort of change here. And so that's why I got into it."

Riley ultimately fell short to Republican incumbent Marc Molinaro, losing by a little over 4,400 votes. But, in April 2023, he announced he would be challenging Molinaro again. 

The Democratic candidate says he is proud of his grassroots campaign. If elected, he says a top priority would be the economy, from rising utility bills and grocery costs to bringing back good manufacturing jobs. 

"We've got to get out of these terrible trade deals and start making stuff in America again. I want to put American workers first," Riley said. "I want to create American jobs. And we can do it in places like this."