Jeanine Driscoll has served the Town of Hempstead as receiver of taxes since 2019. A year before the completion of her second term, which began in 2023, she has entered the race to represent New York’s 4th Congressional District. The Queens native has lived in Bellrose and Floral Park, where she and her husband raised five children. Driscoll, 59, has been an attorney since 1992, and previously served as an associate justice in Bellerose and participated in local civic boards.
The Town of Hempstead covers more than 95 percent of the 4th District, which Driscoll believes has helped to prepare her, over the past seven years to become a U.S. representative. Her experience with property assessments, tax exemptions and small businesses, she said, would help her master federal spending and economic issues. “I’m a fiscal conservative,” she said. “I do think there’s a lot of spending going on — state and federal — that probably should be cut.”
Driscoll supports eliminating taxes on tips and overtime as well as Social Security benefits. Tax relief, she said, could help police officers, firefighters and other essential workers who take on extra shifts to pay their bills, while providing seniors with relief from rising expenses. She also criticized the New York metropolitan area’s minimum wage of $17 an hour as being burdensome to business owners.
“I think it's way too high,” Driscoll said. “It's killing some of these small businesses. I talk to a lot of vendors and owners in the hospitality business who really have difficulty operating. They have to cut down on staff because the minimum wage is so high.”
Driscoll has focused her campaign on reducing taxes, limiting government spending and supporting local communities. She supports restoring the full state and local tax deduction, to provide relief to homeowners facing high property taxes, but acknowledged that achieving a full restoration could be difficult because lawmakers from states with lower property taxes may oppose it.
“It’s something that I want to examine and see if it's possible,” Driscoll said. “You never know. You might be able to cut agreements and deals with people across the country.” She also suggested strengthening New York’s school tax cap to make it harder for districts to exceed the mandated limit, which would further benefits taxpayers.
Driscoll plans to address immigration with clearer rules and tighter policies. “My father's an immigrant,” she said. “My brother-in-law is an immigrant. Both of them have been naturalized.” And when it comes to Medicaid, she supports enforcement of work or volunteer requirements for eligible recipients while recognizing exemptions for people with disabilities, caregivers and parents of young children. Health care, she said, remains an important issue.
Asked why voters should elect her to Congress, Driscoll cited her honesty, hard work and accountability. She said she would remain committed to constituents’ needs and following through on campaign promises. “They're not going to be able to come back and say, ‘You promised to do this and you didn't do it,’” she said. “If I can't do it, because of whatever happens with Congress, I'll be able to explain it. But I’ve been honest and loyal, and I will continue to be that way.”
