Mike Lawler Jobs New York

Twelve Canvassers Say Mike Lawler's Campaign Lured Them With $3,000 a Week and Paid $1 a Door. His Campaign Banned the Reporters Who Broke the Story.

A federal lawsuit filed Friday says canvassers recruited from five states to knock doors for Mike Lawler were promised big weekly pay, housing and travel, then paid as little as $1 a door, worked 70 to 84 hours a week, and were fired when they complained. Lawler's campaign answered by cutting off Bloomberg.

MAGA Report Cards · Nov 03, 2026

Twelve Canvassers Say Mike Lawler's Campaign Lured Them With $3,000 a Week and Paid $1 a Door. His Campaign Banned the Reporters Who Broke the Story. — Photo: Roberto Schmidt / Getty Images, via PunchUp

Twelve people who knocked on doors to re-elect Mike Lawler have sued him, his campaign and the companies that ran his door-knocking operation in federal court in Manhattan. They say they were promised good weekly pay, a place to stay and a paid trip to New York, and instead got as little as $1 for each door they knocked, with no guaranteed pay at all.

Bloomberg Law broke the story on Monday, the day before the election. The complaint was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Lawler's campaign did not respond to PunchUp's request for comment. It went after the reporters instead.

What the workers say happened

According to PunchUp's detailed account of the complaint, the canvassers were recruited from Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Maryland and Michigan to knock doors in Westchester County in September.

The recruitment flyer, as quoted in the complaint, promised "$2 A DOOR," "$1,500 - $3,000 WEEKLY BASE PAY + BONUSES," "HOUSING COVERED" and "TRAVEL COVERED." Bloomberg Law describes the promised weekly base salary as $1,200 to $3,000, with free housing and travel paid from September through Election Day.

Here is what the workers say they actually got:

$1 per door, not $2, and no base pay. They say they learned this at orientation, after they had already traveled to New York.
A quota to keep a roof over their heads. Workers say they had to knock 100 doors a day to keep their hotel room.
70 to 84 hours a week with no minimum wage and no overtime. The complaint calls it a "canvassers' sweat shop."
Travel money taken back. The promised travel reimbursements were withdrawn, the workers say.
About $3 an hour. One canvasser, Bernardette Hurtte-Reid, says she was paid $275 in total, which the lawsuit puts at $3.27 to $3.93 an hour. Another says she was paid nothing.

The complaint claims the companies recruited people from far away on purpose, so that once they arrived "they would be trapped in New York and would need to continue to work."

When several workers complained about their pay and treatment on September 11, the suit says, they were fired hours later.

The discrimination claims

The lawsuit also describes racist, religious and age-based abuse from people running the operation. The workers say a director at one subcontractor told Black canvassers he felt "like he's surrounded by a group of monkeys." Two older Muslim women say a recruiter called them "the geriatric crew," and that they were called "the ladies with the head wraps" because they wore hijabs.

To be clear about who is accused of what: the complaint attributes those remarks to people working for the contractors, not to Lawler himself, and it doesn't claim he witnessed them. The recruiter named in the suit denied making the remarks to PunchUp. None of the claims has been tested in court.

Why Lawler is in the lawsuit

Lawler is sued both personally and through his campaign, alongside four consulting and canvassing companies and three individuals. The workers argue that Lawler and his campaign had enough control over the operation to be legally responsible for how it treated them.

That is the core of the case, and it's a question that matters well beyond this race. Campaigns routinely farm out door-knocking to layers of contractors. When the workers at the bottom of that chain are cheated, every layer above them points at the next one down. The candidate whose name is on the door hanger is the person who benefits from the work.

The campaign's answer: ban the reporters

Lawler's campaign did not respond to PunchUp's request for comment. But it did respond to Bloomberg.

According to Semafor's Max Tani, as reported by Raw Story, the campaign told Bloomberg it was "revoking all RSVPs and press credentials for Bloomberg reporters," and that any Bloomberg reporter who tried to attend an event would be "treated as a trespasser."

So on the eve of an election, a congressman accused of letting the people who campaigned for him be paid about $3 an hour chose to fight the newsroom that reported it. He isn't the first Republican on this site to treat the press that way. North Carolina Senate nominee Michael Whatley has had police called on reporters at his events.

This is also not the first time questions have been raised about where the money in Lawler's campaign goes. We've reported that his campaign has paid $502,000 to a consulting firm Lawler co-founded, run by a man who still owes Lawler up to $250,000.

Why it matters to voters in the Hudson Valley

A member of Congress votes on minimum wage, overtime rules and the agencies that enforce them. How a candidate's own operation treats the people it hires is the closest look voters get at how he thinks about work and the people who do it.

Twelve of those workers say they were promised up to $3,000 a week and paid as little as $1 a door. The one response from Lawler's campaign that has been reported is barring the reporters who told voters about it.

The bottom line

Twelve canvassers filed a federal lawsuit on Friday saying they were recruited from five states with promises of up to $3,000 a week, housing and travel to knock doors for Mike Lawler, then paid as little as $1 a door, worked 70 to 84 hours a week without minimum wage or overtime, and were fired after complaining. One says she earned $275 in total. The claims are unproven, and the discriminatory remarks they describe are attributed to contractors, not Lawler. His campaign did not respond to PunchUp and instead revoked Bloomberg's press credentials after Bloomberg reported them.