GENESEO–Let’s pick up where we left on Labor Day weekend 2025.

Rev. Jason McGuire, a former Livingston County Conservative party chair, and the current executive director of New York Families Foundation and New York Families Action, is bright, personable, cheerful, dedicated, and principled, all of which make him an effective advocate.

And an effective opponent of the powers that be in New York.

What did the New York attorney general’s office do?

McGuire said that after a false complaint against him, the attorney general’s office investigated him and those connected to him for years. He said the investigations cost him $100,000 in lawyers’ fees and costs, yet the only misdeeds anyone could find were not reporting political-speech-reimbursement expenses totally less than $1300.

At the Federal Election Commission, or FEC, which enforces federal political-speech law, such an allegation would–in all likelihood–have led at most to an admonishment letter.

Or perhaps it would have led merely to a prosecutorial-discretion-based dismissal. Why? To put it in laity’s terms, $1300 in political-speech-law violations isn’t even close to being worth pursuing, even if the allegations are true.

However, in this case–repeat: in this case–McGuire said the state attorney general’s office insisted on pursuing the violations.

Because defending himself at trial would have cost $250,000, he said that–to bring prosecutors’ pursuit of him to an end–he agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanors.

But then a state Supreme Court justice in Livingston County surprisingly imposed a jail sentence. He served seven weekends in the county jail in the summer of 2025.

You, faithful reader of this column, will recall that the prosecution of McGuire is a travesty for which he deserves a gubernatorial pardon.

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In law, the process alone can be the punishment, even if defendants never receive fines or incarceration. Yet McGuire has endured both

• a punishing process through which the attorney general’s office, among other things, trashed his good name, and

• incarceration.

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A video, called Inmate 090198, about McGuire’s ordeal, is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkLLD6izuKY. It’s worth watching. McGuire’s words on the video speak for themselves. Here are just some of them:

“My name is Jason McGuire. I’m … to the state of New York Inmate No. 090198. …

“When you think about politics in our day, we tend to watch California and New York and what happens on either of those coasts that begins to drift into other places across the country. I am the canary in the coal mine here in New York. If you gave the opportunity to leftists … anywhere around the country, this is what they would seek … . This is a wake-up call. …

“My predecessor used to say that New Yorkers won’t wake up until a pastor is put in jail. Well, here we are. This is the moment we’re in. It’s happened. It’s on our watch. …

“I have been incarcerated as a result of … lawfare, and people have to realize that … is happening here in America. People describe the American dream as kind of having … your own home and those kinds of things … . We sold our home … as a result of what we’ve been going through … to offset some legal expenses. …

“We believe … New York has spent nearly three-quarters of a million dollars investigating me. At the end of the day, all (it) could find were three minor campaign-finance violations. Three transactions that were not properly … in our reports totaling less than $1300. …

“In 2022, there were 4000 campaign violations here in New York. Not a single one was prosecuted. Why this one?

“For me, … courage begets courage. And … one of the reasons why … we need to stand up … is … people need to understand that it is worth it. Yes, there’s a cost, but the cost is worth it. And if we don’t pay that price, if we’re not engaged in that, if we’re not willing to take that stand, … then what comes next?”

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Michael Geer, president and chief executive officer of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, added his own words: “All over the country, the family-policy councils are spreading the word about what has happened to Jason, because we all recognize that when lawfare happens, when government turns against people because of their views, all of us can end up like Jason did.”

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McGuire has publicly announced that since his incarceration, he has received a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis and is undergoing treatment.

This part of McGuire’s story, and an opportunity to help him fight the cancer battle financially, are at https://www.givesendgo.com/jasonmcguire.

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March 14 marks the sixth anniversary of Randy Elf’s regular weekly column in this newspaper. Dr. Elf appreciates your spending time each week with him. Meanwhile, to his surprise, he is at 0:18.05 of Inmate 090198.

COPYRIGHT © 2026 BY RANDY ELF