WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep Joe Morelle (D-Irondequoit), who represents the 25th congressional district, won re-election easily Tuesday night with more than 60% of the vote over his Republican challenger Gregg Sadwick. This will be Morelle’s fourth term in the House of Representatives.

While pleased with the results in his race, Morelle was disappointed with the outcome of the presidential race but he was one of the first Democrats in congress to publicly congratulate President Trump on Wednesday morning.

“I have enormous faith in the American public, I may not agree always with their judgments, I clearly wanted the Vice President to win, but if we really believe in American democracy and we believe in people’s self-determination, they’ve made this choice — so it’s not up for me or anyone else to second-guess that, our job now is to figure out how to come together,” Morelle told News10NBC.

Morelle’s attention now turns to certifying the presidential election and securing the Capitol for the transition of power. As the ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, he is tasked with overseeing the certification of federal elections.

“On January 3, we will seat the members, we will elect a speaker and then three days later we will certify the electoral college, so, my committee has responsibility for all that as well as the security at the capitol complex. I’ve been working very closely with the capitol police and all of our law enforcement partners just to make sure that we don’t have a repeat of January 6th of 2021,” Morelle explained.

For the first time, the committee sent election observers to counties across the country where House races were expected to come down to razor-thin margins. “We’re monitoring everything to make sure it’s being done properly, I have no doubt that the election officials in the various local communities and states are doing the right thing and hopefully we’ll proceed without a hitch,” said Morelle.

The Committee on House Administration is also responsible for security at the Capitol complex during the transition of power.

Jennifer Lewke (News10NBC): “I’m assuming you’ve now seen the worst, so you can better plan for it in the event there are issues.”

Rep. Joe Morelle: “Yeah, for 240 years we’ve had peaceful transfers of power and never before had American citizens ever attacked the Capitol. …We’ve changed the rules; now the head of the Capitol Police can go directly to the National Guard if we need to, we’re going to put infrastructure up. it is sad that you have to think about this; I mean we would want Americans to be able to come to the Capitol anytime, but given what happened four years ago, we’re taking every precaution. We’ll make sure members are protected and the process is protected, the Capitol is protected — and I’m hopeful we won’t see any demonstrations or anything similar to what happened four years ago.”

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