Photo: SOPA Images Limited//Alamy Stock Photo
The number of candidates vying to replace longtime representative Jerry Nadler just keeps growing.
George Conway, the high-profile lawyer (and former Republican), announced his plans to run in the Democratic primary for the open seat in New York’s 12th Congressional District, which spans midtown, the Upper West Side, and the Upper East Side.
There are now nine people in the race, which already includes:
• State assemblyman and former Nadler aide Micah Lasher, who is viewed by many as the representative’s heir apparent (and front-runner)
• State assemblyman Alex Bores
• Gun-control advocate Cameron Kasky
• Kennedy scion Jack Schlossberg
• Journalist Jami Floyd
• Former Merrill Lynch managing director Alan Pardee
• Civil-rights attorney Laura Dunn
• LGBTQ+-rights activist Mathew Shurka
(Another 12th Congressional District candidate, City Councilman Erik Bottcher, dropped out late last month and decided to run for a State Senate seat instead.)
Conway, a prominent Donald Trump foe, notably made his campaign official on the fifth anniversary of the riot in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, opening his introductory video with scenes of the violence that day intermixed with shots of people being detained by federal immigration authorities and news headlines of Trump’s criminal conviction and rising grocery prices.
While some recent candidates have shied away from campaigns focused on the president and his policies, the Lincoln Project co-founder’s opposition to Trump not surprisingly takes center stage.
“We have a corrupt president, a mendacious president, a criminal president whose masked agents are disappearing people from our streets, who’s breaking international law and he’s running our federal government like a mob-protection racket,” Conway says in the video.
I’m running for Congress in NY-12, my home.
We have a demented, criminal president running the country like a mob operation—government by the boss, for the boss.
We need Democratic fighters who will defend the rule of law and deliver government by the people. Join us. pic.twitter.com/e6Hz8QYCRv
— George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 (@gtconway3d) January 6, 2026
Conway highlights his decades-long legal career that began with his move to the city in the 1980s and his very public fights with Trump over the years, even highlighting a past tweet from the president where he calls Conway a “stone cold LOSER.”
“He doesn’t like me. I don’t like what he’s done to our great country. And now I’m running for Congress to take the fight back to him on your behalf, on the behalf of New Yorkers whom I owe so much, to protect the fundamental rights and basic economic needs of all New Yorkers, to make our nation better than it was before, to write new laws that will safeguard our democracy so that we don’t end up facing autocracy ever again,” he said.
Conway was previously married to Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to Trump who served in senior roles during his first administration. The pair lived in New Jersey and later relocated to Washington, D.C., during Trump’s presidency. In anticipation of his congressional bid, Conway has since returned to New York where he is now renting an apartment and is registered to vote.
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