{"id":255987,"date":"2026-06-05T01:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T01:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/255987\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T01:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T01:52:07","slug":"schlossberg-bores-conway-and-lasher-spar-in-nyc-primary-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/255987\/","title":{"rendered":"Schlossberg, Bores, Conway and Lasher Spar in NYC Primary Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Few if any congressional districts in the United States possess the wealth and cultural cachet of New York\u2019s 12th District<\/a>, which encompasses much of the core of Manhattan. Bursting with landmarks like the Empire State Building and Central Park, the solidly Democratic seat is a choice perch<\/a> from which to build a national profile and gain influence.<\/p>\n

The seat is currently held by Representative Jerrold Nadler, the former House Judiciary Committee chairman who helped lead President Trump\u2019s impeachments. Mr. Nadler announced last year that he would not seek re-election<\/a> after more than three decades in Congress.<\/p>\n

Vying to replace him is a crowded field of Democratic candidates who will face off on Primary Day, June 23. Four of them \u2014 Alex Bores<\/a>, an East Side state assemblyman; Micah Lasher<\/a>, a West Side state assemblyman; Jack Schlossberg<\/a>, the grandson of John F. Kennedy; and George T. Conway III<\/a>, the ex-husband of Mr. Trump\u2019s former campaign manager \u2014 have led the limited public polling that has been conducted.<\/p>\n

The candidates have tussled in forums and on social media, but on Thursday night they took part in the first televised debate of the race. Here\u2019s an overview.<\/p>\n

An early clash over A.I. policy<\/p>\n

Mr. Bores made a name for himself in Albany sponsoring legislation that would establish new rules governing the safe development of the most advanced artificial intelligence models.<\/p>\n

The bill prompted a flood of spending against him from well-funded super PACs, which were seeded with money from executives at companies like Open A.I who also supported Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n

Responding to the first question of the night, Mr. Lasher was quick to point out that other groups, funded by employees, investors and backers of Open A.I.\u2019s largest competitor, Anthropic, were supporting Mr. Bores. He noted how Chris Larsen, a billionaire crypto investor, spent $3.5 million to boost his campaign.<\/p>\n

Mr. Bores has been a proponent of cryptocurrencies, answering a questionnaire from one industry group<\/a> by saying that if elected, he would \u201cmake sure that poorly constructed regulation does not hinder crypto innovation or blockchain adoption.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlex only wants to tell you half the story about one A.I. company that\u2019s spending millions to defeat him, and that\u2019s bad, but he\u2019s not telling the whole story,\u201d Mr. Lasher said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Bores said in response that he had been a supporter of aggressive crypto regulation in the State Legislature. He also argued that the spending against him reflected how scared the technology industry was by the prospect of his election, while sidestepping questions about the money being spent in his favor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith friends like these, who needs Republicans?\u201d Mr. Bores said. \u201cThe Trump disinformation is coming from within the party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trumping the others on Trump<\/p>\n

The 12th District is solidly Democratic, and went for former Vice President Kamala Harris during the last presidential race by about 64 percentage points. So it\u2019s no surprise that the candidates all sought to hype their anti-Trump bona fides on the debate stage.<\/p>\n

They all spoke with horror about the president\u2019s immigration policies and called for ICE to be abolished. Several noted that they had recently visited Delaney Hall, the immigrant detention center in Newark<\/a> where law enforcement has been clashing with protesters. Mr. Bores pointed to the donors funding the super PACs attacking him and noted that many of them support Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n

But it was Mr. Conway, who rose to fame as an anti-Trump Republican who frequently criticized the president on cable news<\/a>, who invoked Mr. Trump the most. He circled back to Mr. Trump in response to nearly every question, asserting that nothing of policy significance could be discussed until steps were taken to impeach the president.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of the proposals that you have heard here in the last couple of minutes will be going anywhere while Donald Trump is president,\u201d Mr. Conway said at one point. (All the candidates agreed that Mr. Trump should be impeached.)<\/p>\n

A wave of Bores bashing<\/p>\n

Mr. Bores was a little-known member of the State Assembly when the race began. But on Thursday night, he was the main recipient of on-stage attacks, reflecting how his star has risen in the race.<\/p>\n

Both Mr. Schlossberg and Mr. Lasher repeatedly reminded viewers about the outside money flowing in to support Mr. Bores, which has resulted in the district\u2019s voters being inundated with mailers and text messages about his campaign.<\/p>\n

They similarly attacked his prior employment at Palantir, a technology company that has aided ICE in its efforts to deport undocumented immigrants, and questioned his assertion that he chose to leave the company in 2019 in protest of that work.<\/p>\n

Mr. Bores has insisted that his discomfort with the company\u2019s collaboration with the Trump administration is what prompted him to quit.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy record on leaving Palantir is absolutely clear. I\u2019m happy to release anything,\u201d Mr. Bores said Thursday. \u201cThis is a shameful lie that they are repeating.\u201d<\/p>\n

At another point in the debate, Mr. Bores seemed to acknowledge that his rivals were uniquely focused on him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re so feisty today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Different Shades of Blue<\/p>\n

For the all the punchiness in the debate, the candidates found many areas of agreement.<\/p>\n

Though they differed on whether the United States should sell weapons to Israel, they were all unwilling to describe Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza as a genocide.<\/p>\n

They all said that taxes on people making more than $1 million should go up. They all said members of Congress should be barred from trading individual stocks. They even all said that the Ed Koch Bridge should be renamed over the former mayor\u2019s handling of the AIDS crisis.<\/p>\n

The overlap reflected how little daylight there is between the candidates on most issues, and suggested that all of them would likely vote similarly if elected to Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Few if any congressional districts in the United States possess the wealth and cultural cachet of New York\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[70436,89545,43109,89546,91147,87192,87193,46937,9,24,11,10,91146],"class_list":["post-255987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-alex","tag-bores","tag-conway","tag-george-t-iii","tag-jack-1993","tag-lasher","tag-micah-c","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-schlossberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}