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By Andrew Stanton
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Cait Conley won the Democratic primary in New York's 17th Congressional District on Tuesday and will face off against Republican Representative Mike Lawler in what is expected to be one of the most competitive and most expensive races in this year's midterm elections.
The district, based around the Hudson Valley, is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Republican seats heading into November. Lawler is one of a handful of Republicans representing districts won by former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, establishing him as a top target for Democrats.
NY‑17 is one of a handful of districts likely to decide which party wins the House majority.
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Cait Conley Wins Primary
Conley defeated several other Democrats, including Rockland County legislator Beth Davidson and progressive Effie Phillips-Staley in the primary on Tuesday. She had about 49.5 percent of the vote, the Associated Press reported with about 94 percent of the vote counted.
National Democrats “got the candidate they wanted” with Conley, whose national security background attracted support from national groups in the primary, Shawn Donahue, professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, told Newsweek on Wednesday.
“When Democrats retook the House in 2018, they ran a lot of these national security Democrats, some of which now, [Michigan Senator] Elissa Slotkin, [Virginia Governor] Abigail Spanberger, [New Jersey Governor] Mikie Sherrill, are statewide officeholders now,” he said. “Conley kind of gets in that bucket, if you will.”
The race is likely to be closely watched in the battle for House control, he said, noting these sorts of districts are likely to be must-wins for Democrats.
“With the number of competitive seats going down because of gerrymandering and Republicans getting a definite advantage because of mid-decade redistricting, if they aren't winning a seat like this, it kind of feels like that their chances of taking the House get a little bit lower,” he said.
Chris Russell, a Lawler spokesperson, expressed confidence in the incumbent’s chances in a statement to Newsweek.
“Cait Conley's record will not survive real scrutiny, which is why we've already challenged her to six debates, and she's already ducking," he said. "Conley's support for higher taxes on working families, her attacks on law enforcement and her hypocrisy on immigration enforcement—attacking ICE while taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from AI and defense-tech firms tied to DHS, Palantir and border-surveillance work—will be her undoing.”
Newsweek reached out to Conley’s campaign via email for comment.
In a statement posted to Facebook after her win Tuesday night, Conley wrote that she will try to “earn” the support of Democratic voters who backed other candidates in the primary.
“My entire life, I have stepped up to solve some of the toughest problems facing our country and delivered results when it mattered most," she said. "I spent 16 years in the Army, deploying six times to combat zones to keep our families safe. I’ve gone from the battlefield to the Situation Room when the stakes were life and death, and I sure as hell am not afraid of a lifelong political hack like Mike Lawler.”
Conley vs. Lawler: Latest Polls, Predictions and Forecasts
Polling on the race is limited. An Impact Research poll of 500 likely voters, conducted February 9-17, gave Democrats an advantage on a generic ballot. In that poll, 44 percent of respondents said they would back a Democratic candidate to 39 percent for a Republican.
But the poll did not ask about any specific candidates, and Lawler may be seen as a stronger candidate than a generic Republican because of his victories in 2022 and 2024 in the Harris-won district.
Prediction markets favor Democrats. Kalshi gave Conley a 70 percent chance of flipping the seat, while Polymarket placed her chances of victory at 68 percent as of Wednesday morning.
Prediction markets allow traders to buy and sell contracts tied to political outcomes and current events, aggregating real‑money wagers into probability estimates. Prices fluctuate as traders react to polling, fundraising, candidate developments and broader political trends. They measure trader sentiment at a given moment but do not always accurately predict the future.
The Cook Political Report views the race as a toss-up, but Sabato’s Crystal Ball classified it as “Leans Republican” as of Wednesday morning
NY-17 Emerges as Key District
The district has emerged as one of the most competitive in the country in recent cycles. It is composed of suburban areas north of New York in Westchester, Putnam and Rockland counties.
It backed former President Joe Biden by about 10 points in 2020 and Harris by less than a point in 2024. It was part of a broader trend in which districts based near New York City saw large swings over the past few years.
Donahue noted that the district has a large Orthodox Jewish population that tends to vote as a bloc—and there were large swings away from Democrats among those voters.
“They came out pretty strongly for Trump," he said. "And, you know, if you're Lawler, you need those voters to come out in force in this election.”
As of February, there were 223,046 registered Democrats and 145,018 Republicans in the district, according to the New York State Board of Elections.
Who Is Mike Lawler?
Lawler, 39, was first elected to Congress in 2022, a strong year for New York Republicans, defeating Democratic Representative Sean Patrick Maloney. Prior to that, he served in New York’s State Assembly and in other political roles. In Congress, Lawler has established a more moderate voting record. He has been critical of some aspects of Trump's administration but has campaigned alongside the president.
Who Is Cait Conley?
Conley, 41, served 16 years in the U.S. Army, including six overseas deployments, and has held senior national security roles in the Army, National Security Council and Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency. She is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, as well as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is running as a centrist Democrat.
How Trump and New York City’s Left Could Shape Race
Although Conley and Lawler are casting themselves as centrists, outside forces, including Trump and progressive insurgents, are likely to loom over the race.
Conley is likely to try to tie Lawler to Trump, according to Donahue. The president's approval rating has declined since he returned to office in January 2025 amid ongoing concerns about the state of the economy and cost of living. The 4-month-old Iran war has sent gas prices surging, adding to those economic woes.
Nationwide, Trump’s approval rating stood at 36 percent in the latest poll from YouGov and The Economist, which found that 58 percent of voters disapprove of his job performance. It surveyed 1,679 adults June 19-22 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
Democrats hope that his approval rating will weaken GOP incumbents like Lawler in competitive seats. The midterms are usually a referendum on the party in power, and the president's party historically loses seats. In the 2022 midterms, when Joe Biden was president, Democrats lost nine seats, while the GOP lost 40 seats during Trump's first term in 2018.
Still, Lawler has been able to outrun other Democrats in the past, winning by about 6 points in 2024 despite Harris winning.
Lawler is likely to tie Conley to “left-wing forces” in New York City. Progressives scored major wins in several congressional primaries on Tuesday, with candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, winning their races. Progressives Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated incumbent Democratic Representatives Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, respectively, while Democratic socialist Claire Valdez won an open seat.
“I think that that's what you're going to see among Republicans in all of the suburban districts in New York this year,” Donahue said. "Whether it will be successful, we'll have to see.”
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