Dems running to unseat Lawler have been ordered: Don't run on Trump

With increasing pressure to take back the House of Representatives, Democrats angling to flip the 17th Congressional District in the Lower Hudson Valley say the right candidate to unseat GOP Rep. Mike Lawler cannot repeat the party’s great mistake of 2024: running on a purely anti-President Donald Trump platform.

“That’s the danger,” Jennifer Colamonico, chair of the Putnam County Democratic Committee, said of the Republican president. “We absolutely cannot run on (Trump).”

The district, which includes Putnam and Rockland counties and parts of Dutchess and Westchester counties, is a textbook competitive purple swing seat. Its voters were split nearly 50-50 between Trump and Kamala Harris in 2024 – a notable shift right for a district Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020. The district has a mix of small towns and villages, bedroom communities for those who work in New York City and a significant Orthodox Jewish voting bloc vote that is prized in both the Democratic Party primary and the general election. Home to about 780,000 New Yorkers and roughly 223,000 registered Democratic voters, the district also has a remarkably high “uniformed” population. One out of every two households in the 17th District has a military veteran, service member, law enforcement officer or first responder, according to Lawler’s office.

All together, it’s a complex political landscape that doesn’t revolve around the president. That means a needed shift in strategy for some Democrats – who’ve spent a decade railing against Trump, with mixed results.

“Our candidates should not focus solely on why Trump is an awful leader for this country, but on what we will do when we take back the reins of power,” Westchester County Democratic Committee Chair Suzanne Berger said. “The fact that Trump is terrible gets into the conversation, but it should not be 100% of the conversation.”

Three Democratic candidates have emerged as leading contenders in the June 23 Democratic primary: Cait Conley, Beth Davidson and Effie Phillips-Staley. Two others will appear on the ballot, John Cappello and Mike Sacks. Local party leaders said the right person must have the skills to strike a delicate balance to lead a district with demographic complexities at a political crossroads.

After all, whoever wins the primary will become a prominent candidate nationally in the battle to flip Lawler’s seat – and they’ll instantly be elevated to pseudo-celebrity status among political watchers tracking the key battleground seats that could determine control of the House. Voter anxieties about the cost of living, foreign conflicts and the economy are expected to give Democrats a leg up in the midterms with a poorly polling Republican president. But Lawler is a master of the art of local politics who has won the district twice and remains one of the most difficult incumbent swing district Republicans for Democrats to unseat.

And Lawler seems confident in his careful relationship with his party’s leader. He has burnished his bipartisan credentials by strategically voicing disagreements with the president, deviating from Trump on issues like the World Trade Center Health Program and the state and local tax deduction cap to gain the necessary political points to keep the swing seat. And while they’re moves most Republicans can’t make while remaining in Trump’s good graces, the president continues to embrace Lawler, endorsing him for reelection and posting twice about the race on his social media platform, Truth Social, in the past year.

But the member of Congress and his team are also confident Democrats won’t be able to help themselves and will continue to fail to keep the president's name out of their mouths.

“Beth Davidson can’t go five seconds without bringing up Donald Trump – neither can Conley or Effie,” Lawler campaign manager Ciro Riccardi said in a statement. “The real question they should be asked is how do they plan to represent a purple district when each of their respective campaigns are predicated completely and totally on opposing everything the sitting president says or does?”

Democratic leaders in the district are hoping the candidates resist. While some Democratic candidates in New York City talk constantly about impeaching Trump, some at the Democratic Rural Conference of New York State in Saratoga Springs this month discussed the consequences of moving to impeach Trump again if the party takes back the House, Colamonico said. The time and resources it would take to impeach the president would prevent Democrats from achieving anything to help struggling Americans.

“It’s not enough to just run against Donald Trump,” she said. “You have to tell people what you’re for and what you’ll do for them. We need to have an agenda.”

Defeating the “bully”

The primary contest for the chance to challenge Lawler this fall has quickly become a race between three women with distinct backgrounds that have shaped the core of their developing political identities: The legislator, the veteran and the progressive.

Davidson, a Rockland County legislator, is a tried-and-true traditional liberal who often boasts about her ability to win a seat in a county that supported Trump by a 12-point margin in 2024. “The kind of leader that Democrats, independents, and I think American voters are looking for are people who are standing up and fighting for them in real time, but also delivering, and that’s something I’ve been able to do as a way that no one else really has,” she said.

Davidson campaigns as a proven fighter, and, as a Jewish woman, she may have the best chance at countering Lawler’s strong support among Jewish voters. Lawler, who’s Catholic, has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, and he’s made combating antisemitism one of his signature legislative issues – authoring and passing the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act in the House following Hamas’ attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.

But persisting conflicts in the Middle East could give a candidate with national security and military experience an edge.

Conley is a U.S. Army veteran, graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a lesbian who served in the military under “don’t ask, don’t tell.” She is a former election security official who served on the National Security Council in the Biden administration and most recently worked at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. While senior adviser to the director at CISA, Conley led the agency’s election security mission to counter Trump’s false claims of cheating – especially the lie that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and accusations of voter fraud in Philadelphia in 2024. 

Born and raised in the Hudson Valley – albeit, not in the 17th District proper – she only moved back from Virginia last year to run, but she’s quick to defend any criticism of her time living outside of New York.

“I would rather have been in Bedford than Baghdad, but I went where my country needed me to go, and I would do it again today, and I am very proud of my service,” Conley told City & State.

On the Israel-Hamas war, which has become a key issue in the primary, Conley supports a two-state solution, but said Israel is a critical national security ally as the only democracy in the Middle East, and that the U.S. has a responsibility to the people of Israel and the Jewish community. Similarly, Davidson has emphasized the need to support Israel while engaging with other countries in the Middle East to better preserve U.S. values internationally. 

Phillips-Staley, who is in her fifth year as a trustee in the Westchester County village of Tarrytown, has differentiated herself by speaking out against Israel. She tells potential voters that the U.S. should not use tax dollars to support governments that commit human rights abuses and is the only candidate in the race to call Israel’s actions in a Gaza a genocide. “The majority of people in this district, in both in my experience talking to people, but also in polling, are sympathetic with the Palestinians and want the violence to stop now,” she said. “I think what is critical about my message that needs to be understood is that I believe that human rights are universal.”

That campaign strategy hasn’t sat well with some local Democratic leaders. “Some of the voices are very loud, but that’s not most people’s voting issue here,” Berger said of Democrats in Westchester County.

Phillips-Staley, who earned the Working Families Party’s endorsement, is considered the progressive underdog of the top three contenders. While each of the three women support limiting use of local police resources to assist federal immigration agents, Phillips-Staley, whose mother is an immigrant from El Salvador, is the only candidate who has directly called to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Phillips-Staley has earned particular attention from Lawler, whose campaign attempted to kick her off the Democratic Party and Working Families Party lines – unsuccessfully advancing lawsuits alleging her campaign engaged in petition fraud. It was a strategic move in this high-stakes primary, but Phillips-Staley maintained her ballot access after a judge rejected those legal challenges.

“I think he knew he never had a chance,” Phillips-Staley said of the suits pushed by Lawler’s campaign. “He got slapped back pretty hard.”

Lawler’s campaign manager said Phillips-Staley could still face a criminal probe for forged petition signatures, as the case has been referred to all four district attorneys in the 17th District, though it’s unlikely anything would come of it anytime soon.

“The fact that her campaign committed rampant voter fraud and Cait Conley and Beth Davidson are seemingly OK with it is a big deal,” Riccardi said. “We’re not going to apologize for shining a light on it.”

And it was a pretty bright light. Trump himself jumped into the fray in a social media post, calling Phillips-Staley “a FRAUDSTER” and demanding “justice should be sought, and the fraud should be investigated.”

The lawsuit is a classic case of Lawler’s tactics, people familiar with his political jockeying told City & State. Lawler served in the Assembly before defeating former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in 2022 while he was chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But before that, Lawler was a political operative with an ethically questionable history, as reported by Politico New York, controlling advocacy groups that paid more than $720,000 to a consulting firm he co-founded. Several Democratic leaders in the Lower Hudson Valley said Lawler is not to be underestimated.

“He’s a bully. He likes to bully – he’s devious,” Colamonico said.

The lawsuit targeting Phillips-Staley wasn’t the first time Lawler’s campaign went on the offensive ahead of next month’s primary. Earlier this year, Lawler’s campaign was caught sending a clandestine blast of text messages to Democratic voters in attempts to sow division in the race, suggesting some apprehension about the vulnerability of his seat. The blast text from the campaign included a picture of Conley and one of her campaign surrogates with the words “DC INSIDER KICKING LOCAL CANDIDATES OFF BALLOT.”

"He’s a retail politician and shows up for the photo ops,” Colamonico said. “He’s not really delivering for the district. Some Republicans were not excited to carry his petitions. I had a Republican operative call me up and say he thinks Lawler’s toast.”

The candidate for the moment

The three leading candidates have all said that the country’s greatest threat is coming within its own borders, and vow that they’re the right Democrat to tip the scales and unseat a two-term representative. But they’ve toed a narrow line with potential supporters, asserting that they won’t back down from a fight without directly invoking the president – so as to avoid alienating voters who may have backed Trump.

New Yorkers in the swing district narrowly went for Harris in 2024, but area Democrats said that data point doesn’t hold much weight after the party relied on a false premise that campaigning on Trump would be sufficient. Jovan Richards, president of the New York State Young Democrats, said the youngest generation of New York voters are more focused on a candidate’s values compared to who they’re fighting against. “Young people are not in this fight because we say we hate Donald Trump,” Richards said. “Young people are in this fight for the values. ... If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

Davidson agreed the focus needs to be in the district.

“It’s more about local issues and how people are worried about their utility bills, worried about their drinking water and about their schools – worried about how their kids are going to be able to afford to stay in the area, and how their parents can retire and die with dignity,” Davidson said.

The county legislator is a strong supporter of fully restoring the SALT deduction and touts her record of passing local household gun safety laws. Davidson leads in individual campaign donations, but Conley has the most cash on hand at $1.5 million as of March 31, according to the latest Federal Election Commission filings. Davidson has over $857,000. Either would face an uphill battle financially to defeat Lawler, whose campaign committee boasts $4.2 million cash on hand.

Next month’s primary will serve as an early test for suburban voters after recent lefty victories, like the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

But the same hunger for change that helped Mamdani could boost political newcomers like Conley, who argues that her federal experience and intimate knowledge of congressional oversight outweighs any local legislative stint.

“Politicians have gotten us into this mess, and they’re not going to get us out of it,” Conley said. “People are just sick of political insiders on both sides.”

Conley, whose campaign centers on national and economic security, backs a public service loan program to give service members mortgage benefits. She said it’s time for the Democratic Party to stop offering empty promises and focusing on labels that divide. 

“If we want a different kind of outcome, it’s time for a different kind of Democrat,” Conley said. “We need to be delivering and be part of that solution, and that is where I’m doing this: to help bring change to the Democratic Party and be part of the next generation that does things differently.”

But so far, there isn’t a consensus on what that solution looks like. There’s a notable geographic divide in the 17th District, with counties and local Democratic committees split on support for Conley and Davidson. The Rockland County Democrats endorsed Davidson, its own county lawmaker, while Putnam voted to endorse Conley. The Westchester Democratic Party declined to endorse a candidate in the race, with no candidate receiving the required majority.

While there’s been limited polling on the race, internal polls consistently show Davidson in the lead, Conley trailing her by several points, followed by Phillips-Staley in a distant third with less than 10% of the vote.

Even as the Westchester Democrats decided not to endorse, Berger said most of her members were split between Conley and Davidson, but agreed on one thing: “We need a candidate that can win in November.”

Conley and Davidson have the most resources and organized staff to run a successful campaign, Berger argued, and most Democrats think either candidate would perform well against Lawler on the debate stage.

A Siena University poll from late April showed two-thirds of registered voters in the state viewed Trump unfavorably. Trump’s deep unpopularity in the state makes it a natural strategy for Democrats to tie Lawler to the president, but voters in the upcoming primary will decide which type of Democrat has the greatest chance at success in this fragile climate: the polished local legislator, the decorated combat veteran who has fought Trump’s bogus election fraud claims or the progressive who’s more closely aligned with Mamdani’s politics.

Candidates are aligned that the party’s greatest foe cannot be its downfall in challenging Lawler. Davidson said it’s less about Trump, but having a representative in Congress who stands with the people of the 17th District over him.

“It’s the ballroom, it’s his name on the passport, it’s the endless grift and corruption and greed that is just so unbecoming to the presidency and that Mike Lawler can never seem to find the backbone to speak up against,” Davidson said.

Democratic hopefuls seem to have grasped the advice to focus on the policies they’ll fight for in Washington, D.C., but at the end of the day, even in their attempts to make the race about anything other than Trump, that goal has been undercut as they struggle to articulate their visions without acknowledging him and the party in power.“We have to also say (to voters), I understand that even before Donald Trump, you were frustrated about the system and it was broken,” Conley said, “and we have to recognize that and do better.”