Cait Conley

Cait Conley is the Democratic nominee for New York's 17th Congressional District, challenging Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in one of the most closely watched House races in the country. Conley won a five-way Democratic primary on June 23, 2026, and faces Lawler in the November 3, 2026 general election in a Hudson Valley swing district covering Rockland and Putnam counties and parts of Westchester and Dutchess counties.

A fourth-generation Hudson Valley native, Conley grew up the daughter of a postal worker and a construction worker. She was a junior at Pine Bush High School on September 11, 2001, and began her application to the United States Military Academy at West Point the very next day, becoming the first in her family to graduate college and finishing in the top 2% of her class. She later earned master's degrees from Harvard University's Kennedy School and MIT. Conley served 16 years as an active-duty Army officer, deploying overseas six times to Iraq and Afghanistan, and was one of the first women to hold a Special Operations leadership role. Her service earned her three Bronze Star Medals.

After leaving the military, Conley continued her public service in Washington, serving as Director for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council and later as a senior advisor at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, where she led the agency's election security mission and worked directly with Congress on infrastructure and national security legislation. Conley has been endorsed by VoteVets, EMILYs List, and multiple Hudson Valley Democratic county leaders, and her campaign outraised the entire NY-17 Democratic primary field. Her national security background and local roots have made her a leading recruit in Democrats' effort to flip the seat this fall.

Cait Conley has fought to:

• Lower costs for Hudson Valley families by taking on utility monopolies and Big Pharma price gouging, and creating a public health insurance option
• Defend the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid, and expand Medicare to cover vision, dental, and hearing
• Ban members of Congress from trading stocks and close the revolving door between Congress and lobbying
• Restore CISA's election security mission and protect the integrity of U.S. elections
• Invest in clean energy, including solar, wind, and geothermal power, to lower utility bills and create local jobs
• Crack down on corporate landlords and Wall Street investors buying up housing, and cut red tape that slows affordable housing construction
• Rein in ICE and fix the broken immigration system while focusing enforcement on violent criminals
• Expand BOCES, Career & Technical Education, and community college programs to prepare Hudson Valley workers for the jobs of the future

Across these priorities, Conley frames her candidacy around the same approach that guided her military and national security career: take on hard problems directly and deliver results for the families of NY-17.