US Midterms 2026
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Cait Conley, a Democrat and former Army officer who led election security work at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, faces Republican incumbent Mike Lawler for New York's 17th congressional district in 2026.
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Democrat Cait Conley and Republican Mike Lawler made their case to voters to represent the Hudson Valley in Congress during their second and final debate for New York’s 17th Congressional District.
“I don’t think those types of folks belong in Congress, and I don’t believe that people who condone that type of behavior belong in Congress either,” Conley declared.
Cait Conley delivered the jaw-dropping burn this week, becoming the second Democratic congressional candidate to publicly distance themselves from Hochul ahead of next month’s midterms.
No story this week names this candidate.
Cait Conley is a native of the Hudson Valley region of New York, where her father was a construction worker and her mother a postal worker. She graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and later earned a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Master of Business Administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
After West Point, Conley served as an officer in the U.S. Army for 16 years, completing six overseas deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Early in her career she was a military police platoon leader in the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, at Fort Lewis, and she later spent more than a decade in the special operations community as a team leader and troop commander for counterterrorism task forces, becoming one of the first women to lead a special ops team.
From 2021 to 2023 she was a Director for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council.
After leaving active duty in 2023, Conley joined the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as a senior advisor to director Jen Easterly and took over its election security portfolio, serving as the agency's lead official for coordinating with state and local officials ahead of the 2024 election.
In 2023 she also became executive director of the Defending Digital Democracy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She left the agency after Donald Trump's inauguration in 2025 and then worked as a consultant at Hidden Level and Primer AI.
Cait Conley announced her candidacy for New York's 17th congressional district on March 24, 2025.
The Lower Hudson Valley district, covering all of Rockland and Putnam counties, northern Westchester County and a small part of Dutchess County, is held by Republican Mike Lawler, who was re-elected with 52.2% of the vote in 2024 and is one of three Republicans in the 119th Congress representing a district carried by Kamala Harris in 2024.
In the June 2026 Democratic primary Conley won 49.6% of the vote, ahead of Rockland County legislator Beth Davidson at 31.8% and Tarrytown village trustee Effie Phillips-Staley at 15.3%, with two other candidates further behind.
Her campaign has emphasized homeland security, public safety, protecting Medicaid and Medicare, and codifying abortion rights.
The two nominees met in a debate broadcast by News12 Hudson Valley, and Conley, who also holds the Working Families Party line, faces Lawler in the general election on November 3, 2026.
