Undaunted in the Hudson Valley

Mike Lawler has some explaining to do

Democrats got their dream nominee, military vet Cait Conley, for the NY-17, which is among the most flippable House races in the country.

(Credit: TheJoFe, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Her biographical details are beyond impressive: daughter of a working class Hudson Valley family, graduated in the top 2 percent of her West Point class (as the first in her family to go to college), earned advanced degrees from Harvard and MIT, served 16 years in the U.S. Army (winning 3 Bronze Stars), deployed overseas six times to combat, and served as director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.

Impressive under any circumstances, her career honed the expertise, skills, and attributes most needed by an increasingly desperate Trump regime. (The only additional element she might have added would have been a degree in abnormal psychology.)

While not designed with a specific adversary in mind, her career reflects a deliberate choice to face challenges that forge courage, integrity, honor, and decency. She embraces the “Steel sharpens steel,” West Point mindset, which she referenced in her victory speech. That attitude is perfectly aligned with what will be required to defeat a morally squalid Trump regime in rapid decline.

As impressive as she is on paper, Conley, in an interview with The Contrarian in January, showed equally critical assets — feistiness, wit, rapid-fire delivery, and sincere affection for her Hudson Valley community. For those who struggle to reconcile with Americans who put Trump back in office, Conley provided the perspective of someone whose family has lived for four generations in the Hudson Valley (in a district that barely went for Kamala Harris in 2024):

This isn’t what they signed up for. What they heard during his campaign was hope in his lies. Hope that someone was finally going to address the affordability crisis. Hope that someone was finally going to make America work for working Americans again.

She makes clear this is a campaign of, by, and for working-class Hudson Valley families. “We are going to meet people where they are, not as partisans, but as neighbors, as New Yorkers, as Americans,” she said on election night. “You know, we say throughout this campaign, defending democracy is a team sport. This is our team,” she said, gesturing to her supporters. “Across this district, people who are not here in the room tonight, that is also our team.”

If Conley sounds like a player-coach leading a “mission we begin together and we will finish together,” her opponent, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), invariably seems isolated, stressed (frequently hurrying down a hallway to avoid reporters), and dour. She embodies the ethos that “no one is coming to save us. We are the cavalry.” He conveys a near desperation to save himself from his own record of spinelessness, stuck justifying why his voting is indistinguishable from that of MAGA members from the Deep South.

The seat is ranked as a toss-up, but the national political environment, the advantage in candidate quality, and Conley’s effective 3-fold attack on Lawler suggest this is more akin to a “lean Democratic” seat.

First, he is a phony moderate, insistent that voters treat his excuses credulously. Think of him as the Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) of the House — always concerned, but never courageous. Had he cast hard “no” votes against Trump when they mattered, or demanded unfit Cabinet officials be fired, or treated oversight seriously, he might have convinced voters he still had a moral pulse. But, given his track record, it is safe to assume that if voters reward him with another 2 years in Congress, he will keep bending the knee to Trump in D.C. and dissembling about his “independence” to voters back home.

Lawler doesn’t even have the nerve or smarts to develop scheduling conflicts when Trump shows up. After he appeared with Trump last month in his district, Conley slammed the duo: “Since Trump has taken office, it’s only gotten harder for families to make ends meet. But he clearly does not care and neither does Mike Lawler as he rips health care away from our neighbors and continues the illegal war in Iran jacking up gas prices.”

Second, Lawler’s duplicitous politics heighten his constituents’ economic hardship. In January, Conley told me Lawler is “a great shapeshifter,” who puts Trump, the Republican donor class, and corporate interests above fellow New Yorkers. “He is someone who serves one person, Mike Lawler. And unfortunately, the people here in the Hudson Valley have paid the price of this selfishness, and so have people around the country.” Given that the big, ugly bill passed by a single vote, she pointed out, “Mike Lawler was one vote that enabled it to become law.”

On election night, Conley let voters know this is personal. “His deciding vote gutted Medicaid, stripping healthcare from 37,000 people right here in our district. That’s our neighbors, our parents, our kids, our families,” she said. Likewise, she hit Lawler’s sellout to Trump that deepened families’ economic worries. “Mike Lawler voted eight separate times to protect Trump’s illegal, reckless tariffs. Tariffs that are raising prices on everything Hudson Valley families, our families depend on, our prescriptions, our groceries, things we can’t go without,” she said. Hudson Valley residents are paying the price for Lawler’s spinelessness.

Third, on matters of war and peace, Lawler is no patriot. Conley’s military record and willingness to risk her life for her country set up a devastating contrast with Lawler’s constitutionally and morally indefensible refusal to check Trump’s illegal, disastrous war (not to mention Trump’s extrajudicial killings on the high seas and murdering of Americans in the streets of Minneapolis and elsewhere). Conley has no patience for Lawler’s cowardice in voting “without hesitation to send our troops into harm’s way despite the clear incompetence of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump, and the rest of this administration,” or for his using law enforcement as an excuse to justify extrajudicial murder. She blasted Lawler for blaming Alex Pretti and Renee Good’s deaths on failed immigration policies: “I will tell you as someone who started my military career as a military police officer who has conducted domestic law enforcement, what we are seeing has nothing to do with law enforcement. … We cannot afford to allow this administration to go unchecked and enabled by cowards like Mike Lawler.”

On election night, she continued hammering away:

[G]rowing up the way I did, we were taught to fight for our home. That’s why after 9/11, I went to West Point, spent 16 years leading America’s sons and daughters in defense of this nation, including six overseas tours. From combat zones to the White House situation room, I have spent my life answering the call to serve, tackling our nation’s hardest challenges. . . . And now, as I look around, I see a country that I was willing to die for become something I barely recognize.

Cait Conley remains undaunted in her battle to end the MAGA horror-scape, restore democracy, and reclaim the real meaning of patriotism: championing working-class people. The pro-democracy coalition should be very grateful she is running — and excited at the prospect of watching Lawler held to account for his cowardice.