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Will the Progressive Insurgency in NY-17 Oust MAGA Loyalist Mike Lawler?

Local progressive groups have turned out a huge ground game to support Democratic nominee Cait Conley, despite her centrist leanings.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries with Cait Conley, Democratic candidate for NY-17, during an early voting rally on the first day of early voting for the midterm election in Peekskill, New York, on October 24, 2026.

“When you take on Mike Lawler, you take on organized labor,” Teamsters president Sean O’Brien told New York 17th Congressional District voters at a rally for Lawler in Westchester County last week. It was a false, even brazen claim: The state AFL-CIO backs the Republican Lawler’s Democratic challenger, Caitlin Conley. So do the Communications Workers of America, SEIU1199, local teachers’ unions, and many other labor groups who are, as usual, supporting the Democrat in the race.

That didn’t stop O’Brien. And he wasn’t chastened by the fact that Conley would be the first female special operations veteran from New York in the House of Representatives when he told her, condescendingly, it’s time “to put your helmet on and button your chin straps, it’s a full contact sport.”

Here’s the thing: Conley would seem to sleep with her helmet on. Given the reservations I’ve heard about her from progressive voters over the last year, the main one is that she can be reserved, not at all warm or fuzzy, and is by progressive standards a little bit hawkish. She comes off as the Army veteran she is. But in the district, no one doubts Conley’s bravery or readiness for battle. Conley snickers at the Teamster leader’s braggadocio in a phone call with me a few days later. “I love how people who never left the comfort of their couch after 9/11 want to talk about hard fights.” She regularly talks about how she vowed as a teenager to join the military after the 2001 attacks.

Lawler is a MAGA loyalist who has on occasion broken with the president. But in a district that voted for Kamala Harris two years ago, that may no longer be a winning record. So he plays up his differences with Trump, and his support from Democrats and union members, and he hopes he can get by Conley that way.

He may not. Conley beat two popular, progressive female rivals in the June primary, and some of those women’s supporters are still a little bitter over what they perceive as establishment Democrats’ behind-the-scenes support for the military veteran, who had no local political record, over two local politicos, Rockland County legislator Beth Davidson and Tarrytown Village Trustee Effie Phillips-Staley, who have served their communities legislatively for years. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries didn’t prove to be the biggest draw when he appeared in Peekskill with Conley October 24. A crowd of maybe 200 people, many of them union members, milled about along the Hudson River and applauded, especially when Conley introduced him as “Speaker Jeffries” (his fervent wish). But elsewhere that day, Peekskill was teeming with activism, as the many local groups who’ve emerged in the district used the next-to-last election-season weekend to gather, train volunteers and canvas.

The paradox of Conley’s race is that if she wins, the centrist will at least partly owe her victory to a progressive insurgency that came together after Lawler’s 2024 victory vowing to defeat him with a Democrat. Many didn’t get their chosen candidate in the June primary, but they’re still hard at work. As Phillips-Staley herself told me, “What we are all aligned on, from the left to the moderate within the Democratic party, is that Mike Lawler needs to go.”

Most polls show Democrats winning the House, but Conley’s race is important. New York cost Democrats the House in 2022, losing five blue seats, when the party nationwide only came up short by four. This year’s primaries saw a lot of lefty victories in the Manhattan area–three DSA members, plus reliable progressives  Brad Lander and Micah Lasher–but they’ll all win next week. Upstate near Conley, centrist liberal incumbents Pat Ryan and Josh Riley look safe. It’s Conley, plus somewhat vulnerable Democratic centrists Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen on Long Island, and an unlikely Democratic victor in Elise Stefanik’s former seat, Democrat Blake Gendebien, who will make Tuesday night interesting.

NY 17 is a diverse district, with multiracial, fairly Latino Peekskill, Sleepy Hollow, and Tarrytown; still pretty white........

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