High-profile conservative lawyer and longtime critic of President Donald Trump, George Conway III, officially launched his campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, entering the Democratic primary in New York’s 12th Congressional District.
In remarks this week and in his campaign launch video, Conway framed his bid as a response to what he described as existential threats to democratic norms. Released on January 6, the fifth anniversary of the U.S. Capitol attack in 2021, the video interspersed footage of that day with scenes highlighting concerns about immigration enforcement and economic strain, signaling the broad themes of his message.
“We have a corrupt president, a mendacious president, a criminal president… running our federal government like a mob-protection racket,” Conway said in the announcement.
He told ABC News, “The stakes have never been higher. What’s at issue is the survival of our democracy, the survival of rule of law, the survival of constitutional government … we need a Democratic Congress and a majority in that Democratic Congress that’s laser-focused on the threats to the rule of law.”
Born in Boston, MA, in 1963, he built a legal career that included arguing key cases before the Supreme Court and involvement in high-profile litigation in the 1990s. He was once a Republican and even celebrated President Trump’s 2016 election victory alongside his then-wife, Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump’s White House.
Over time, however, Conway became one of Trump’s most vocal conservative critics, co-founding the anti-Trump political action committee, the Lincoln Project, in 2019 before later stepping back from that role.
Now a member of the Democratic Party, Conway told TIME Magazine that he “absolutely” supports Hakeem Jeffries’ bid to become Speaker in a Democratic House next year. “We have to do job one, which is holding the President accountable and his people, and making sure this never happens again,” Conway says.
While New York’s 12th Congressional District is one of the bluest in the state, he also has plenty of competition, including the grandson of John F. Kennedy Jr., Jack Schlossberg, as well as a survivor of the Parkland, FL school shooting, Cameron Kasky, among others. They are all running to take over for longtime New York politician Representative Jerry Nadler, who announced in September that he will not be seeking re-election.
His position as a former Republican and member of Trump’s circle could hurt his chances with voters in the district. However, he told ABC News that he’s “unconcerned” about voters perceiving him as a Republican or still linked to Conway.
