More than a year of campaigning to take on Rep. Mike Lawler is finally reaching its end as Democratic voters head to the polls to choose among five contenders in the primary for a high-profile House race.
The election on Tuesday, June 23 will decide which Democrat goes up against the second-term Republican this fall in New York’s 17th Congressional District, a race that is viewed as highly competitive and crucial to determining which party controls the House for President Donald Trump’s last two years in office.
As voters cast ballots during nine days of early voting that ended June 21, the candidates and their supporters have fanned out across the Hudson Valley district to make their final pitches at Metro-North stations and other stops. The terrain they are crossing takes in all of Rockland and Putnam counties, the northern half of Westchester and a piece of Dutchess County.
The top contenders are Army veteran Cait Conley and Rockland County Legislator Beth Davidson, with the latest polls showing Conley ahead but a large share of voters still undecided. Running third in the polls is Tarrytown village Trustee Effie Phillips-Staley, who has run to the left of the two front-runners and built progressive support.
Sharing the ballot with them are former journalist Mike Sacks and Air Force veteran John Cappello.
Campaign clash over Conley’s consulting jobs
Conley has led the field in fundraising while getting outside support as well from VoteVets, a Democratic veterans’ group that spent $1 million on TV ads supporting her. But she also has caught flak from two directions in the race’s closing days over her consulting work with two tech companies since she left the Biden administration, where she held national security posts until early last year.
Davidson has hammered her rival on that issue in TV ads and mailers, tying Conley’s employers to the Trump administration’s deportation campaign and to efforts to “mine our private data.” And from the others side, a new super PAC linked to Republicans dropped $1.5 million on TV ads blasting Conley with similar claims.
Conley counters that her work involves protecting the public and has nothing to do with immigration enforcement. She has parried with her own ad rebuffing the claims and one from VoteVets that features a Navy veteran saying the attacks on Conley “disgust me.”
The latest polling and fundraising totals
Conley led Davidson by 11 points in a Tavern Research poll this month that put Conley at 34%, Davidson at 23% and Phillips-Staley at 13%. Conley’s lead was even wider in another recent poll that was commissioned by a Democratic group supporting Conley and reported by the City & State news site on Monday, June 22.
Conley has dominated in campaign cash with $940,000 in her account as of June 3, compared to Davidson’s $414,000 and Phillips-Staley’s $55,000, according to the candidates’ last full financial reports. Conley has since reported taking in another $131,000 in donations, while Davidson has collected $63,000 and Phillips-Staley has gotten $27,000 in donations, federal records show.
Funding source for Democratic primary ads revealed
The super PAC ads attacking Conley’s consulting work were seen from the outset as the latest Republican meddling in Democratic primaries this year to try to damage a feared candidate or elevate a perceived weaker one. Similar efforts funded by other shadowy super PACs have been waged in Pennsylvania, Maine and other states, targeting competitive districts like New York’s 17th that will help set the scales of power in Washington in this November’s midterm elections.
The suspicions were confirmed in campaign filings last weekend that showed that a Republican-aligned group called Conservative Americans PAC had funded the super PACs involved in the earlier primaries.
Progressive Champions PAC, the group that bought the anti-Conley ads, didn’t have to report its funding sources yet. But it was created on the same day and uses the same Alabama bank as Real Change PAC, an entity that turned $1.2 million from Conservative Americans PAC into ads in Democratic primaries in New Jersey and Maine.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA TODAY Network. Reach him at CMcKenna@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Dem race to take on Mike Lawler closes with primary for key NY-17 seat
Reporting by Chris McKenna, New York State Team / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Chris McKenna, New York State Team | USA TODAY Network
