BEDFORD, NY — In the Democratic primary for New York’s 17th congressional district, all six candidates are united in their opposition to Donald Trump. But on a frigid night in Westchester last week, one of the frontrunners decided to borrow a page from the president’s media response strategy: attack.
When Cait Conley walked into a meeting in Bedford hosted by Indivisible Westchester on February 11, the special operations veteran found a room full of New York voters with questions and concerns related to a slew of recent stories from The Intercept, Politico, and the Judge Street Journal.
In response, Conley delivered a series of fierce diatribes smearing the reporters, accusing them of coordinating with her opposition, and dismissing the substance of their stories as outright “lies,” according to a recording obtained by the Journal.
“Mike Lawler has been attacking me nonstop for the last four weeks. He has been planting opposition stories. He has been spreading lies. So there was a series of articles this week trying to literally, completely misrepresent the work that I have done—lies.”
“And these ‘reporters,’” Conley said, making air quotes, “didn’t contact me when we did engage them and try to correct the record, didn’t do a thing about it, and continue to publish lies.”
“I would argue if they were real journalists, they would issue a retraction,” she said later that evening.
Two days prior, The Intercept and Politico had revealed Conley’s work for Primer.ai and Hidden Level—two companies that tout partnerships with tech giant Palantir, which holds lucrative contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Conley told the group those articles misrepresented her work for the companies, which she maintains has nothing to do with immigration enforcement. She then added that she signed nondisclosure agreements with her clients and can’t speak specifically about the work she does.
“I literally signed NDAs. That’s how deep they had to dig to try to get this,” Conley said, referring to the reporters whose stories relied upon her publicly available financial disclosure report, which details her past employment.
Conley also responded to the Journal’s story from earlier that day, which detailed her team’s effort to place an opposition research memo implicating her closest competitor, Beth Davidson, for work Davidson performed for mainstream Democratic organizations like Emily’s List and the New York State Nurses Association.
Conley suggested all three stories were part of a unified effort to hinder her campaign.
“I believe as Democrats, one caution we must take is—who in this room believes Mike Lawler lies? What about Donald Trump? These are the people we are fighting. Expect them to come at us with everything they can to include lies,” Conley said.
“You’re going to see an AI video of me when they’re trying to say I did something I didn’t do. Like, this is 2026 and unfortunately, the toxic world of running in politics looks like this. This is why a lot of good people don’t. Because it’s really shitty when people lie about you and then put it out on the internet.”
When one attendee voiced concern about her strategy to accuse the reporters of lying, Conley dismissed him. “I understand you are supporting a different candidate.”
Although a campaign spokesperson declined to challenge the accuracy of the Journal’s reporting last week, Conley went on to call the story “fucking bullshit.”
“The recent one tried to say that I slammed Emily’s List and the nurses union. I am literally a huge supporter of Emily’s List. I post about it. I’m trying to earn their endorsement,” Conley said. “It’s fucking bullshit and it’s going to keep coming.”
A spokesperson for Conley did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
On February 5, Conley communications strategist Jackie Rosa sent the Journal an email titled “No prints pitch - Beth Davidson’s 30-year far left political operative career.”
Rosa attached a memo speculating that Davidson’s work with Emily’s List and NYSNA would “allow Republicans to connect her to hundreds of progressive candidates across the country that the organization endorsed in that period and attack Davidson for their views.”
Emily’s List is one of the largest pro-choice organizations in the country. It is highly unusual for a candidate backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to criticize an opponent’s ties to it.
Rosa later sent a statement to the Journal claiming the memo originated not from the Conley campaign, but The Bench—a new Democratic political group that identifies fresh talent for the party and provides them with consulting and financial resources. But the memo’s digital signature suggests it was created by an employee of a separate political firm that Conley contracted for research. When a member of the audience confronted Conley with this information in Bedford last week, she misstated the claims of the Journal’s article.
“So the reporting in which I am slamming Emily’s List, the nurses union, that is not true,” she said, adding she’d accept endorsements from both groups. Last month, Conley was endorsed by Congressman Pat Ryan in an exclusive announcement in the Journal.
Toward the end of the meeting, a NYSNA spouse in the audience approached Conley to ask whether she would clarify her position on the union in a public statement. Earlier that day, she declined to tell the Journal whether she supported the union.
“What I’m trying not to do is give this guy’s Twitter post—who doesn’t work for a publication, this is a guy who has his own personal website who is doing this—I’m not trying to elevate him,” Conley said, referring to the Journal. “Am I absolutely willing to say all of that publicly in terms of ‘I stand with the nurses?’ Yes, I am happy to make that post tomorrow. I’ll go home tonight.”
Conley did not make the post that night or the following day. She did eventually post a video on February 14, expressing her solidarity with NYSNA from the picket line in Manhattan. “So folks have been asking me what my thoughts on the New York City nurses strike, and I want to be very clear about where I stand, and that is proudly with the New York State Nurses Association,” Conley said.
One day after the Bedford town hall, Politico reported a new poll in NY-17 that shows Conley at 18%, Davidson at 17%, and former Briarcliff mayor Peter Chatzky at 12%, with 41% of voters still undecided ahead of the June primary.
“When we talk about what this fight is going to be like, it is going to be an ugly few months,” Conley warned the crowd. “We have seen it.”
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She has accomplished a lot in her young life but attacking the press is not a good look. I think answer the questions directly…. Do the companies she consults for work with Panlantir? Seems yes; but she insists that while its surveillance work it’s for our safety; that’s worth discussing. She keeps it vague due to NDA’s but then insists it’s all good surveillance. Just answer the question and own whatever you’re doing and why.
There seems to be some conflating here. Cait Conley was the Director for Counterterrorism on the White House NSC and senior election security advisor at CISA under President Biden, whose administration worked with Palantir through various agencies. She has not worked in the Trump administration, which has corrupted agencies and used Palantir for different purposes. She apparently consulted for about 18 months for two associated companies. But she is not in favor of the current actions of ICE. Her opponents are reaching because they are desperate. Cait Conley is highly qualified to represent NY-17 in Congress – in my view, she is the most qualified in terms of experience in Washington, D.C. and will be able to hold her own as a freshman representative, and stand up for our principles, which have been compromised, and stand up to the MAGA contingency. Cait Conley is sensible, reasonable and compassionate; but she also is no-nonsense and has a fire born of defending the U.S. and being ready to lay down her life for her country. That cannot be said of any of the other candidates hoping to take on Rep. Lawler.