George Conway Launches Bid for Congress Tied to Stopping Trump: ‘I Know What Makes Him Tick’

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Nine years ago, George Conway was down front at Donald Trump’s election night party, festooned in a Make America Great hat and embracing his then-wife, who ran the billionaire’s campaign. The tears of joy would not last long. These days, the seasoned conservative lawyer and activist is down to make Trump’s final two years in the White House a living hell. And he’s ready to do so as a Democrat. Conway on Tuesday announced that he is running for an open House seat representing Midtown Manhattan, joining an already crowded field that includes John F. Kennedy’s lone grandson, a survivor of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, and a raft of other formidable candidates looking to fill a seat represented by Rep. Jerry Nadler, who first was elected to the House in 1993. Conway’s rollout—which has been the subject of Washington cocktail party chatter for months—comes on the five-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol that sought to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election. Democrats across the country have launched campaigns for Congress vowing to fight Trump. Conway’s bid is different. His is almost entirely about Trump, to the point that the 62-year-old says he has no plans of being in the job when he turns 67, suggesting he may serve just one term and leave Washington when Trump does. Even in his launch video, images of Trump are there from the start. As one of the lawyers who set in motion the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and later agitated for the impeachments of Trump, Conway is casting himself as a legal workhorse who could help Democrats finally hold Trump accountable—including during a potential third impeachment trial. “We are in a situation where we have a criminal President who abrogates his oath of office every day, defies the law, defies the Constitution, and frankly thinks he’s the law,” Conway tells TIME. “We need a Democratic Congress.” It has been, to undersell it, quite the evolution—and one that nods to the ongoing conversation in politics about just what mold of politician might lead this nation through the Trump hangover.  Conway used to run in the same circles as Ann Coulter and Matt Drudge, dated Laura Ingraham, and represented Paula Jones in her case against Clinton that eventually got entangled with the 42nd President’s impeachment. He lived in Trump Tower for years and recommended his then-wife, Kellyanne Conway, for the condo board. He was even seen as a leading contender to be the Trump Administration’s main lawyer at the Supreme Court. But after Trump’s election, Conway’s split with the GOP became unmistakable, even as Kellyanne Conway served as Trump’s counselor and had a prime second-floor West Wing office. George Conway quit the Republican Party in 2018 and worked to defeat Trump in 2020 through a super PAC he founded, the Lincoln Project. He spent a good chunk of 2024 trying to get Vice President Kamala Harris across the finish line. (George and Kellyanne Conway announced they were divorcing in 2023.) Now, Conway is a Democrat—”How could I be anything else at this point?” he asks—who says he would “absolutely” support 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. Part of that, in Conway’s telling, is what he is calling “a second American reconstruction,” an overhaul of government safeguards “where we pass laws within the boundaries of the Constitution that will prevent this kind of authoritarian, autocratic corruption, this kind of threat to our system of government in a way of life.” The nod to the post-Civil War reforms is no accident. “I don’t need to do this. I’m a retired lawyer. I made my career. I made my money. I should be out skiing somewhere,” he laughs. But, he says, the risk is too great to trade his law license for a lift pass. Democrats in New York’s 12 District have a built-in 33 point advantage, meaning the winner of the June 23 primary should coast to victory in November. The district is one of the richest in the country and bluest in New York, but the primary is one shaping up to be hard-fought. Jack Schlossberg, the 32-year-old author and Kennedy grandson, has attracted plenty of attention, as has 25-year-old Cameron Kasky, a Parkland survivor and gun safety activist. State Assemblymen Alex Bores, 34, Micah Lasher, 44, and journalist and lawyer Jami Floyd, 61, are also in the crowded primary. This primary is seen as one of the early indicators of the story Democrats are going to be telling voters headed into midterm elections that are widely seen as trending in their favor. But it’s Conway who is candidate of the hour as he links his launch to the Jan. 6 anniversary. It’s trolling, for sure, but it is what earned him so, so many contemptuous tweets from Trump over the years. “I’ve been fighting this guy now for the most of a decade,” says Conway, who was referred to as “Mr. Kellyanne Conway” in presidential tweets. “I know what makes him tick. I know how to fight these people. And this is going to require legal skills.” First, though, it’s going to require votes in a primary where only Democrats can vote. Democrats, it must be noted, who have to be convinced that Conway’s pluck is sufficient to send him back to Washington. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.