New York’s 17th Congressional District could be one of the most hotly contested races in the country this fall as Democrats try to retake the majority in the House.
But first, five Democrats will face off in this month’s primary to earn the party line and face incumbent Republican Congressman Mike Lawler, who won in 2022 by just a few thousand votes.
The candidates seeking to represent parts of Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, and Dutchess counties include Rockland County Legislator Beth Davidson; Cait Conley, a former National Security Council official; Tarrytown Village Trustee Effie Phillips-Staley; journalist Mike Sacks; and Air Force veteran John Cappello.
All are campaigning on challenging President Donald Trump, affordability, housing, and healthcare.
Davidson is touting her life experience and service to her community. The 20-year resident of the Hudson Valley is a two-term Nyack school board member, a two-time cancer survivor, and a board member of her synagogue, Bet Am Shalom.
“In terms of who I see as leaders of the Democratic Party right now, it's the grassroots," Davidson said, "and so every time I go to a No Kings rally or an anti-ICE protest, I feel like that's where the heart of the Democratic Party is, and where my allies are, and the coalition I'm building to take back the seat.”
Davidson said she wants to strengthen and expand Medicare, support local law enforcement, and expand homeownership opportunities.
As a legislator, she also said she’s worked across the aisle in the past to cut taxes and pass common-sense gun safety legislation. She also said she wants to give a home to Jewish voters who feel abandoned by both parties.
“I do think that uniquely positions me in this race to be both a voice against anti-Semitism and in support of Israel," she said, "but also so many other issues that Jews care about that, despite those values of standing up for the environment, women's rights, gun safety, caused them to either not vote at all, or ... ticket split.”
Also on the ballot is Conley, an Army West Point graduate who served as a National Security Council official under President Joe Biden. An Army Special Operations combat veteran who has served six tours overseas, she said her roots in the Hudson Valley go back four generations. She said her run for office is inspired by a Special Ops community motto: “Run to the sound of the guns.”
“I'm watching the country that I was willing to die for, that I've lost countless friends fighting for, becoming something I barely recognize," she said. "Where this administration — Trump and his cabinet — are weaponizing the executive branch, terrorizing people inside our own borders, using the federal government against our own people. That's not the America I fought for.”
She said she brings experience protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure, like energy and water, from her work with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Conley said her platform includes holding utility companies and Big Pharma accountable, creating public options for healthcare, and cleaning up corruption.
“That means hauling in these political leaders in these departments and agencies, and having them testify under oath about what they are doing, and then being held accountable for it, and that means Congress holding investigations into the conduct of these agencies,” she said.
Phillips-Staley, a fifth-year trustee for Village of Tarrytown, said she decided to run for Congress after the Adult Survivors Act passed and she won a civil claim for an assault by serial offender and former Columbia Presbyterian gynecologist Robert Hadden.
She said members of her Latino community said she should run.
“The Republican Party is brazen in its ability in the way it focuses on the needs of its donors, the needs of the military industrial complex, the needs of profit over people,” she said.
But she said Democrats are also out of touch and just as focused on their corporate donors.
“I hear constantly about how our tax dollars are spent on foreign wars and supporting governments that you know, frankly, dollars to Israel, when that military aid is used in a way that violates human rights, that I hear about just as much as I hear about the issue of housing,” she said.
She said her priorities are housing for all, as well as human rights, universal child care, supporting parental leave, and Medicare for All.
Sacks, a lawyer turned political and legal journalist, is challenging for the nomination as well. He covered the Supreme Court for the Huffington Post and national politics and law for Scripps Television.
He said his experience watching the news play out and Trump’s rise inspired him to jump into the fray and push for progressive legislation, and fight what he has repeatedly called “zombie Reaganism.”
“In 1980, [Ronald Reagan] swept into power with the idea of greed is good and tax cuts solve everything, and that may have worked politically for a little bit, but it has stopped working," he said. "It is exhausted, and we are left with the putrefied remains of it, roaming our land with the Trump MAGA-ism hurting all of us.”
He said progressive policies are also good politics.
“Think Social Security from the New Deal, think the Great [Society], Medicaid and Medicare, and Fair Housing Act, and Voting Rights Act, and Civil Rights Act," he said. "People who were opposed to them at the time, the ancestors of today's Republican Party, all claim these things were socialism or communism. And yet, when these laws are put in place, those who oppose them and their heirs suddenly become their biggest proponents, saying they'll protect those bills and those laws, and while they want to slash their funding in the dead of night.”
His platform includes stopping corporate price gouging, capping credit card interest rates, lowering child care costs, national rent control, and supporting the Voting Rights Act.
Finally, John Cappello is an Air Force veteran who served over 20 years and taught at the Air Force Academy. He also served at the U.S. embassies in Belgrade, Serbia, and Tel Aviv, Israel.
Like other candidates, he said making housing more accessible and providing universal healthcare are big priorities.
“It's a big business, but it's not a normal business, is it? It's not ... some normal commodity; it's not a radio or a refrigerator," he said. "We're talking about people's well-being, and I think that we can figure out a way to provide universal coverage and choice.”
He also said that the United States needs to be a leader on the world stage again.
“I found that countries, as much as they might complain about the United States, they still — at the end — look to us for leadership, and look to us for stability, and I've seen that in the Balkans, I've seen that in the Middle East, and across the spectrum, and I think we have to get back to that point where we remember it's not about us imposing our will around the world, but it's about us, you know, the role of government in the United States is to make people's lives better,” he said.
Cappello said he wants to increase and protect housing, restore and strengthen the Affordable Care Act, ban stock trading by Congress members, tighten rules on lobbying, and explore term limits for Congress members and the Supreme Court.
Early primary voting is underway and runs through Sunday. Election Day is June 23.
