The Democratic Party has had tight control over New York’s 12th Congressional District, which stretches the width of Manhattan from the top of Central Park to Union Square, for more than a century. About his own three-decade career representing the district in Congress, retired Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) was never elected with less than 75 percent of the vote. Come November, the district will almost certainly remain under party control, but whoever wins it could say a lot about the direction the party takes in 2026 and beyond.
Nadler, 78, announced his retirement in September, about a month after a 26-year-old voter declared his intention to run for the congressman. Liam Elkinda Rhodes scholar and co-founder of the nonprofit Invisible Hands, described Nadler as an emblem of an aging and weakened Democratic Party, full of geriatrics who stubbornly refuse to give up power before it is too late. “The Democratic Party is DYING. We are losing votes. Losing elections. Losing our democracy,” he said in his campaign launch video.
Nadler acknowledged the party’s age problem when he announced his decision not to seek re-election, telling the New York Times“Seeing the Biden thing really said something about the need for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that.”
A host of political hopefuls are now lining up for a chance to fill Nadler’s seat: With the June primary half a year away, the field is crowded with activists, advocates, influencers and local politicians. The race will offer insight into a host of questions still up in the air after Democrats’ humiliating defeat in 2024. How big is voters’ appetite for change? How much influence will tech billionaires’ cash have on the electorate? Does Kennedy’s name still have any influence on Democratic politics? How much is the #resistance celebrity worth? And how instructive it will be Zohran MamdaniCould it be the recent victory in this part of the city, where support for the incoming mayor was softer?
One thing is clear: an undercurrent of frustration and disappointment with the Democratic Party runs through many of the candidates’ campaign launch videos. Democrats have “lost the plot” Jaime Floydsays a former WNYC anchor who worked in the Clinton White House in hers. Lawyer and defender of victims’ rights. Laura Dunn declares: “We deserve better than the Democratic leaders who have been profiting from their position while you and I struggle to make ends meet…better than the undecided centrists who are allowing the rollback of our rights and freedoms.” Cameron Kaskya survivor of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting says, “We need leaders who won’t coddle their billionaire donors, who won’t support genocide, and who won’t settle for flaccid incrementalism.”
The second person to declare his intention to run for the seat after Elkind was Micah Lasher44-year-old, who currently represents part of the district in the New York State Assembly. Lasher, a former aide to Nadler, is considered the big favorite to win the outgoing congressman’s endorsement and, if he does, the Democratic nomination. An active operator in New York politics since his adolescence, Lasher has already accumulated the official support of a profusion of local officials – and at least one former rival: Elkind supported the assemblyman when he dropped out of the race in December.
Lasher, however, will have a lot of competition, starting with Alex Bores35, his colleague in the state Assembly, a former software engineer who has made a name for himself as an advocate willing to take on an increasingly powerful artificial intelligence industry. Bores co-authored the Responsible AI Education and Safety (RAISE) Act, landmark legislation that will impose new barriers on large AI companies. For its recklessness, a pro-AI PAC with $100 million at its disposal has declared its intention to spend generously against Bores — a campaign that has already started. If Bores achieves a primary victory, it will send a powerful message to national Democrats who have been reluctant take a firm stance to regulate the industry.
Lasher and Bores, who currently represent segments of the district in the state Assembly, are the established politicians in the race. (A third local politician vying for Nadler’s seat, City Councilman Erik Bottcher, dropped out of the race in late December and opted to seek a seat in the state Senate.)
But voters eager for new blood will have no shortage of newcomers to choose from, including two social media stars minted in the Trump era: Jack Schlossbergthe 32-year-old grandson of John F. Kennedy who won fans for his unconventional Instagram presence (often critical of his cousin, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) and George Conway62 years old, the former Republican was married to Trump’s campaign manager in 2016, Kellyanne Conway.
A lawyer who worked on Clinton’s impeachment trial before becoming an outspoken Trump critic, Conway’s candidacy will test whether voters in this historically liberal district are willing to rally around an anti-Trump crusader who still describes himself as conservative. (“I want to preserve our democracy, I want to preserve our way of life, I want to preserve the rule of law,” Conway saying in a recent interview. “These people who follow the orange Jesus are not conservatives, they are nihilists.”
A trio of big-name attorneys have also thrown their hats in the ring: Kasky, Dunn and Matthew Shurka. Shurka, 37, is a gay man who spent years in conversion therapy as a teenager before becoming a vocal advocate for laws banning the practice. Kasky, 25, co-founded the gun violence prevention group March for Our Lives after his classmates were shot and killed by a former student in Parkland. He is running on promises to pass Medicare for All and end U.S. funding for Israel’s war on Gaza. “The fight of my life is the fight against American-manufactured violence everywhere,” Kasky says. “I don’t understand how people can be horrified by the shootings in our high schools, but I think these children and adults massacred in Gaza are different. It’s the same thing.”
Dunn, 40, a survivor of sexual assault as a college student, became an attorney with a practice focused on Title IX (sex-based discrimination on college campuses) claims before, she says, Trump made it functionally impossible for victims to bring such claims in his first term. Dunn was part of a group of lawyers who worked to rewrite Title IX regulations during the Biden administration, but Biden delayed their implementation until it was too late. “There are legal battles going on around this now, but I’m skeptical that we’ll revive them,” Dunn says. “I am very upset that the Democratic Party plays with sexual assault like a political football.”
Completing the field is Alan Pardee58 years old, former CEO of Merrill Lynch.
With the April 2 filing deadline three months away, the race is still open, and there is still time for even more participants, with their own views and grievances against the Democratic Party, to come forward.
