Elections

The crowded NY-12 primary is already full of competing visions for the party's future

The Democratic party has had a vise-like grip on New York’s 12th Congressional District — which spans the width of Manhattan from the top of Central Park to Union Square — for more than a century. Over his own three decade career representing the district in Congress, retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) was never elected with anything less than 75 percent of the vote. Come November, the district is almost certain to remain in the party’s control — but who clinches it could say quite a lot about the direction the party is heading in 2026 and beyond.

Nadler, 78, announced his retirement in September roughly one month after a 26-year-old constituent declared his intention to primary the congressman. Liam Elkind, a Rhodes scholar and co-founder of the nonprofit Invisible Hands, portrayed Nadler as an emblem of an aging, enfeebled Democratic party, full of geriatrics who stubbornly refuse to give up power before it’s too late. “The Democratic Party is DYING. We’re losing votes. Losing elections. Losing our democracy,” he said in his campaign launch video. 

Nadler acknowledged the party’s age issue when he announced his decision not to seek reelection, telling the New York Times, “Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that.”

A crush of political hopefuls are now queuing up for the chace to fill Nadler’s seat: With half a year to go before the June primary, the field is crowded with activists, advocates, influencers, and local pols. The race will offer insight into a host of questions still hanging in the air after Democrats’ humiliating defeat in 2024. How big is voters’ appetite for change? How much influence will tech billionaire cash exert on the electorate? Does the Kennedy name still carry any sway in Democratic politics? How much is #resistance celebrity worth? And how instructive will Zohran Mamdani’s recent victory be in this part of the city, where the incoming mayor’s support was softer?

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One thing is clear: A current of frustration and disappointment with the Democratic Party runs through many of the candidates’ campaign launch videos. Democrats have “lost the plot,” Jami Floyd, a former WNYC host who worked in the Clinton White House, says in hers. Lawyer and victims rights advocate Laura Dunn declares: “We deserve better than Democratic leaders who’ve been profiting off their position while you and I struggle to make ends meet… better than wishy-washy centrists who are allowing the roll back of our rights and liberties.” Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida says, “We need leaders who aren’t going to coddle their billionaire donors, who won’t support a genocide, and who aren’t going to settle for flaccid incrementalism.”

The second person to declare his intention to run for the seat after Elkind was Micah Lasher, 44, who currently represents part of the district in the New York State Assembly. A former aide to Nadler, Lasher is considered as the heavy favorite to nab the outgoing congressman’s endorsement and, if he gets it, the Democratic nomination. An operator active in New York politics since his teenage years, Lasher has already racked up the official backing of a profusion of local officials — and at least one former rival: Elkind threw his support behind the assemblymember when he bowed out of the race in December. 

Lasher, though, will have a lot of competition, starting with Alex Bores, 35, his colleague in the state assembly, a former software engineer who has built a name for himself as a champion willing to stand up to an increasingly powerful artificial intelligence industry. Bores was the co-author of the Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act, a landmark piece of legislation that will place new guardrails on large AI firms. For his temerity, a pro-AI PAC with $100 million at its disposal has declared its intention to spend lavishly against Bores — a campaign that it has already begun. If Bores pulls out a win in the primary, it will send a powerful message to national Democrats who have been reluctant to take a strong stance regulating the industry. 

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Lasher and Bores — who both currently represent segments of the district in the state assembly — are the established politicians in the race. (A third local politician who was vying for Nadler’s seat, City Councilman Erik Bottcher, dropped out of the race in late December, opting to seek a state senate seat instead.) 

But voters eager for fresh blood will have no shortage of newcomers to choose from, including two social media stars minted in the Trump era: Jack Schlossberg, the 32-year-old grandson of John F. Kennedy who gained a following for his offbeat Instagram presence (which often skewers his cousin, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) and George Conway, 62, the former Republican once married to Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. 

A lawyer who worked on the Clinton impeachment before he became an outspoken Trump critic, Conway’s candidacy will test whether voters in this historically liberal district are willing cast their lots in with an anti-Trump crusader who still self-describes as a conservative. (“I want to conserve our democracy, I want to conserve our way of life, I want to conserve the rule of law,” Conway said in a recent interview. “These people who follow the orange Jesus are not conservatives — they’re nihilists.”)

A trio of well-known advocates have also thrown their hats in the ring: Kasky, Dunn, and Mathew Shurka. Shurka, 37, is a gay man who spent years in conversion therapy as a teenager before going on to become an outspoken champion of laws banning the practice. Kasky, 25, co-founded the gun violence prevention group March for Our Lives after his classmates were gunned down by a former student in Parkland. He is running on pledges to pass Medicare for All and end American funding for Israel’s war on Gaza. ”The fight of my life is the fight against American manufactured violence everywhere,” Kasky says. “I do not understand how people can be horrified by the shootings in our high schools, but think that these children and adults being slaughtered in Gaza is any different. It’s the same thing.”

A survivor of sexual assault as a college student, Dunn, 40, became a lawyer with practice centered on Title IX claims — sex-based discrimination on college campuses — before, she says, Trump made it functionally impossible for victims to pursue such claims in his first term. Dunn was part of a group of advocates who worked to rewrite Title IX regulations during the Biden administration, but Biden delayed implementing them until it was too late. “Now there’s legal battles around it, but I’m skeptical that we will revive them,” Dunn says. “I am very upset by the Democratic Party playing with sexual assault as a political football.”  

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Rounding out the field is Alan Pardee, 58, a former managing director at Merill Lynch. 

With three months to go before the April 2 filing deadline, the race is still wide open and there is still time for even more entrants, with their own visions for and grievances against the Democratic Party to step forward.