George Conway, high-profile conservative lawyer turned Trump critic, launches run for Congress
George Conway, a lawyer and high-profile critic of President Donald Trump who was previously married to Trump confidant Kellyanne Conway, launched a bid as a Democrat on Tuesday for the New York City-based congressional seat being vacated by retiring Democratic U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler.
The campaign launch comes five years after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 -- and a video announcing his campaign opens with clips of rioters rushing the Capitol on that day, although Conway does not mention the event or date explicitly in the video.
"The stakes have never been higher. What's at issue is the survival of our democracy, the survival of rule of law, the survival of constitutional government ... we need a Democratic Congress and a majority in that Democratic Congress that's laser-focused on the threats to the rule of law," Conway told ABC News in an interview ahead of his campaign launch.
Conway had a long career as a conservative attorney before sharply criticizing Trump and the GOP. He assisted Paula Jones, who accused President Bill Clinton of misconduct; the case was later settled with no admission of guilt. Clinton has denied the allegations. Conway has compared assisting Jones to how he assisted author E. Jean Carroll, who sued Trump for defamation.
Conway broke with fellow conservatives when he began sharply criticizing Trump during his first term, and built an online following while lambasting the president.
Conway also co-founded the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump political action committee that has funded ads and initiatives criticizing the president during both of his terms in office.
He could face some scrutiny over his ties to Nadler's district, as he spent over a decade away from New York City.
He moved to New York in 1998, and worked at a Manhattan-based law firm until 2019; but he and his family moved to the New York City suburb Alpine, New Jersey, in 2008 and to Washington, D.C., in 2017 when Kellyanne Conway joined the administration.
Conway is now living again in the district and is registered to vote in New York.
"I live here. I worked here. I spent my entire career in this district. I love this district. I always come back to it. My four kids were born in this district ... and I want to do something to give back to what I took from this district, which was basically just everything in my career, that happened, that was great in my life," he told ABC News.
Conway and his family have also made headlines for their own political divides related to Trump.
His now-ex wife Kellyanne Conway served as Trump's campaign manager during Trump's 2016 run for president and a senior counselor during Trump's first term. She remains an ally of the president.
George and Kellyanne Conway sometimes presented themselves as an example of how spouses could work together across deep political and ideological divides. They divorced in 2023, saying then that it was an "amicable divorce."
Conway told ABC News he's unconcerned about voters perceiving him as a Republican or as still linked to Kellyanne Conway or conservative politics.
"I've been walking the streets of this district when I come back to New York with such great regularity, and people walk up to me, and they know what I've been doing, and other people are going to hear about what I've been doing," he said.
He added that he left the Republican Party in 2018 to become an independent and spent money and time supporting Vice President Kamala Harris' 2024 bid for the White House.
"For all intents and purposes, I've been a Democrat for a number of years. I'm just dotting the i's and crossing the t's, now ... My values haven't changed. And I think as people get to know me better, the ones who don't know me, I think people are going to understand where I'm coming from," he said.
Conway is entering what is already a crowded Democratic primary for Nadler's seat, which is in a deeply blue district that includes swaths of the Upper East Side, Upper West Side and midtown Manhattan. Around a dozen candidates have already filed to run in the Democratic primary, according to Federal Election Commission filings, since Nadler, the dean of New York's congressional delegation, announced in September that he would not run for reelection.
Those candidates include high-profile names such as Kennedy family scion Jack Schlossberg, gun control activist Cameron Kasky and state Assembly Member Micah Lasher and lawyer Jami Floyd.
But Conway says he will stand out among the crowded field.
"I think people just have to look at what I've been saying and doing for the past seven years, at great personal and financial cost to myself ... I know how to fight this guy. I've been doing it, and frankly, I've come to the conclusion that writing op-eds and going on TV is not enough," said Conway, who has donated more than $900,000 to the joint fundraising committee between President Joe Biden's campaign and the Democratic Party in 2024, according to filings with the FEC.
Conway, who said he already had his career as a lawyer, claimed he wouldn't become a "career politician."
"I want to make a difference by using the experience that I have and my knowledge of how Trump ticks, and to fight. To end this once and for all, end this nightmare that is Trumpism. And I don't think anybody else can really say that they have done that in the way that I have been doing it."
