Cait Conley

According to her campaign website, Cait Conley is a fourth-generation Hudson Valley native whose mother was a postal worker and whose father was a construction worker, and she attended Pine Bush High School.[3] The site says she began her application to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point after the September 11 attacks, received a congressional nomination from the late Rep. Maurice Hinchey, and was the first in her family to graduate from college.[3] She earned a bachelor's degree from West Point and master's degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.[2][6]

Conley served 16 years as an active-duty Army officer, starting as a military police officer and later in special operations leadership.[2][3] According to her campaign website, she deployed overseas six times to combat zones including Iraq and Afghanistan and was awarded three Bronze Stars.[3] She later served as Director for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council at the White House and at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) under President Joe Biden, according to her campaign website and Ballotpedia.[2][3][6] Her campaign website says that in these roles she worked with Congress on national security legislation and on the security of critical infrastructure and election systems.[3]

Conley won the Democratic nomination in New York's 17th Congressional District on June 23, 2026, according to the Associated Press as reported by Spectrum News, and faced Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in the November 3, 2026 general election.[7] She lives in Millwood, according to a June 2026 River Journal candidate profile.[6] During the campaign, she described herself as not a politician.[2][3] She won the November 3, 2026 general election with 53% of the vote to Mike Lawler's 46.9%, according to unofficial results reported by NBC News.[1]