Micah Lasher won the competitive Democratic primary to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), holding off Assemblyman Alex Bores in New York‘s 12th Congressional District.
Lasher led with 39% of the vote to Bores’s 35% with 85% of the vote counted, according to the Associated Press. He prevailed over a crowded field that also featured Kennedy scion Jack Schlossberg and attorney-turned-activist George Conway.
The Upper East and West Side-anchored district leans heavily Democratic, meaning Lasher is all but certain to win the November election. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who votes in the district as a resident of Gracie Mansion, voted in the primary but did not endorse or disclose who he voted for.
Conway, the former husband of Kellyanne Conway, ran as a Trump provocateur, testing the limits of a stringent anti-Trump campaign in a Democratic primary. He focused his platform on impeaching President Donald Trump. He garnered 6.1% of the vote.
Schlossberg, a progressive influencer and the grandson of former President John F. Kennedy, tried to use his celebrity to catapult him to Congress. He finished with 10.8% of the vote.
Lasher, a former staffer to Nadler, ran with the backing of the retiring congressman. Bores worked at Palantir before his election to the Assembly.
Unlike in other Democratic primaries, where Israel has become a flash point, the leading contenders rarely differed in their views. All four refused to call Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide. Only Schlossberg expressed opposition to weapon sales to Israel, while Bores, Lasher, and Conway generally supported continued support.
The district is home to the largest population of Jewish people in the United States.
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The race was also marked by the prevalence of AI interest group spending, which poured roughly $20 million into the race. Leading the Future, a group backed by pro-AI venture capitalists, spent more than $8 million against Bores due to his work on AI regulations in the New York Assembly.
This was the second most expensive House primary on record, according to nonpartisan database AdImpact. Only this year’s primary in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, which saw Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) lose his seat, was more expensive.
