Pearl River, NY — November 2, 2026… On the eve of Election Day, Bloomberg Law published a story on a lawsuit filed October 30 by 12 canvassers who claim they were mistreated while working on the race. Lawler for Congress never hired, employed, or paid any of the plaintiffs. They worked for subcontractors of America PAC, an outside super PAC that federal law bars the campaign from coordinating with.

Bloomberg Law asked the campaign for comment at 1:04 PM today and published roughly 20 minutes later, before the campaign could respond. The campaign answered at 1:24 PM and again at 1:43 PM, asking to speak with the reporter and an editor, and heard nothing back for more than an hour. The campaign has not been served with the 53-page complaint. Every dollar Lawler for Congress has spent is public in its FEC filings, and none of it went to these plaintiffs.

The campaign has demanded a retraction and an apology. Bloomberg refused.

“Democrats spent a week shopping this hoax around, and Bloomberg Law was the only outlet willing to run it the day before the election,” said Lawler for Congress campaign manager Ciro Riccardi. “Twenty minutes to answer a 53-page lawsuit we had never seen, about people we never hired, is not journalism. A two-minute search of FEC records would have killed this story. Bloomberg Law’s complete unprofessionalism is disappointing. Cait Conley and her allies are desperate, and voters will see this for exactly what it is tomorrow.”
 

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Fourteen of the Crystal Ball’s last 17 Toss-ups shifted towards the Democrats today. NY-17 was one of the three that didn’t.

Pearl River, NY — November 2, 2026… Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball put out its last ratings of the year today, a day before the election, and moved Mike Lawler’s race from Toss-up to Leans Republican. The only other Toss-ups to go towards Republicans today were Kentucky’s open KY-6 and Ann Wagner’s MO-2.

Harris won NY-17 in 2024 by less than a point, and Lawler won it by six points over Mondaire Jones. Lawler, Brian Fitzpatrick and Don Bacon were the only three Republicans to win Harris districts that year. Fitzpatrick’s PA-1 went to Leans Democratic today, and Bacon’s open NE-2 is rated Likely Democratic.

Back in June, a week before her primary, Cait Conley told Simon Rosenberg on Hopium Chronicles that Lawler and the Republicans “are so scared to have Mike Lawler face me in November because they know I will beat him.” In August she went on Morning Joe and said it was a priority for Democratic leadership “to make sure we send Mike Lawler packing in November.”

“The DCCC told everybody back in July that Mike was on the ropes,” said Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi. “Three months later the Crystal Ball moved Mike’s race to Leans Republican. Hakeem Jeffries and his political advisors may cost Democrats dozens of House seats with the tens of millions they’ve spent trying to unseat Mike, and the race is still shifting in our favor.”

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Conley says she and Hochul are on the same “team.” Hochul calls it “the Gov and Cait campaign.”

Pearl River, NY — October 29, 2026 —   Kathy Hochul campaigned with Cait Conley this morning at a Democratic campaign office in Peekskill, in front of “Team Hochul Adams” and “Your Family, Her Fight” signs, and told the room, “This has been the Gov and Cait campaign of knocking on doors since July.” She also said, “To have her as our candidate is extraordinary.” Conley stood next to her and clapped for every line.

Conley told the crowd she and Hochul are on the same “team,” and she brushed off questions about where she lives as a distraction. She doesn’t own a home in the 17th District. The only house on the financial disclosure she filed in May is a rental in Lee County, North Carolina, and Fairfax County, Virginia, has a 2026 tax record in her name.

On July 15, Hochul and Attorney General Tish James spoke on the New York Democratic Party’s voter protection kickoff call, with Conley as a featured guest. “I am the top of the ticket and all the races below me, especially our congressional races,” Hochul said, including “taking back that district that Mike Lawler has held for so long.” James followed: “Congressional races like Cait Conley’s are how we win back the House.” The party’s voter protection director told Conley it was “laser focused” on the district and “targeting a lot of our resources and volunteers” there.

Two weeks ago at a VFW forum in Putnam County, Lawler said, “Kathy Hochul has got to go,” and Conley said she agreed. Politico reported she then called Hochul to apologize, and her spokesperson said Conley “looks forward to winning together on November 3rd.”

In Siena’s poll of likely voters, out yesterday, 53 percent of downstate suburban voters said they disapprove of the job Hochul’s doing.

“Two weeks ago Cait told a room full of veterans she agreed Kathy Hochul has to go. Then she picked up the phone and said sorry, and this morning she was clapping along while Hochul called it the ‘Gov and Cait campaign,’” said Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi. “Cait Conley is completely beholden to Kathy Hochul and the Albany Democrats who made this state so damn expensive. The only team she’s on is Kathy Hochul’s. Why would anybody in the Hudson Valley believe she’ll stand up for them in Washington?”
 

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The mailers carry no legal disclaimer, and the group has filed nothing with the FEC. The Department of Justice has told the Lawler campaign it referred the group to the FBI.

Orangeburg, NY — October 27, 2026 —   Today, Congressman Mike Lawler (NY-17) was joined in Orangeburg by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson, Rep. Jimmy Patronis, State Senator Bill Weber, Rockland County Executive Ed Day, local elected officials and a senior couple who saved over $6,000 on their taxes this year thanks to the Working Families Tax Cut Act. Lawler also called on Cait Conley to condemn an anonymous group mailing false attacks into the district in the final days of the race.

The mailers, from a group calling itself American Forge Coalition, reached Republican homes across NY-17 on October 23 and 24. They claim Lawler “supports giving mass amnesty to up to 13 million criminal illegals.” The only disclosure reads “Paid for by American Forge Coalition,” with no address, phone number, or website, and no statement of authorization, as federal rules require. The phone number printed on the mail is Lawler’s Pearl River district office. No FEC committee is registered under the name, and none of the 259 24- and 48-hour reports filed on the race since September 1 come from the group. The Department of Justice has told the Lawler campaign it referred the group to the FBI.

“Somebody is spending real money in the last weeks of this election lying about my positions on criminal illegal aliens, and they won’t say who they are,” said Congressman Lawler. “There’s nobody to my right on the ballot, and voter suppression is illegal. You can figure out who comes out ahead if Republican voters stay home.”

Conley’s own policy page says it is time to “get rid of dark money flooding our elections,” and says she worked at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “to protect our election systems.”

“Well, here it is in her race,” said Lawler. “And the question is, will Cait Conley condemn the far-left groups that are very clearly trying to suppress voters in the waning week of this election? That’s the question, and every reporter here should ask her.”

The Working Families Tax Cut Act, which Lawler helped pass, raised the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction from $10,000 to $40,000 and kept the 2017 tax cuts from expiring. Had they lapsed, the standard deduction would have been cut roughly in half and the child tax credit would have dropped from $2,000 to $1,000 per child.

“I was clear when I told my own party I wasn’t voting for a tax bill that didn’t fix SALT, right? The SALT caucus worked together and got the cap raised from $10,000 to $40,000,” said Lawler. “Now that’s significant money for people paying some of the highest property taxes anywhere in the country. The Speaker could have told us to take a hike, but I know many families around here are happy that he didn’t.”

“You have 3.3 million seniors in the state of New York who are no longer paying taxes on their Social Security. That’s a big deal for a lot of people,” said Speaker Johnson. 

Conley would have let it all go. At the October 7 NAACP forum at Rockland Community College, Conley said of the expiring SALT cap, “The best thing that Congress could have done for New Yorkers was absolutely nothing and just letting it go away.”

Conley doesn’t pay property taxes in NY-17. She still owns the house in Fairfax County, Virginia, where she filmed her launch video, as POLITICO reported under the subhead “Running for New York, from Virginia.” Since January 2025, she has paid Fairfax County almost $11,000 in property taxes and county charges on that house. Her campaign says she lives in Ossining, but the Hudson Valley Digger found she moved to Millwood, in the Town of New Castle, in 2025.

 Her campaign has also misspelled several towns in the district, including writing “Ossinging” for the town she claims as home.

“How much has she paid in property taxes in this district? The answer, of course, is zero, because she doesn’t own a home here,” concluded Lawler. 

Watch the press conference HERE. Photos are available HERE.

The memo on American Forge Coalition can be found HERE.

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American Forge Coalition is mailing attacks on Mike Lawler into Hudson Valley homes missing a critical disclaimer. The organization was filed in May of this year, and no publicly available records online show who runs or funds it.

Pearl River, NY — October 27, 2026 —   Voters across the Hudson Valley have been receiving mailers from a shadowy group called American Forge Coalition in recent days. One says, “Mike Lawler Put Us at Risk,” across the top. The mailers also make false claims about the Congressman’s position on immigration.

As of Monday, the FEC has no filer by that name. Twenty-two outside groups have reported spending for or against Lawler this year, and American Forge Coalition still isn’t one of them. From October 15th through November 1st, any outside group that spends $1,000 or more on ads urging a vote against a federal candidate has 24 hours to report it. This also includes expenditures “not made in consultation or cooperation with, or at the request or suggestion of any candidate, or his or her authorized committees or agents, or a political party committee or its agents.”

The group’s own website ends with “Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee,” the line federal rules require on independent campaign ads. The mailers, however, leave that important disclaimer off, suggesting a candidate, candidate’s committee, or outside group likely authorized them.

American Forge Coalition’s web domain was registered at GoDaddy on May 27 with the owner’s name hidden. Its privacy policy is dated May 14, 13 days before the domain existed. However, the privacy policy has almost identical language to Senate Majority PAC’s website:

American Forge: “When you sign a petition, we treat your name, city, state, and any comments you make as public information. We may, for example, provide compilations of petitions, with your personal information including comments, to national leaders.”

Senate Majority PAC, in a policy last updated in March 2022: “We may treat your name, city, state, and any comments as public information. We may, for example, provide compilations of petitions, with your comments, to national leaders, without disclosing e-mail addresses.”

Beyond the potential ties to SMP, federal law bars foreign nationals from paying for independent expenditures in American elections, directly or indirectly. American Forge Coalition hasn’t named a single donor, so nobody can check whether any of its money came from overseas, which 501(c)(4) organizations are allowed to accept.

The Department of Justice has told the Lawler campaign it referred American Forge Coalition to the FBI. This is a logical step for a group engaging in, at best, illegal electioneering, and, at worst, using foreign donations to do it.

“Make no mistake, this is a federal crime, and someone will be held accountable. Nobody mails ‘Mike Lawler Put Us at Risk’ this close to an election because they want to talk about policy. That’s a campaign ad, and somebody’s working pretty hard to hide who paid for it and who authorized it, which makes it an electioneering expense without any FEC filings,” said Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi. “All of this smacks of illegal electioneering expenses paid for by, well, it could be anyone, including foreign funders, paying for it. Cait Conley led election security at CISA for Joe Biden. She knows exactly what this is. Is she going to condemn it, or is she fine with it as long as it’s not aimed at her?”

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Conley’s closing argument to voters has been to flip-flop on key issues, from impeaching Trump to data centers and more. Now with Linda Sarsour’s endorsement, Jewish voters in NY-17 are left wondering: will Conley flip on us, too?

Pearl River, NY — October 20, 2026 —   New reporting from the Judge Street Journal confirmed the worst fears of many Jewish voters in NY-17 this morning – Zohran Mamdani and the antisemitic forces that swept him into office are actively trying to elect Cait Conley in the Hudson Valley.

At a CAIR conference in September, Linda Sarsour made the pitch to pro-Palestinian voters in NY-17, saying, “Do we get someone like a Conley in and say to her you’re lucky we let you slide this time, but it’s easy that this slides back if you don’t get yourself together.”

Sarsour was referencing, of course, Conley’s supposed support for Israel and her stance on Gaza.

“How can Jewish voters trust Cait Conley if she’s relying on support from Linda Sarsour, one of the most prominent Zohran Mamdani supporters and a rabid antisemite, and her supporters?” asked Ciro Ricccardi, Campaign Manager for Lawler for Congress. “Politics make for strange bedfellows, but Cait has somehow found her way into the arms of the very same groups and their leaders who have made Jewish people fear for their lives in New York City, the exact same folks Congressman Mike Lawler has denounced at every step of their Jew-hating ways.”

“It’s appalling, and Cait must immediately and swiftly denounce Linda, her antisemitic record, and make clear she does not want Linda or her supporters’ backing in this race to represent one of the largest Jewish communities in the United States,” concluded Riccardi. “Although, as we’ve seen, Cait Conley’s word means little – as she has flip-flopped on issue after issue this campaign to make whichever room she’s talking to happy.”

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Conley owns no property in NY-17 and pays no property taxes here, but does have a 2026 real estate tax record in her name in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Pearl River, NY — October 20, 2026 —   Today, the Lawler for Congress campaign released “Virginia,” the closing ad of Congressman Mike Lawler’s (NY-17) reelection campaign. The ad takes Cait Conley to task for wanting to represent NY-17 in Congress, but not owning property or paying taxes here, and for parachuting into the district solely to run for office.

“Cait Conley doesn’t own a home here, and she’s never paid taxes here. But do you know where she does? Virginia,” Lawler says in the ad. “Think about it. Cait doesn’t pay taxes here, but wants to raise ours even higher. Is she serious?”

Watch “Virginia” here.

The only house Conley listed on the financial disclosure she filed with the House in May is a in Lee County, North Carolina, from which she collected $15,001 to $50,000 in rent last year. Fairfax County, Virginia, property records show a 2026 real estate tax summary for Conley, despite her claim she’s all in to represent the Hudson Valley.

“Unlike Cait, we own a home, pay taxes, and this is where we’re raising our family,” Lawler says in the ad. “It’s why I fought both sides to restore SALT and why I’m fighting to reopen Indian Point to cut energy costs.”

The tax law Lawler helped negotiate raised the SALT cap from $10,000 to $40,000 for filers making under $500,000, and the Tax Foundation estimates it cuts 2026 taxes for the average New York filer by $4,079. At the Spring Valley NAACP forum on Oct. 7, Conley said “The best thing that Congress could have done for New Yorkers was absolutely nothing.” Cait’s plan would have resulted in a tax increase of over $4,000 for Hudson Valley families.

“Cait Conley trying to run a campaign about ‘cost-of-living’ in NY-17 when she doesn’t pay taxes here, pay a mortgage here, run a business here, or raise a family here exposes her entire campaign as the fraud that it is,” said Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi. “Mike Lawler is fully invested in the Hudson Valley and shares the same experience as others who live here.  That’s why he stood up to his own party to get families here the largest tax cut in American history while delivering on his promise to lift the cap on SALT.”

“Cait wants to raise taxes by $4,000 on the working families, seniors, and businesses in the Hudson Valley while she pays taxes in Virginia,” mocked Riccardi. “Hudson Valley residents are some of the smartest voters in the country. They understand what Congressman Lawler’s successful efforts to lift the cap on SALT from $10,000 to $40,000 means to their bottom line. They also don’t want to be lectured about cost-of-living by a carpetbagger who has no clue what that even means in this district. If Cait Conley wanted to run for Congress, she should have done so where she lives – Fairfax County, Virginia.”

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The Lawler for Congress campaign is putting five figures behind “Tell Her No,” a one-minute spot built almost entirely out of Cait Conley’s own words saying that Hudson Valley residents who have voted Republican are a greater threat to the country than Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Pearl River, NY — October 12, 2026 —   Today, the Lawler for Congress campaign launched “Tell Her No,” which will be running on digital, text, and streaming platforms. “And then my last two years in uniform, I was at the White House as the director for counterterrorism,” Conley told an interviewer last November, and the ad lets that sit for a second before it plays what she’s been telling Democratic audiences ever since.

On a July fundraising Zoom, Cait Conley said, “I truly believe the greatest threat to America’s future is coming from within our own border right now.” On Sept. 2 she said this Republican Party “is not the real Republican Party” and called it a “cult.” She’d told a Democratic committee much the same thing on July 16 (“You know, the Republican Party is a cult”), and six days before the June primary she went on Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles, said the greatest threat to America was coming from inside our borders, and then added, “And Mike Lawler’s been complicit in that.”

Over footage of Al-Qaeda and ISIS fighters, the ad’s narrator tells viewers what she thinks of them: that anyone who voted for Trump is a bigger threat to America than radical terrorists. The New York Post broke the story on her comments in an exclusive this morning, and her campaign doubled down on them, instead of apologizing.

“Cait Conley spent two years as Joe Biden’s counterterrorism top staffer at the NSC, so she, of all people, knows who actually wants to hurt Americans. And yet she keeps telling voters in the Hudson Valley that the greatest threat to our country is inside our own borders and calling the party about half this district votes for a cult,” said Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi. “Close to 200,000 people in the Hudson Valley voted to send Mike Lawler back to Congress in 2024. Does she think each of those voters is more dangerous than ISIS or Al Qaeda? We’d honestly like to hear her answer, and until she gives one, voters should vote to send her back to Virginia.”

Watch “Tell Her No” here.

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The New York Post caught her using the line time and again on the campaign trail, over two dozen times, saying that folks inside the United States who have voted for a Republican are a greater threat than Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or Hamas. Conley has repeatedly said her campaign “isn’t about left vs. right, it’s about right vs. wrong” – so does Cait Conley think calling Republicans the greatest threat to our country instead of terrorist groups isn’t wrong?

Pearl River, NY — October 12, 2026 —  For the first two years of the Biden administration, Cait Conley was a counterterrorism director on the White House National Security Council. On the campaign trail, she has a different idea of the country’s greatest threat. According to an exclusive in this morning’s New York Post, she means President Trump and anyone who’s ever voted for a Republican…

The Post showed that Cait Conley has made this a plank of her platform. Conley told the Rockland County NAACP on April 23 that she “never thought” the greatest threat to our country “would come from within our border.” On a July Zoom fundraiser, Conley told donors she “truly believe[s] the greatest threat to America’s future is coming from within our own border right now.” At the AFL-CIO’s Sept. 28 candidates’ night, she said the biggest threat to the United States “wasn’t from our foreign adversaries.”

On June 17, six days before the primary, Conley told Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles livestream that “the greatest threat to America and to our future is coming from within our own borders right now.”

Congressman Lawler told the Post that Conley “believes that the greatest threat to our country isn’t Al Qaeda, ISIS, or even Russia or China,” and called it “insane and disqualifying.” Conley’s campaign didn’t walk any of it back.

“Cait Conley spent years going after terrorists, so she knows what a real threat to this country looks like. And yet, Cait’s telling voters in the Hudson Valley the greatest threat is people not voting how she wants them to,” said Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi. “Does Cait Conley really believe someone who voted for Mike Lawler in 2022 and 2024 is a bigger danger to America than ISIS or Al Qaeda? And if she does, how exactly does she plan to work with anyone in Congress who doesn’t vote the way she wants?”

Don’t miss the New York Post’s full story here.

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Journal News reporter Chris McKenna found Lawler had nothing to do with approving Orangetown’s data centers. Bloomberg and JPMorgan Chase got the go-ahead under Democratic Supervisor Andy Stewart, who now works for Nyack Mayor Joe Rand, Conley’s canvass partner today in Orangeburg, where Stewart approved the building of multiple data centers.

Pearl River, NY — October 10, 2026 —  Cait Conley keeps telling voters Mike Lawler is the reason Rockland has data centers. Today at 10 a.m. she’ll be in Orangeburg with Nyack Mayor Joe Rand, canvassing on the “effects of unregulated Data Centers in Orangetown.” She might want to read her hometown paper first.

Here’s what Chris McKenna of The Journal News found: “There are no obvious links between Lawler and the data centers built in his town. Lawler served on no Orangetown boards that granted approvals for the projects, and he had no say over them as a state assemblyman and then a U.S. House member since 2021.”

In fact, some of Conley’s biggest supporters were the ones responsible. In May 2013, Andy Stewart, then Orangetown’s Democratic supervisor, sent a note to residents announcing that Bloomberg was building a $435 million data center in the town’s corporate park, and thanked the town’s engineers and building inspectors for moving it along. Four years later, his Town Board voted unanimously to let JPMorgan Chase build another one. Stewart told the Nyack Free Press that landing the Chase data center was one of the things he was proudest of as supervisor.

And, since March of 2022, Andy Stewart has been Nyack’s Village Administrator, the staff job that runs the village day to day and reports directly to the mayor and trustees. The mayor is Joe Rand, also the Democratic candidate for State Senate in the 38th District, and one of Cait Conley’s closest allies. Funny how one of Cait Conley’s strongest supporters is employing the guy who’s responsible for the explosion of data center development, and no wonder she wants to deflect.

“Cait Conley has based much of her campaign on a lie, and The Journal News just called her on it,” said Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi. “Mike Lawler never had a say on any of these projects. The guy who did, and who bragged about it, now works for the same mayor Cait is knocking doors with today. So is she going to ask Joe Rand about his village administrator being responsible for the data center development in Orangetown, or is she just going to keep lying to voters?”

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