George T. Conway III spent most of his adult life as a Republican, and until just a few weeks ago, he was living full time in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.
But as Mr. Conway, a former conservative lawyer turned leading critic of President Trump, sees it, extreme times call for extreme measures.
So he moved to Manhattan, registered as a Democrat for the first time, and on Tuesday, he jumped without apology into the primary race for a coveted open House seat in one of New York City’s bluest districts.
“We have a criminal president who is basically running the government like a mob operation,” Mr. Conway said in an interview before declaring his candidacy. “We need people to come in who are willing to call that out, and people with special skills.”
Without question, Mr. Conway has an inside line on the president. He is a former card-carrying member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, who was married to Kellyanne Conway, a senior Trump aide, before breaking hard from the MAGA movement in 2018. (The Conways divorced in 2023.)
But his candidacy to replace Representative Jerrold Nadler may be a difficult sell, particularly given his past party affiliation and residency. Stretching the width of Manhattan from 14th Street to near the top of Central Park, New York’s 12th District is among the most affluent, reliably liberal and politically engaged in the country. Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one.
The race has already attracted sitting state lawmakers, a Kennedy heir and a survivor of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting — some of whom have been deeply engaged in local community issues for years. (Other well-known critics of Mr. Trump — including Michael D. Cohen, his former fixer, and the journalist Molly Jong-Fast — have also considered running.)
In an interview on Monday in a Midtown office building, Mr. Conway said that despite having poured himself into social media posts, podcasts and legal briefs opposing Mr. Trump, he had never considered running for office until last November, when a friend encouraged him to look at Mr. Nadler’s seat.
“I got off the phone and I immediately Googled the 12th Congressional District of New York,” he said. “And I’m thinking, this is my home, I made my career here. I know these people. I know what they think. I know what they think of Trump.”
Mr. Conway had lived within the current district boundaries two decades before, when he was a corporate litigator at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. At the time, he owned a condo in Trump World Tower near the United Nations, where he and Ms. Conway met the future president for the first time.
This time around, Mr. Conway quickly found an luxury rental apartment in Chelsea. Mr. Conway had been a political independent since 2018, but he registered as a Democrat in December, according to a registration record shared by his campaign.
His conservative credentials may give New York voters pause. In the 1990s, he helped bring accusations of sexual misconduct against President Bill Clinton to light, angering Democrats.
When Mr. Trump won the White House in 2016, Mr. Conway cried tears of joy on election night and was talked about for a job in the Justice Department. He did not take it, but moved with his then-wife from their home in New Jersey to the Washington area when she took a job in the White House.
The political breakup that followed was national news. Mr. Conway called Mr. Trump a narcissist unfit for office. The president called him a “stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!”
“I get how people can be upset how I once supported Trump,” Mr. Conway said in the interview. “But I think if people really listen, my views, my philosophy, my values, have always been the same.”
If elected, he said he would fight to protect the Affordable Care Act and support legislation that would enshrine the abortion rights that the Supreme Court eradicated into law. (Mr. Conway once argued that Roe v. Wade had been incorrectly decided, but he said this week that he thought the court’s decision overturning it was “appalling.”)
He supports New York City’s year-old congestion pricing program, but he said he did not know how he would have voted in November’s mayoral election, won by Zohran Mamdani.
“Zohran, he’s a great politician, and his focus on affordability I really admire,” he said, but he added that he was “disturbed” by Mr. Mamdani’s criticism of Israel.
Mr. Conway’s launch on Tuesday was timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. If elected, he said he hopes to be a “wingman” for Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who led the House’s impeachment case against Mr. Trump at the time.
“At 62, I can’t do this for very long and I don’t want to do this for very long,” he said. “I am kind of like a special-teams player coming in.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
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