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Democrat Cait Conley finally condemned Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s anti-Israel rhetoric — but only after Rep. Mike Lawler backed her into a corner for repeatedly dodging the question.
“Yes, I do denounce Mamdani’s statement on Oct. 7th,” Conley said while squaring off with conservative incumbent Lawler in their final debate Wednesday night.
“I condemn antisemitism from any party or anyone,” she added.
That admission came only after Lawler called her out for refusing to denounce what he characterized as Mamdani’s “antisemitic base” — the anti-Zionism pervading the mayor’s Democratic Socialists of America party — during their first debate in September, putting Conley on blast when they met again Wednesday.
“Last debate, Cait was given four opportunities to condemn Zohran Mamdani’s antisemitism and she refused each time only for him to issue the most vile antisemitic statement on Oct. 7,” Lawler said.
He was referring to Mamdani’s widely maligned statement on this year’s Hamas terror attack anniversary, which paid brief lip-service to the 1,200 people massacred in 2023 — before dedicating most of the statement to “the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
That statement hadn’t been made at the last 17th District debate — on Sept. 28 — where Lawler repeatedly tried to get Conley to denounce Mamdani’s anti-Israel stances, before she dodged and parried each time.
“Do you denounce Donald Trump for the harm he’s caused to families in the Hudson Valley?” she shot back once.
But Mamdani’s Oct. 7 statement appeared to have been enough for Conley to grab onto and denounce Wednesday — and even once she did, Lawler still let her have it.
“Great,” he said. “It shouldn’t have taken you until today to denounce it.”
The candidates are duking it out in one of the state’s most Jewish districts, meaning the conflict in Israel and Gaza has been one of the hottest subjects on the campaign trail.
Lawler has given outright support for Israel, calling it “our greatest ally in the world” during the debate.
“This is critical and I am opposed to any effort by the Democrats and the DSA to defund the strategic partnership between the United States and Israel and I will fight it tooth and nail,” he continued.
And though she’s hemmed and hawed over Mamdani’s Israel stances, Conley — an Army veteran who served in the Middle East — has also voiced support for the Jewish state, though in more measured terms.
“I believe in Israel’s right to exist. It is the only Democracy in the Middle East. It is a strategic partner for American national security and I believe that America has a national responsibility to insure the security of the Israeli people,” she said Wednesday, before hedging that stance.
“I will also criticize the Netanyahu administration when I believe it is doing the wrong thing for Israel and America,” she said, telling reports after the debate that West Bank settlement should be halted, that she opposed the country’s operations in southern Lebanon, and that Israel needed to work on a “real, legitimate two-state solution.”
Lawler and Conley are polling neck-and-neck with less than three weeks to go before Nov. 3 election.
Conley leads Lawler by 2 points in most polls — about 48% to 46% — but the margin remains so that that it could be anybody’s race. Lawler, for example, first won the district in 2022 by a less than 1% margin.
New York’s 17th Congressional District stretches from the White Plains’ border across the lower Hudson Valley, and is one of the liberal state’s few swing districts — meaning what happens there could have very real implications for the balance of power in Washington and the country for the next two years.