George Conway — co-founder of the Lincoln Project, ex-husband of Kellyanne Conway, and a man who once admitted to spending $1 million of his own money trying to defeat Donald Trump — ran for Congress in New York's 12th District on Tuesday. He pulled roughly 5 percent of the vote.
A million dollars. Five percent. The word oops doesn't feel strong enough for this.
The Democratic primary wasn't even close at the top. Micah Lasher won with 39.1 percent. Alex Bores came in second at 35.0 percent. Conway finished so far behind the leaders that his result rounded to a footnote — in a race to replace Jerry Nadler, a seat that practically comes with a Democratic guarantee. He couldn't even crack double digits in the friendliest possible electorate for a Never Trump Republican-turned-Democrat.
Conway's pitch to New York Democrats was, essentially, that hating Trump qualified him for public office. He'd spent years building a media brand around it — cable news hits, social media wars, the Lincoln Project's ad campaigns. In April 2026, he openly admitted the $1 million personal investment in the anti-Trump cause, as though the figure proved his commitment rather than his judgment.
New York Democrats, to their credit, weren't buying. The 12th District had actual local candidates running on local issues. Conway was running on name recognition from cable television and a divorce.
That divorce is the part of the story Conway never figured out how to spin. He and Kellyanne Conway were married for 22 years before splitting in March 2023. She had been Trump's 2016 campaign manager — the first woman to run a winning presidential campaign. George spent the back half of that marriage publicly savaging his wife's boss on every platform that would have him. The Lincoln Project, which he co-founded, became the vessel for that project. The marriage didn't survive it.
President Trump, never one to let a defeated opponent slink away quietly, issued a statement after the results came in. "No wonder his 'husband' dumped him like a dog!" Trump wrote. "This is a truly unattractive person, both inside and out." The "Mr. Kellyanne" framing — Trump's long-standing nickname for Conway — hung over the entire post like a subtitle.
The Gateway Pundit reported the results Tuesday night, noting Conway's performance against a field that wasn't exactly stacked with political heavyweights. Losing to Lasher and Bores is one thing. Losing by 30-plus points to both of them suggests the problem wasn't the competition.
Conway built a second career on the theory that there was a massive, underserved market of Republicans who wanted to hear a Republican tell them their party was evil. The cable networks loved it. The speaking circuit loved it. The donor class funded it. And when he finally put his name on a ballot and asked actual voters to validate the theory, they gave him 5 percent.
A million dollars buys a lot of cable news segments. It does not, apparently, buy a congressional district.