Cait Conley’s Donors Hate Us. Why Should We Vote For Her?
We keep getting told we should just trust Cait Conley. That she’s a good person, a veteran, someone who’ll grow into the job. Maybe. But we don’t vote based on vibes, and here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud: the people who built Cait Conley’s path to Congress have been pretty explicit about what they think of people like us.
Start with Reid Hoffman, one of the five billionaires funding the network (Majority Democrats, The Bench, Precinct) that’s propping up her campaign. He told CNBC outright that his strategy is to fight “far left groups, such as the Justice Democrats,” because they supposedly help Republicans by attacking “centrist Democrats who can win general elections.” Translate that: people who organize, who primary bad incumbents, who push for things like Medicare for All or a ceasefire in Palestine—we’re the problem. Not the billionaire class funding a deregulation agenda.
Then there’s Seth London, the architect of the whole operation. His private memo — leaked to reporters — explicitly modeled his project on the 1990s Democratic Leadership Council. That’s not a neutral choice. The DLC is the faction that gave us welfare “reform,” financial deregulation, and a Democratic Party that spent thirty years losing its working-class base. London’s memo calls for rejecting “identity politics,” embracing “abundance,” and building what he calls “a party within the party” to counter the influence of activists like us.
We are the activists he’s talking about. So is everyone who signed our pledge—everyone who’s knocked doors, organized a coalition, or shown up to a town board meeting.
And then there’s DMFI. Their whole reason for existing is defeating Democrats who won’t give Israel unconditional support — they’ve spent $30 million this cycle alone, funneling millions of it through shell PACs specifically to hide where the money’s coming from. This isn’t new for them. In 2024, AIPAC’s super PAC spent roughly $17 million to take out Jamaal Bowman, making it the most expensive House primary in history, then turned around and spent $8.5 million more to take out Cori Bush a few weeks later — DMFI kicked in another $500,000 on top of that. Combined, pro-Israel groups spent $30 million just to remove those two people from Congress. They also helped take out Nina Turner. They’re doing the same playbook nationwide right now. And they endorsed Cait Conley by name.
And one more thing worth sitting with: not one of these people appears to live in, or have ever lived in, NY-17. Reid Hoffman and Reed Hastings are Silicon Valley fixtures. Stephen Mandel runs his hedge fund out of Greenwich, Connecticut. Michael Novogratz’s firm is based in Manhattan. These are people shaping who represents Putnam, Rockland, and northern Westchester without living among any of us, sending their kids to our schools, or breathing our air.
So when someone tells us “her donors don’t determine her politics,” we want to believe that. We really do. But these aren’t quiet, passive donors. These are people who have said, on the record, that the goal is to defeat people like us. Not persuade us. Defeat us. And then they wrote the check that elected the person now asking for our votes.
We’re not asking Cait Conley to apologize for her donors. We’re asking her to prove, specifically and publicly, that she’s not just their vehicle. Because right now, the people who built her campaign have told us exactly what they think of the coalition we’re part of. We’d like to hear, in her own words, whether she agrees with them.
— BabiesNotBombsNY17
Sources:
https://prospect.org/2024/12/02/2024-12-02-insider-memo-envisions-new-dlc/
https://prospect.org/2026/06/22/pro-israel-super-pac-cinematic-universe/
https://theintercept.com/2024/08/06/aipac-cori-bush-election-results-wesley-bell/
https://abcnews.com/538/pro-israel-groups-spent-big-oust-squad-members/story?id=113675889
https://jacobin.com/2026/04/democratic-campaigns-finance-dark-money