Some political candidates run on a record. Jack Schlossberg ran on a grandfather who has been dead for 63 years, a Harvard MBA he has not deployed in any publicly documented way, a series of shirtless impression videos that went viral on TikTok, and Nancy Pelosi’s endorsement, which she gave him because her father once chaired his grandfather’s 1960 presidential campaign, which is the kind of connection that gets you an endorsement in 2026 for an event from 1960. He finished third.
Schlossberg entered the race in November to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler in New York’s 12th Congressional District. He held a launch rally at Terminal 5, which according to Slate is Manhattan’s worst music venue, known primarily as a place to become ill while electronic music plays. Aides were, per Slate, “windswept, screaming at one another because no one had the wristbands.” He then gave a speech in which he promised to be “the most confusing member of Congress,” which is a sentence that contains both a self-assessment and a pledge, and then he dabbed. Slate, which covered the event, concluded he should win anyway. He did not win.
George Conway also ran. Conway is a former Republican, the ex-husband of Kellyanne Conway, and a man who moved to Manhattan from Connecticut specifically to enter this race, having spent years building 3 million social media followers by posting anti-Trump content. He described himself as uniquely positioned to defeat Trump by winning a congressional seat in a district that votes Democratic by 30 points, which does not require a former Republican to do. He finished fifth with 6.1 percent of the vote. He moved to a new city for this.
The race was won by Micah Lasher, a state assemblyman who formerly worked for Michael Bloomberg and for retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler, and who received $10 million from a Bloomberg-backed super PAC. He is not famous. He has no viral TikTok content. He has never dabbed at a campaign event, at least not on camera. According to HuffPost, the race ultimately became a proxy battle between two wings of the AI industry, with Lasher backed by groups aligned with Anthropic and AI safety, and his opponent backed by OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz. The Kennedy and the ex-husband of Kellyanne Conway were not part of this framing because neither of them was relevant to the outcome.
Schlossberg posted after his loss that he was proud of the campaign and grateful to his supporters. His grandfather’s seat, which Nadler held for 34 years, will be occupied by a Bloomberg aide who won a proxy war between competing Silicon Valley factions. The Kennedy family’s connection to New York’s 12th Congressional District lasted approximately seven months.
When the grandson of a president with Pelosi’s endorsement, shirtless TikToks, and a Harvard MBA finishes third behind a Bloomberg aide nobody had heard of, what exactly was the campaign selling?
Sources
Slate: Who won New York’s Democratic primaries?
Slate: I went to a Jack Schlossberg event. He should win.
HuffPost: The AI industry successfully defeats its No. 1 target
HuffPost: Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s Grandson And Online Provocateur, Is Running For Congress
Breitbart: Election night livewire
