Kellyanne Conway
Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway (née Fitzpatrick; born January 20, 1967) is an American political consultant and pollster who served as Senior Counselor to the President in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020.[1][2][3][4] She was previously Trump's campaign manager, having been appointed in August 2016; Conway is the first woman to have run a successful U.S. presidential campaign.[5] She has previously held roles as campaign manager and strategist in the Republican Party, and was formerly president and CEO of the Polling Company/WomanTrend.[6]
Kellyanne Conway
Conway lived in Trump World Tower from 2001 to 2008 and conducted private polls for Trump in late 2013 when he was considering running for governor of New York. In the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, Conway initially endorsed Ted Cruz and chaired a pro-Cruz political action committee.[7][8][9][10] After Cruz withdrew from the race, Trump appointed Conway as a senior advisor and later campaign manager.[11][12] On December 22, 2016, Trump announced that Conway would join his administration as counselor to the president.[13] On November 29, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Conway would oversee White House efforts to combat the opioid overdose epidemic.[14][15]
After Trump's inauguration, Conway was embroiled in a series of controversies: using the phrase "alternative facts" to describe fictitious and disproven attendance numbers for Trump's inauguration; speaking multiple times of a "Bowling Green massacre" that never occurred; and claiming that Michael Flynn had the full confidence of the president hours before he was dismissed. Members of Congress from both parties called for an investigation of an apparent ethics violation after she publicly endorsed commercial products associated with the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump.[16] In June 2019, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel recommended that Conway be fired for "unprecedented" multiple violations of the Hatch Act of 1939.[17]
In August 2020, Conway left the administration. This came after months of a public feud between herself and her teenage daughter, Claudia, who lambasted her in the media, politically and personally, and threatened to seek legal emancipation.[18][19][20] In 2022, Conway joined Fox News as a contributor.[21] She frequently appears as a guest/host on a variety of programs including Hannity, The Five, Outnumbered, The Big Weekend Show and more. Conway also contributed to Fox's 2022 Midterm Election coverage. Since 2024, Conway has been paid by the Club for Growth to advocate on behalf of TikTok and its parent company ByteDance.[22]
Early life
Kellyanne Elizabeth Fitzpatrick was born on January 20, 1967, in the Atco section of Waterford Township, New Jersey, to Diane (née DiNatale) and John Fitzpatrick.[23][24] Conway's father had German, English, and Irish ancestry, while her mother is of Italian descent;[25] John Fitzpatrick owned a small trucking company, and Diane worked at a bank. Conway's parents divorced when she was three,[26][27] and she was raised by her mother, grandmother, and two unmarried aunts in Atco. She graduated from St. Joseph High School in 1985 as class valedictorian. In high school, she also sang in the choir, played field hockey, worked on floats for parades, and was a cheerleader.[28] A 1992 New Jersey Organized Crime Commission report identified Conway's grandfather, Jimmy "The Brute" DiNatale, as a mob associate of the Philadelphia crime family; DiNatale did not reside with Conway's grandmother, Conway, and the rest of her family.[26] Conway's cousin, Mark DeMarco, has stated that while in high school, Conway ordered members of the football team to stop bullying him; according to DeMarco, the bullying stopped.[29] Her family is Catholic.[23][30]
Conway credits her experience working for eight summers on a blueberry farm in Hammonton, New Jersey, for teaching her a strong work ethic. "The faster you went, the more money you'd make," she said. At age 16, she won the New Jersey Blueberry Princess pageant. At age 20, she won the World Champion Blueberry Packing competition: "Everything I learned about life and business started on that farm."[30]
Conway graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Trinity College, Washington, D.C. (now Trinity Washington University), where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.[31] She earned a Juris Doctor with honors from the George Washington University Law School in 1992.[32] After graduation, she served as a judicial clerk for Judge Richard A. Levie[33] of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.[34][35][36]
2016 presidential election
Ted Cruz support and endorsement
When the 2016 election campaigns got underway, Conway had been acquainted with Donald Trump for years, because she lived in Trump World Tower from 2001 to 2008 and sat on the condo board.[8] Yet she initially endorsed Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican presidential primary and chaired a pro-Cruz political action committee known as Keep the Promise I, which was almost entirely funded by businessman Robert Mercer.[51][52] Conway's organization criticized Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as "extreme" and "not a conservative".[9][10] On January 25, 2016, Conway criticized Trump as "a man who seems to be offending his way to the nomination."[53] On January 26, Conway criticized Trump's use of eminent domain, saying "Donald Trump has literally bulldozed over the little guy to get his way."[54]
In mid-June 2016, Cruz suspended his campaign and Conway left.[55]
Trump campaign
On July 1, 2016, Trump announced that he had hired Conway for a senior advisory position on his presidential campaign.[56] Conway was expected to advise Trump on how to better appeal to female voters.[56] On August 19, following the resignation of Paul Manafort, Trump named Conway the campaign's third campaign manager.[38][57] She served in this capacity for 10 weeks, through the November 8 general election, and was the first woman to successfully run an American presidential campaign,[58] and the first woman to run a Republican general election presidential campaign.[57] Saturday Night Live started satirizing her in October 2016, portrayed by Kate McKinnon.[59][60][61] In a January 2017 interview, Conway acknowledged the SNL parody by noting that, "Kate McKinnon clearly sees the road to the future runs through me and not Hillary."[62][63]
Personal life
Conway was married to George Conway,[132] who is of counsel at the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and wrote the Supreme Court brief for Paula Jones during the Clinton impeachment in 1998.[133][134] The couple have four children: twins Claudia and George IV, Charlotte, and Vanessa.[134] Prior to Trump's presidency, they lived in Alpine, New Jersey.[36][135][136] Prior to her marriage, Conway dated the senator and 2008 presidential candidate Fred Thompson.[137]
George Conway is a critic of Trump; in December 2019 he co-founded the Lincoln Project, which campaigned against Donald Trump's re-election from a conservative perspective.[138] In March 2019, President Trump responded to criticism from Kellyanne's husband George by describing George as a "stone cold LOSER & husband from hell".[139] Kellyanne defended Trump by saying that George Conway is "not a psychiatrist" and that Trump should not be expected to respond when George, "a non-medical professional accuses him of having a mental disorder".[140]
Conway's daughter Claudia is a TikTok influencer who became known in 2020, at age 15, for her anti-Trump messages.[141][142][143][144] In July 2020 she said that her parents' marriage had "failed".[143] Claudia identifies as a leftist and liberal,[145][146] and described her TikTok fan base as "leftist, A.C.A.B. (All Cops Are Bastards), anti-trump, blm (Black Lives Matter)".[147] In August 2020, Claudia Conway announced she was seeking emancipation.[148] In January 2021, she claimed that her mother has been "physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive," posting videos on TikTok appearing to show her mother screaming at and even once hitting her.[149] On January 25, 2021, Kellyanne Conway's official Twitter account shared a topless photo of a girl later confirmed to be Claudia Conway.[150] New Jersey police launched an investigation into the matter.[151] At age 16, Claudia Conway appeared as a contestant on, but was eliminated from, American Idol.[152]
In September 2019, Conway's cousin Giovanna Coia, who was then White House press assistant, married Vice President Mike Pence's nephew John Pence, who worked for the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign.[153][154][155]
One of the few White House staffers to have had protection from the Secret Service due to various threats, Conway chose "Blueberry" as her Secret Service code name because of associations with the fruit from her youth in pageants and berry picking.[156]
In a September 2018 interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Conway stated she was the victim of a sexual assault.[157][158]
On August 23, 2020, Conway announced her resignation in order to "spend more time with her family,"[159] as did her husband George, who announced he had taken time off from the Lincoln Project and Twitter.[160]
In March 2023, George and Kellyanne announced that they were divorcing after 22 years of marriage.[161]
Books
In 2005, Conway and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake co-authored What Women Really Want: How American Women Are Quietly Erasing Political, Racial, Class, and Religious Lines to Change the Way We Live (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2005; ISBN 0-7432-7382-6).
In 2022, Conway authored Here's the Deal: A Memoir (Threshold Editions, 2022; ISBN 1982187344).