Claudia Conway’s phone was buzzing. She was about to walk into a bagel shop in Lower Manhattan when her younger sister called. It was a Tuesday in mid-September and Claudia, 19, had come from her college, where she is a sophomore majoring in political science. She said she had been registering fellow students to vote as part of this year’s National Voter Registration Day.
Ms. Conway said that being “a normal college student” can be challenging at times — especially when classmates or strangers recognize her as a daughter of two of the more outspoken and combative Republican voices in modern politics.
“People are like ‘Oh, how are your parents,’ and it’s weird,” she said.
These days, she and her mother, Kellyanne Conway, talk on the phone multiple times a day. Both said that their relationship has come a long way since Claudia, at 15, drew the internet’s glare in 2020 for posts on social media that disagreed with the political views of her mother, who served as a top aide to former President Donald J. Trump during his 2016 campaign and for most of his four years in the White House.
In one post, Claudia wrote that she was seeking emancipation from her parents. (Her father, George Conway, is a longtime Republican lawyer and a founder of the Lincoln Project, an organization catering to anti-Trump Republicans.) In another post, Claudia wrote that she was “running away.”
The public spat involving the high-profile family was emblematic of the polarization that has divided loved ones, friends and colleagues in the Trump era of politics.
In the aftermath, her parents, who have since divorced, said they would be retreating from public life to spend more time with Claudia, her twin brother, George, and their two younger daughters, Charlotte and Vanessa. Claudia announced she would be taking a break from social media. It was short-lived: She was posting again within months and, in 2021, she re-entered some people’s feeds when she appeared as a contestant on “American Idol.”
For this year’s presidential election — the first in which she can vote — Ms. Conway has rejoined the political discourse with a more pragmatic approach that she said was influenced by her earlier bouts with online scrutiny. She still speaks her mind with “spunk,” as she put it, “but in a tasteful way, in a more grown-up way.”
Ms. Conway — a member of Generation Z, which is known for resisting traditional categorizations — calls herself an independent. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll of registered voters showed that 40 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 identify as independent; most in that age group are Gen-Z voters, the eldest of which turn 27 this year.
In August, she sat between her parents in a Chicago hotel room while moderating a conversation with them that was streamed on Instagram Live during the Democratic National Convention. Last month, she sat down for an interview about young voters on “Here’s the Deal with Kellyanne,” a show hosted by her mother on the Fox Nation streaming service.
She has also participated in networking calls organized by Future Coalition, a left-leaning group with a focus on mobilizing young voters, and in initiatives led by HeadCount, a nonpartisan voter-engagement group.
Ms. Conway has taken a particular interest in issues like gender equality, racial justice, gun control and restoring access to reproductive health care. “She basically organized a march in Englewood, N.J., herself,” her father said, referring to a demonstration in support of abortion rights that Ms. Conway staged in 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
She identifies as queer, but doesn’t like to label herself. “I’m very comfortable with my identity, but it’s taken a while to get to this point,” said Ms. Conway, who lives in Manhattan with her Corgi, Gracie.
To Corryn Freeman, the executive director of Future Coalition, Ms. Conway embodies the type of frankness that many Gen Z-ers crave. “She had every opportunity to potentially become political royalty in the Republican Party,” Ms. Freeman said. “Faced with privilege and an easy path forward, she chose her heart.”
Ms. Freeman met Ms. Conway at the Democratic convention, and Future Coalition has since featured her in videos across its social media and on a podcast produced by the organization. It also paid her to participate in a video call with influencers last month.
On the call, Ms. Conway referred to the online ordeals she had overcome while encouraging the influencers to use social media as a way to reach voters. “I’ve been canceled 100 times, but I’m still sitting here,” she said.
Ms. Conway’s volunteer work for HeadCount has also included initiatives encouraging influencers to mobilize voters. “The fact that she is a notable person, or a daughter of notable people, never comes across,” said Tappan Vickery, the senior director of programming and strategy at HeadCount. “She rolled up her sleeves and got into research and our programs, just like everybody else.”
Olivia Julianna, a 21-year-old influencer and political activist from Texas who spoke at the Democratic convention, said she doesn’t agree with Ms. Conway on everything but that she appreciates her “hustle.”
“I do have a sense of respect for her,” Ms. Julianna said. “A lot of young people don’t identify with either party and find themselves in that independent category, and I think she can speak to a lot of those young people in a way some of us just can’t.”
Reflecting on the social media posts she made about her parents as a 15-year-old in 2020, Ms. Conway described them as having been something of a learned behavior. “I just figured if my mom and my dad could say whatever they want online, so could I,” she said, crediting therapy sessions, some of which she attended with her mother, with helping her process that time in her life.
“I take full accountability for every single thing that I posted,” Ms. Conway added, noting that some posts pushed the Conways’ private lives further into the public sphere. “I regret the way in which I said some things and the way in which I worded things.”
Her parents told the Times that they did not impose their interest in politics or their views onto their children. Ms. Conway’s twin brother and her other two siblings have remained largely invisible in the years since she began publicly wading into political discourse.
But partisan viewpoints were a staple of being raised in the Conway home. When friends’ parents might have turned on “SpongeBob SquarePants,” Ms. Conway said, hers were likely to play Fox News.
“I called anything bad in my life Hillary, as in Hillary Clinton,” she said. “Like any villain on TV, and like a boo-boo on my arm. I would call everything Hillary.”
All of the Conway children have been brought up to be “free thinkers,” their mother said. “They will ask questions. They will push back.”
She added that raising Ms. Conway and her siblings has underscored the importance of listening and “making sure they feel heard and respected, and understood.”
Ms. Conway seemingly sees the virtue in that, too. While she will “never understand the Trump administration and the appeal of working for the Trump administration,” she said, she understands that her mother “thought she was doing a good thing by serving her country.”
“We all choose different paths and live different lives,” Ms. Conway added. “She’s a very accomplished woman.”
As for her path, Ms. Conway, who has plans to start a podcast, admitted she is still very much charting it.
“I overcame all of these headlines,” she said. “I overcame this crazy childhood that I had. I overcame trouble in the home, and all of these things. I overcame it all. And I’m still overcoming it.”
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