The Squad vs AIPAC: Gaza war hangs over New York Democratic primary

It was Thursday afternoon, five days before the election, and at the height of a New York heatwave. Still, Gail and Barry Mahler, two 75-year-old residents of New Rochelle, New York, walked into a local church to cast their ballots in a Democratic primary that typically passes with little fanfare.

The Mahlers are Orthodox Jews, devoted supporters of Israel, and determined to oust their incumbent congressman, Jamaal Bowman.

“You mention Jamaal Bowman and everyone rolls their eyes,” said Barry.

“In our synagogue, there’s no debate,” Gail agreed. “It’s Latimer.” 

She was referring to George Latimer, the Democratic county executive trying to unseat Bowman in a primary contest that has become a national showdown between the party’s warring progressive and centrist factions. Israel, and its war in Gaza, is the dividing line.

In a sign of the race’s importance, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the stars of the Democrats’ socialist wing, campaigned with Bowman on Saturday in a district that includes many of the Westchester suburbs north of New York City and a patch of the Bronx.

In turn, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group, has poured $15mn — and counting — into the race, saturating the airwaves with anti-Bowman advertisements and making this the most expensive congressional primary in the party’s history.

Bowman’s defeat would be the first for a member of “the Squad”, the clique of leftwing Democrats who emerged to challenge the party establishment when Ocasio-Cortez pulled off a stunning defeat of a powerful incumbent in a neighbouring district in 2018. 

“If it happens it will send shockwaves through the system,” said Jake Dilemani, a political consultant who has advised Jewish groups. “It will embolden other efforts to kill [leftwing] candidates.”

Progressives, in turn, have sought to frame the contest as less about ideology or Israel than the deployment of vast sums of money to tilt elections.

“They have opened the floodgates to Republican donors,” said Usamah Andrabi of the Justice Democrats, an early supporter of Bowman. “This race has turned into a fight for the future of the Democratic party, and the future of democracy.”

Bowman, 47, a Black former middle-school principal who was raised by a single mother, lives in Yonkers, one of the working-class cities in a district that features suburbs that are among the nation’s wealthiest. He electrified progressive Democrats four years ago when he knocked off a 16-term incumbent, Eliot Engel, who chaired the House foreign affairs committee and was for decades a solid supporter of Israel.

Bowman supports raising taxes on the wealthy, defunding the police and paying $14tn in restitutions to Black Americans, among other progressive policies. His campaign for social justice resonated at a moment when even tony Westchester was convulsed by the police murder of George Floyd. Two years later he trounced two challengers in the Democratic primary and easily won re-election.

In Latimer, 70, he faces an opponent whose lack of sizzle is offset by an encyclopedic knowledge of the district. He was born in Mount Vernon, a working-class Irish and Italian enclave that is now largely Black and Hispanic. He has served in various levels of state and local government since 1987 and has won the backing of Hillary Clinton.

Latimer has portrayed Bowman as wedded to social media while ignoring the mundane work of governing. On Israel, he has largely deferred to President Joe Biden.

In an odd dynamic, the advertising blitz unleashed by Jewish donors on his behalf has focused not on Israel policy but domestic issues, such as Bowman’s vote against Biden’s infrastructure bill. 

There are those like Amy Siskind, a former banker-turned political activist, who complain that Bowman has been out of step with the district, focusing exclusively on its poorer, minority communities and staging social media confrontations at the Capitol with Maga stars such as Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“Our district is very Democratic, but we’re a moderate Democratic district,” Siskind said, speculating that Engel “would not have lost in a normal election year”. 

Still, Bowman appeared to be on course for another term until Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel — and his response to it — scrambled the race. The congressman distinguished himself as one of only nine Democrats to vote against a resolution condemning Hamas and pledging support for Israel.

The resolution, he said, was problematic because it did not mention “the pain and suffering in Gaza”. Bowman also doubted claims by Israeli women that they had been sexually abused by their captors — although he has since recanted.

In November, Bowman held a “healing breakfast” to try to repair relations with Jewish constituents. But some were unwilling to forgive him for challenging Engel in the first place, according to the Bowman camp. 

Others felt that Bowman had ignored them for too long. They complained that even before October 7 the congressman had been turning hostile towards Israel. To the Mahlers’ dismay, for example, Bowman boycotted an address to Congress last July by Israel’s centrist president, Isaac Herzog. His calls for an immediate ceasefire after October 7 felt to them more like support for Hamas, a Palestinian group that the US has designated a terrorist organisation.

In January, even J Street, a progressive pro-Israel lobby group founded in opposition to AIPAC, withdrew its endorsement of Bowman. J Street appeals to a younger generation of American Jews who, polls show, are far more critical of Israel than their parents.

In a statement, though, its president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said it had been pleased to work with Bowman “to promote a shared set of values and principles rooted in the pursuit of justice” but that recent months had “highlighted significant differences between us”.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Westchester, Jewish activists have worked to re-register more than 2,000 Republican and Independent voters as Democrats so they can participate in a primary that will almost certainly determine the eventual winner. (The last time a Republican represented the 16th district was in 1949).

“This is the first election since October 7 where people feel like there’s something they can do. There’s urgency,” said Sydney Altfield, who has been organising Jewish voters from the makeshift office of Westchester Unites on a strip of shops in New Rochelle. Their motto: Don’t Kvetch. Vote. 

On a recent afternoon, a dozen or so workers were crammed into the small office with a dingy carpet, working the phones as they tried to make contact with the district’s 26,000 likely Jewish voters — about 9 per cent of the district’s total electorate. Coloured cards plastered to the wall denoted the area’s synagogues and Jewish community centres. Each has a designated captain who commands a team of organisers.

“This is existential for our community,” one Jewish voter said, citing not only the war in Israel but also rising antisemitism at home.  

Even as polls have shown him fading, Bowman has remained defiant. At a final debate last week, for example, he said the US should not be sending any more weapons to Israel. He accused billionaires of recruiting Latimer to run against him “because I’m fighting against the genocide in Gaza and I’m speaking up for Black and Brown people here”.

In private, some Bowman allies despair that the candidate cannot seem to restrain himself. He could amply criticise the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu without “poking the bear”, as one put it, by referring to Israel as a “settler-colonialist” state.

Other progressives have shown more finesse. In April, Summer Lee, a progressive in Pennsylvania, beat a challenger who was backed by pro-Israel groups. Missouri’s Cori Bush, another Squad member, faces a similar challenge in August.

“He’s willing to call a spade a spade,” Andrabi said of Bowman, “even if it’s going to cost him politically”.