In what counts as a seismic moment in the battle between progressives and centrists in the Democratic Party, NBC News projects Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., has lost the Democratic primary in New York’s 16th Congressional District to his centrist challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer.
In 2020 Bowman ousted 16-term Rep. Eliot Engel in the Democratic primary in the same district by running on issues that included the Green New Deal and “Medicare for All.” Bowman’s loss to Latimer marks the inversion of his victory — a symbol of a resurgent establishment in New York Democratic politics and the revelation that the left-wing group of Democrats known as “the squad” has its own vulnerabilities on the issue of Israel policy. And while Bowman was far from a perfect politician, it’s a shame he’s been ousted over an issue on which, in the main, he’s on the right side of things.
Bowman’s ouster is the first electoral loss for the squad since it emerged in 2018.
Bowman’s ouster is the first electoral loss for the squad since it emerged in 2018 with the elections of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Bowman was elected in that second, 2020 wave. His toppling of an establishment stalwart two years after Ocasio-Cortez had done the same to then-Rep. Joe Crowley suggested the first wave wasn’t a fluke. It signaled that lefty challengers could even take aim at powerful establishment Dems. Since then, the squad has grown.
The squad accomplished something that had previously seemed impossible: Candidates who declared themselves democratic socialists or stridently agitated for social democratic policies such as Medicare for All didn’t just run viable challenges against Democratic establishment politicians; they beat them by mobilizing progressives. (Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont opened up this world of possibility when he ran his surprisingly popular presidential campaign in 2016.) Elected members of the squad had also been able to survive primary challenges from establishment Democrats — until Tuesday night.
One of the main reasons Bowman lost was his positioning on Israel policy after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. He emerged swiftly as a prominent advocate for a cease-fire, voted against military aid to Israel and characterized Israel’s military operation as “genocide.” Bowman is deeply progressive across the board on most issues, so his disapproval of funding Israel’s brutal military operation wasn’t surprising. But he has also cited a visit to the West Bank in 2021 and witnessing the oppression of Palestinians firsthand as a “transformational moment” in his understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pro-Israel leaders recruited Latimer, who has been in New York politics for decades, to challenge Bowman and showered Latimer with cash.
Bowman’s Israel positions put him at odds with many of his constituents, and it seems he could’ve done more to win them back. His district, which includes parts of the Bronx and Westchester County, includes a large Jewish community, a significant contingent of which opposed Bowman’s positions on Israel. Some recent polling indicates that a plurality of voters preferred Latimer’s staunchly pro-Israel positions over Bowman’s. Bowman also at one point denied reports that Hamas committed acts of sexual violence on Oct. 7 — although fortunately he later walked that back and eventually apologized.
Bowman at times engages in a level of bluster that I don’t particularly care for, and he may have overestimated the efficacy of always going on the attack and underestimated what he needed to do to shore up his weaknesses. Bowman also seemed to neglect opportunities to try to build ties with the Jewish community in his district after Oct. 7 that wouldn’t have required changing his positions on Israel policy. A more skilled lawmaker would have done more work to build trust with his diverse community at a time of exceptionally heightened emotions and rising bigotry against Jewish and Arab communities.
It’s not unusual for politicians to take positions that many of their constituents fiercely oppose. But pro-Israel groups exploited Bowman’s vulnerability and targeted him with an unprecedented lobbying effort to take him down. Among other groups, a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee poured a jaw-dropping $14.5 million into the race to take down Bowman. "This race offers an unambiguous choice," an AIPAC spokesman told The New York Times. "George Latimer is a progressive, pro-Israel candidate while Jamaal Bowman has refused to support the Jewish state as it fights a moral and just war against Iranian terrorist proxies."
The result has been the most expensive primary race in modern American history, according to AdImpact, a group that tracks political advertisements. With so much anti-Bowman advertising flooding his constituents’ homes, we don’t know how the race would have gone without that huge, unusual outside intervention. Notably, the AIPAC-affiliated advertising mostly didn’t focus explicitly on Bowman’s Israel positions but instead painted him as an anti-Biden renegade and someone who traffics in “controversy, chaos and conspiracy.” But a lot of news coverage and local organizing against Bowman did focus on his positions on Israel, and they were salient in Latimer’s criticisms of Bowman at debates.
AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups will most likely use this victory to put other Democratic lawmakers on notice and warn them to not criticize Israel too strongly. But the reality is that this is the first victory that the group has notched against the squad, and this race involved a distinctly vulnerable candidate and a strong challenger. There’s a growing number of Democratic lawmakers speaking out against the U.S.’s unconscionable backing of Israel’s indiscriminate military operation and starvation policy in Gaza. One hopes that they aren’t frightened out of taking the right position on standing in opposition to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.