Why I Hope Jamaal Bowman Loses
And it has very little to do with Israel and everything to do with Jewish Democrats.
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Tomorrow is primary election day in New York State, and nowhere has there been a more contested Democratic primary than in New York’s 16th Congressional District, where incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman is facing off against Westchester County Executive George Latimer.
The race is now the most expensive primary in congressional history. That is largely because the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC has pumped more than $14 million into the race to unseat Bowman, who has taken a host of anti-Israel positions since October 7.
In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s terror attack on October 7, Bowman called for a cease-fire in Gaza and joined other left-wing Democrats in voting against a nonbinding resolution condemning Hamas’s actions. He even called claims of sexual assault unsubstantiated “propaganda.” (Bowman reversed that position … five months later). Moreover, he has regularly labeled Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” and has surrounded himself with critics of Israel, whose rhetoric has veered into anti-Semitism. Bowman has so upset the Jewish community that even J Street, which supported him in 2020 and is a left-of-center pro-Israel group, refused to endorse him this year.
While I vehemently disagree with Bowman’s views about Israel and the war in Gaza, it’s not the reason I hope he loses his primary fight to Latimer. Instead, a Bowman victory would send a terrible signal to Jewish Democrats that the progressive movement simply doesn’t care about them. It would serve as an endorsement of Bowman’s dismissive and even hostile attitude toward his Jewish constituents.
While AIPAC’s intervention in the Bowman/Latimer has received the lion’s share of media attention — and Bowman is using the pro-Israel group as a punching bag to rally progressive voters — Bowman upset his Jewish constituents long before AIPAC got involved in the race,
As Daniel Marans points out in an excellent deep dive on the race, Bowman's fraught relationship with the Jewish community pre-dated October 7. His decision not to attend Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s speech to Congress in July 2023 upset many of his constituents — as did his vote the same month against a House resolution that said Israel isn’t a racist or apartheid state. But it was also the basic stuff that Bowman got wrong. Marans quotes a local resident, Danielle Tagger-Epstein, “chair of the Rye City Democratic Committee and a Bowman donor as recently as January 2023,” and her frustration with his “failure to follow through on her efforts to arrange conversations with her rabbi and other Jewish friends.” I’ve heard this anecdotally from others as well: that Bowman blew off the Jewish community in his district.
Indeed, when Bowman first ran for re-election in 2022, he won only 54 percent of the vote in a contested Democratic primary. That was a clear indication that he had rubbed many of his constituents the wrong way in just under two years in office.
According to Latimer’s internal polling, he was leading Bowman by 10 points in January — and voters had a more favorable view of him than the incumbent. That was well before AIPAC and others started pumping money into the district.
Of course, Bowman’s constituents are not all Jewish. There are about 130,000 Jewish residents in Westchester County, which comprises much of the 16th District. That’s about 10 percent of the population, although one might imagine that in a Democratic primary, the percentage of Jewish voters is likely a bit larger.
But Bowman has also engaged in other stunts that alienated his non-Jewish and Jewish constituents, like voting against President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill and infamously pulling a fire alarm in Congress (many of the TV ads in the district have focused on Bowman’s no vote on the infrastructure bill).
But after 10/7, Bowman seemingly went out of his way to make matters worse - taking a hard left stance on the war in Gaza, jumping into the bed with anti-Zionist Jews, and ignoring much of his Jewish constituent base. He was a no-show at community vigils for those killed and taken hostage on October 7, even as Marans points out, “he made impassioned appearances at pro-Palestine rallies.”
As Micah Sifry, a Westchester County resident who has written frequently about the race, the Jewish opposition to Bowman was not driven by outsiders but rather was an organic response to his actions and statements.
Back in mid-October 2023, when 26 local rabbis from across the denominational spectrum of American Judaism wrote privately to county executive Latimer begging him to primary Bowman, they opened their letter with these words: “For over three decades, our community was represented in Congress by a Democratic champion who consistently delivered for the people of Westchester and represented our core values in Washington, especially in unwavering support for Israel’s safety and security.” [Emphasis added.] The champion they were referring to was, of course, Eliot Engel, whose longevity in Congress was rewarded in 2018 by his elevation to the chairmanship of the powerful House Foreign Affairs committee. The rabbis letter went on to argue that Bowman “brought a deeply concerning agenda to Washington,” “disregarded” their attempts to engage him and instead “doubled down on his anti-Israel policy positions and messaging.” They concluded, “your election would be a vital course correction from the last three years.”
Quite simply, the vast majority of American Jews support Israel and were angry and disconsolate after October 7 — and Bowman didn’t seem to care.
What comes across in much of the reporting on this race is that Bowman adopted the views of a shrill but tiny minority and treated the majority of his Jewish constituents with massive disrespect.
To be clear, if Bowman wants to take an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian stance about the war in Gaza, that is certainly his right. But to do so in such open disregard to the views of his constituents — and in a way that profoundly alienates them — is both politically stupid and deeply insensitive. Quite honestly, it’s hard to imagine a progressive lawmaker taking such a position toward any other minority group that lives in their district.
In continuing to call for a cease-fire and in regularly and persistently bashing AIPAC and accusing the group of trying to “buy democracy” from 16th District voters, Bowman is not trying to mend fences but rather burn them down.
It’s no wonder AIPAC has put a target on Bowman’s back. In Westchester County, they were pushing against an open door. Ironically, by focusing so many of his attacks on AIPAC, Bowman has handed the pro-Israel lobby group a huge victory. I strongly suspect that AIPAC jumped into this race with both feet because Bowman was clearly in political trouble, and they could claim it was because of them if he was defeated.
But if Bowman loses — and I expect he will — it will not be because of AIPAC. As Sifry notes, “When the post-mortems on this primary are written, I hope progressives in particular don’t simply say, what did you expect, AIPAC bought this seat in order to prove, like the NRA, that members of Congress who cross its line will be decimated. That would be oversimplifying the picture. Choices Bowman made on how to conduct himself the last three years also made the conditions for a challenger like Latimer especially propitious. And here we are.”
Again, while I disagree with Bowman’s position on Israel, the man is entitled to his views. But he represents a large Jewish community and, throughout his tenure in Congress, has largely ignored their concerns and, since October 7, their trauma. But this race is about more than Jamaal Bowman.
Since October 7, many in the progressive movement have openly trafficked in anti-Semitic language and virulently attacked Israel. Even worse, many liberals have shown a disinclination to speak about against this rising tide of anti-Jewish hate. For those of you who aren’t Jewish, talk to your Jewish friends. There is a palpable sense of anger and betrayal in the Jewish community that, after years of advocating for vulnerable minority groups, Jews are being abandoned.
A Bowman primary victory would confirm this view and send a terrible signal that in the modern Democratic Party, Jewish concerns simply don’t rate. It would suggest that Democrats, who usually take very seriously the issues facing minority communities, don’t feel the same about Jews.
That’s why I hope Jamaal Bowman loses.
What’s Going On
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This is a excellent piece in the Columbia Spectator about the connection between Jewish identity and Zionism.
Musical Interlude
Thank you, Michael. I have heard too much cheering for the events of October 7. American Jews are being threatened and harassed even though they aren't part of the Israeli government or have anything to do with the fighting. Should we harass Americans of Russian descent because we object to Putin's destruction of Ukraine?
I'm no fan of AIPAC at all but invoking it in a knee-jerk fashion gives me awful flashbacks to our own Democratic congressional primaries in 2021 and 2022 when Nina Turner blamed it for her own incendiary language, long before October 7 of last year. Our district (OH-11) has a large Jewish population as well, including one of the largest Orthodox populations between New York and Chicago, and Nina chose to blame "outside money" for her loss instead of her big mouth unattached to a discerning mind. I saw with my own eyes at the July 4 parade through the Orthodox neighborhood how they greeted Shontel Brown enthusiastically; AIPAC didn't order them to do so. BTW Shontel is currently ranked more progressive than Jamal Bowman .