The most expensive primary race in America concluded this week in New York’s 16th Congressional District with Westchester County Executive George Latimer defeating incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman. The narrative found in mainstream and social media would have one believe that Republican billionaires funded a random White racist to defeat a popular Black politician who had the nerve to combat the Democratic establishment’s backing of Israel in its war against Hamas.

That is a complete fiction. The reality is that:

• Bowman was a very flawed extremist politician
• Bowman cared little for the vast majority of his district and he was quite unpopular amongst his constituents
• Latimer is a very well-known and liked progressive politician in the majority of the district
• Latimer likely would have won with a fraction of the spending
• Mainstream and social media picked up far-left talking points tainted with antisemitic dog whistles, rather than focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates

The race is unpacked here, as some of the lessons relate to other races featuring members of the squad as well as the deeply flawed Vice President Kamala Harris.

NY’s 16th Congressional District

Bowman won his NY16 seat in 2020 when the district’s boundaries covered northern Bronx and some of southern Westchester County. When congressional district lines were redrawn in 2022 after the 2020 Census, NY16 was almost completely lower Westchester with a small nub of the Bronx.

In 2020, a good potion of lower Westchester was located in NY17, which voted for another Black progressive politician, Mondaire Jones. However, when the lines were redrawn in 2022, Jones opted to run for congress in Manhattan and left Bowman to run in NY16 with the expanded lower Westchester in the district.

Many people in the 16th district wanted to oust Bowman in 2022 for a range of actions and statements including voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, calling for defunding the police, his stated aims for destroying capitalism and abolishing the immigration center. At that time, some Jews in the district asked AIPAC to get involved in the primary but the pro-Israel group refused because two contenders were already facing Bowman, Catherine Parker and Vedat Gashi. As predicated, those two ended up dividing the anti-Bowman votes, and Bowman sailed to an easy primary victory with only 20,000 votes. After the primary, in September 2022, AIPAC suggested to people in NY16 that it find a single popular candidate early who would clear the field of other Democratic politicians in the next election, which they did as described below in early 2023.

In 2024, the district lines were redrawn slightly, with Co-op City swapped in for the Wakefield section of the Bronx. With the adjustment, there were roughly 252,600 voters in the district of which 41.7% were White, 26.9% Hispanic, 21.3% Black and 6.6% Asian. Jewish groups estimated that the Jewish voting age population in the district was about 25,800, or about 10.2% of the total voter universe.

Latimer won the primary with about a 17 point spread, or 13,300 votes, on the strength of his turnout in Westchester where he secured 64% of the votes. Bowman did well in Co-op City, but with a relatively small number of voters.

Jewish voters made a difference.

The Jewish Vote

Westchester Unites, a division of the Orthodox Union assembled to get out the vote effort under a tagline “Antisemitism is on the ballot.” The group stated that it brought 14,871 Jewish voters to the polls (as of 7:30pm on election night), presumably almost all of which voted for Latimer, a sum which exceeded the margin of victory. Remarkably, that figure is 57.7% of the eligible Jewish voters in the district, an incredible figure for a primary. The number also doesn’t include many of the non-Orthodox and non-affiliated Jews in the district which did not want to be part of the WU effort.

With more mail-in votes being collected in the days post-election, it is fair to estimate that Jews made up as much as one-third of Latimer’s votes.

The incredibly high rate of Jewish voters participating in a primary could not have been achieved solely with WU or AIPAC backing. Jews inside the district had been preparing for this primary battle for over two years.

The Orthodox community was particularly strong in rallying for Latimer. Estimates are that roughly 2,000 people in NY16 changed their party affiliation from Independent or Republican to Democrat to vote in the 2024 primary. Additionally, WU estimates that over 80% of the Orthodox eligible voters participated in the election, a much higher figure than for non-Orthodox.

The question is why Jews in Westchester, which had voted for Mondaire Jones, a Black progressive politician in 2020, turned on another Black progressive in Bowman a short time later, and why Jones himself opted to endorse Latimer over Bowman.

Bowman, Prioritized Blacks And Absent On Antisemitism

The press will say that Jews were offended by Bowman’s pro-Palestinian positions but while true, it misses the mark. Bowman was absent on antisemitism while he served only his preferred base of constituents in his district, the Black and Brown communities.

Consider when antisemitic graffiti was painted on Jewish stores in Scarsdale, NY in January 2024. Bowman did not show up to address the Jewish crowd even though Latimer did. It is not as though Bowman didn’t think “Genocide supporters” painted on Jewish stores wasn’t antisemitic; he condemned such graffiti when it was painted on fellow Democratic congressman Dan Goldman’s office in November 2023.

Instead, Bowman came to White Plains on the day he condemned antisemitic vandalism at Goldman’s office, and told a crowd that Israelis are lying that Palestinian Arabs raped and sexually abused women as a matter of “propaganda.” For some reason, Bowman believes it’s progressive to “believe women” as long as they aren’t Jewish, and to decry antisemitism against colleagues but not constituents.

Beyond ignoring Jews and Jew-hatred, Bowman stressed the Black and Brown communities.

When Bowman discussed student debt, he didn’t discuss it for all his constituents but focused on the Black and Brown communities. Repeatedly.

Similarly when Bowman discussed poor young people in his district, he focused on “Black and Brown kids,” downplaying poor Whites and Asians.

Bowman believes that “his” community is the Black community, which is not a problematic position for an individual, but deeply troubling for a politician when they ignore everyone else.

Bowman established a reputation for not serving all of his constituents during his two terms. He was noticeably absent in Westchester while his challenger, George Latimer, had decades of serving every community in the county.

Latimer secured a complete sweep of Democratic endorsements in Westchester with the sole exception of New Rochelle. Bowman had endorsed that city’s new mayor Yarida Ramos-Herbert when she ran for office, but she did not return the favor as she saw the writing on the walls that Bowman was a flailing politician. New Rochelle opted to not endorse anyone.

Bowman as Outsider

Even though Bowman was the incumbent, he ran as an outsider without local support. He held fundraisers in California and Virginia with supporters of the Hamas terrorist group. He linked his campaign to Michigan Squad member Rashida Tlaib, four states away from his district. In 2023, he had less than 10% of his funds raised from inside the district, while Latimer had almost three-quarters from Westchester.

Bowman was so unaware of and unfamiliar with his constituents, that the day before the June 25 election, he held a rally in the South Bronx, miles away from his district, with politicians from outside the district like Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont. How asinine and emblematic of a failed candidate, unless Bowman had already conceded the race and was setting a stage to run in against Rep. Ritchie Torres (NY15) in two years.

It begs the question of how the narrative became so skewed. Jews in the district tried to get rid of Bowman well before the October 7th Hamas massacre. Latimer is a well-known progressive who was endorsed by Mondaire Jones, not some “random white dude.” All the Democratic committees in Westchester endorsed Latimer, not “far-right Republicans.” He got his money from inside the district while Bowman funded his campaign from outside.

Israel, AIPAC and October 7

Bowman was a poor politician who cared little for his non-minority constituents. His shenanigans of pulling fire alarms in congress made him the butt of jokes and censure in congress. His extremist rhetoric and craving of drama made him more like a 16-year old looking for likes on Tik Tok than a serious politician.

He was an easy target for any challenger.

While Latimer was initially approached to run for congress in April 2023, he didn’t formally announce until December as he canvassed the political landscape of the district measuring support. His timing of joining the race after a visit to Israel in November made it appear that he was coming after Bowman because of the congressman’s anti-Israel positions after October 7.

Bowman’s backers in the extreme far-left group Justice Democrats saw the antisemitic protests on American streets and leaned in. It launched a “Reject AIPAC” campaign, making the group appear nefarious, trying to serve as a red herring so people would forget Bowman’s ineptitude and make the primary race about the Israel-Hamas war.

Bowman loved the narrative, and used antisemitic language that AIPAC was “dark money” and were a bunch of “baby killers” in lines lifted from medieval blood libels (see concession speech 3:00 as an example).

AIPAC became Bowman’s boogeyman. In Bowman’s concession speech (9:28) he said “We should be outraged when a super-PAC of dark money can spend $20 million to brainwash people about things about me that aren’t true. You should be outraged when unfortunately, some so-called Democrats are aligning themselves with radical racist right-wing Republicans.” It was an echo of fellow squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments that “Israel has hypnotized the world – may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”

Of course, every one of AIPAC’s comments about Bowman was true; he had long proven himself to be unfit for office. In facing a well-known popular progressive politician in Latimer, Bowman knew he was doomed and decided to reframe the discussion away from his incompetence to declare himself a martyr for minorities.

Bowman’s left-wing allies under the Justice Democrats umbrella took to the airwaves and declared AIPAC to be enemy number one for coming after Bowman. They slandered the group repeatedly at rallies, in interviews and on social media, in a fictitious narrative that rich racist Jews were coming after a poor Black man.

And the press bought the bait-and-switch.

The Press Ignored Bowman’s Incompetence

The press went out of its way to absolve Bowman for his years of incompetence.

The Associated Press said that Bowman had “stumbles” portraying his actions as accidental, such as pulling the fire alarm, even though videos show that he did it on purpose.

The New York Times referred to Bowman’s “clumsy and sometimes inflammatory comments about Oct. 7,” making it sound that Bowman’s intentions were noble but poorly phrased, when in fact, his comments were deliberate and abhorrent.

A Times opinion piece discussed Bowman’s vicious actions as mere “unforced errors.”

So when the polls closed on June 25, and the obvious became public, The New York Times didn’t talk about the censured eak politician who never got to know his constituents, and instead blamed Bowman’s demise on a “flood of pro-Israel money.”

As did the BBC and other outlets.

The Jewish Vote Broadly

American Jews generally do not vote in a block. Orthodox Jews tend to vote more conservatively while non-Orthodox denominations are typically liberal. Some are pro-Israel and some are anti-Zionist.

But there are moments in time and there are politicians who can galvanize this minority-minority into a voting force.

The scale and barbarity of the October 7 Palestinian Arab attack against civilians in Israel shook global Jewry to its core. The depraved reactions of Americans showing support for the atrocities and the spike in antisemitic attacks made Jews suddenly wary of their neighbors. Even liberal Jews who had formed intersectional alliances with far-left and Muslim groups recoiled to their thin shell and made statements that things had become so bad in America that it was time to prioritize Jews and Israel in absolutely everything.

As the bad news kept coming, many woke liberals needed to turn away to protect themselves and their families. Repeated appalling comments by Jamaal Bowman made J Street rescind its endorsement in January 2024, an action it had never previously done.

And NY’s 16th district was J Street country. Non-Orthodox rabbis in the community were on the rabbinic board as well as other left-wing groups like the New Israel Fund. If Bowman could offend people who spent a lifetime looking away from anti-Zionist comments, he had lost the whole community.

Bowman was so far in the extreme, that only radical fringe anti-Zionist groups like Bend the Arc and If Not Now continued to support him through the primary season.

Ramifications For Other Members of the Squad, Kamala Harris

Bowman was deeply unpopular – not only among Jews – and he would likely have lost an online poll of the 252,000 potential voters in the district by a wide margin. All that AIPAC’s money did – much sourced from inside the district – was help get out the vote; it likely changed few opinions.

The far-left’s vilification of AIPAC is both a red herring to distract from unpopular policies like a broad redistribution of wealth and power, as well as an antisemitic dog whistle to cement the jihadi-socialist alliance.

Bowman suffered from three critical matters: 1) he was broadly unpopular in the district; 2) he was up against a single well-known and liked challenger; and 3) there were enough Jews in the district to make a difference in the vote.

As people consider Cori Bush (D-MO1), a voting clone to Bowman, in her fight with Wesley Bell, those are critical factors to evaluate, even more than the amount of money spent by AIPAC to get out the vote. Similarly, as Democrats ponder a possible replacement for President Biden, they must consider the far left extremist policies of VP Kamala Harris when she was a senator, and her terrible polling numbers.

Jews know that extremism, whether from the left or right, is dangerous for their very beings. They see it has found a home in the diaspora and the media is loathe to call it out, instead choosing the lazy approach of parroting the antisemitic propaganda.

While AIPAC did spend millions of dollars on the Latimer-Bowman race, those who frame the primary as powerful Jewish billionaires trying to silence a poor Black man – which is the precise language of Justice Democrats – are engaging in vile antisemitism, in an attempt to dress up their policies as just and popular. Their use of Jew-hatred as a political tool should make clear that they are deeply anti-American, and should be shunned in society.

ACTION ITEM

In MO-1, extremist Rep. Cori Bush is being challenged by public defender Wesley Bell. Donate to Bell here.

Related Articles:

“The Squad” Starts To Eat Its Own (June 2024)

Latimer-Bowman Contest Is About Redistricting, Not October 7 (May 2024)

Jamaal Bowman Is The Complete Package No One Wants (April 2024)

AIPAC’s Open Tent Versus Justice Democrats Niche Extremism (April 2024)

The Alt-Left And Radical Muslims On The New ‘Rothschilds’: AIPAC and Jared Kushner (April 2024)

Jamaal Bowman’s “Good Trouble” Is All Out War With Zionists In Israel and America (January 2024)

An Open Letter To Progressive Diaspora Jews (October 2023)

As Democrats Become More Liberal And Anti-Israel, DMFI Sticks Fingers In The Dike (July 2022)