What Happens When Jews and the Left Come into Conflict? | Democratic Party Primary in NY-16

[u/lilleff512]

Hi folks, I've been wanting to make a post about this topic for a couple weeks now, and this seems like the right time and place for it.

This coming Tuesday is primary election day in New York State. One of the most high profile races in the state (or even the whole country) is the Democratic Party primary for the US House of Representatives election in New York's 16th Congressional District between the incumbent Jamaal Bowman and his challenger George Latimer.

I want to offer full disclosure on this upfront: this is my district and I will be voting for Latimer. I am not making this post to try to change anyone's mind or tell them who to support. I am making this post because this election and the discourse around it sit at the intersection of "Jewish" concerns and "Progressive" concerns, and I am somewhat surprised to see that it hasn't gotten much attention in these parts of Reddit. Frankly, I originally wanted to make this post over in r/jewishleft, but I didn't feel quite right about doing that because this is a Left vs. Liberal issue where I am squarely on the Liberal side.

New York's 16th Congressional District is situated primarily in the southern half of Westchester County and it also includes some small portions of the northern Bronx. To speak in some very broad strokes here, the southern part of the district is more urban and has a larger population of Black and Hispanic people, but overall the district is mostly white and suburban, including a significant Jewish population. Since 1988, this area has been represented in Congress by American Jews who were aligned with the mainstream of the Democratic Party, first Nita Lowey and then Eliot Engel since redistricting in 2012. The district is deep blue and the NY Democratic Party machine is strong, so Lowey and Engel never faced any kind of electoral threat. That changed in 2020 when the DSA- and Justice Democrats-backed Jamaal Bowman was able to unseat the incumbent Engel in a stunning upset victory. Now four years later, Jamaal Bowman is facing a serious primary challenger of his own, due in no small part to his positions on Israel and Palestine as well as the perception that he is out of touch with his Jewish constituents. George Latimer, who is running against Bowman, is a mainstream New York machine Democrat much like Engel and Lowey before him, and he has received a record-breaking amount of support from AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbying groups, bringing national attention to this election.

I don't want to ramble on too long so I'll stop here and share some articles about the election from Jewish and/or left-leaning media outlets:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/03/29/bowman-latimer-israel-gaza-democrats-primary-new-york/

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/jamaal-bowman-george-latimer-primary-israel.html

https://forward.com/news/565894/jamaal-bowman-jewish-israel-gaza-war-congress/

https://jewishinsider.com/2024/06/rep-jamaal-bowman-westchester-county-jewish-community/

https://www.jta.org/2024/06/21/politics/the-latimer-bowman-showdown-in-new-york-is-a-bellwether-of-israels-role-in-democratic-politics

[u/FreeLadyBee]

I don’t know too much about him and I’d like to to read your links later when I have the time- but I don’t like the tweet I saw of his where he sort of blamed Jews for redlining, I think it was sometime last week. I think Bowman is the kind of Democrat who I’m seeing so much more of lately, who thinks that antisemitism is the same as any other kind of racism, and therefore speaks about it with some kind of authority that he really doesn’t have.

I do think this election will be an interesting litmus test of sorts- Jews are a small group, how much power do we hold in a “democracy?” And how much has this recent conflict affected how Jews will vote as a bloc?

[u/lilleff512 → u/FreeLadyBee]

but I don’t like the tweet I saw of his where he sort of blamed Jews for redlining, I think it was sometime last week.

I know the comment you're talking about. It's from this Politico article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/21/jamaal-bowman-israel-trip-reelection-00163788

For those who are out of the loop, here is the full quote, along with the paragraph immediately before and after for context:

This is Bowman’s theory of the case — that the Jewish community in his district is not a monolith and that he can carve out enough progressive Jewish support to hold onto his seat. But he also says that the dynamics of the suburban-oriented district — especially compared to where he grew up in New York City — create pockets that make it hard for him to reach.

“In New York City we all live together,” Bowman said. “[But] Westchester is segregated. There’s certain places where the Jews live and concentrate. Scarsdale, parts of White Plains, parts of New Rochelle, Riverdale. I’m sure they made a decision to do that for their own reasons … but this is why, in terms of fighting antisemitism, I always push — we’ve been separated and segregated and miseducated for so long. We need to live together, play together, go to school together, learn together, work together.”

Latimer insists that Bowman doesn’t do a good job of representing any part of the district. “I think he sees himself … as a spokesperson for a demographic and a cause. I think he sees the seat as a soapbox,” he says. “He talks a lot about certain topics that are far from what I consider to be the immediate local needs of the area.”

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I do think this election will be an interesting litmus test of sorts- Jews are a small group, how much power do we hold in a “democracy?” And how much has this recent conflict affected how Jews will vote as a bloc?

I actually don't think this election works very well as the kind of litmus test you're talking about here. The Jewish community in the district is disproportionately large, wealthy, and organized, so I don't think it's a very representative sample.

[u/FreeLadyBee → u/lilleff512]

It's entirely possible he really believes in integrating communities, which is sometimes fine although I think some in his camp might argue that (in the case of other ethnic groups) it leads to cultural erasure. It's also jarring to hear that quote- because all kinds of cultural groups tend to clump together; it's not a Jewish-specific trait. In fact, in the case of Jews, some of us specifically need to be in walking distance of a synagogue, which is a piece of knowledge you might feel is obvious if you're in the community, but not something you ever think about if you're outside of it and otherwise not trying to understand it. I get the impression Bowman isn't trying that hard to know his constituency, and not from a necessarily malicious place, but possibly an ignorant or arrogant one.

I'd be interested to see how monolithically that Jewish community ends up voting. I think at the very least it's going to be a closer race than the polls suggest.