Showdown in New York: the most expensive primary in history

The New York primary may come to be seen as a key tipping point for the Democratic Party, said Li Zhou on Vox. Last week, Jamaal Bowman, a member of the ultra-progressive faction in Congress known as “the Squad”, and a fierce critic of Israel, lost the race to George Latimer – a pro-Israel moderate. 

It was a contest that highlighted stark divisions among Democrats over the war in Gaza. Bowman had received strong support from fellow squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and from the veteran senator Bernie Sanders, who called the primary “one of the most important elections in the modern history of this country”. While some might challenge Sanders over that claim, what is certainly true is that it was the most expensive congressional primary in history. The American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) funnelled some $15 million into the campaign. 

The “obscene sums” spent on defeating Bowman will “serve as a warning to other politicians about the cost of breaking with Washington’s pro-Israeli political consensus”, said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. In one sense, his defeat is not surprising. The district, comprising a slice of the Bronx and parts of suburban Westchester County, is heavily Jewish. And Bowman has been “reckless” in his language about Gaza. He has “fallen into the left-wing habit of using ‘Zionist’ as an insult”, and he stupidly dismissed reports of Israeli women being raped during Hamas’s 7 October raid on Israel as a “lie” used for “propaganda”. (He later apologised.) Nevertheless, it will be a shame if his defeat stops Democrats voicing legitimate qualms about the Gaza conflict. And the race has set a worrying precedent for “big money interference in local politics”. 

It suits Bowman and his supporters to blame his loss on AIPAC money, said Liz Wolfe in Reason, but it’s not that simple. His strident criticism of Israel certainly “didn’t play well”, and nor did his “far-left progressivism”, following a spike in street crime. Bowman is the Democratic version of his fellow New York demagogue Donald Trump, said Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. Like Trump, he has a history of foul-mouthed public rants, of “playing the martyr” and peddling conspiracy theories (such as that 9/11 was an inside job). But while the Republicans have embraced Trump, the Democrats have tired of Bowman’s act and now given him the boot. “Good riddance.”