REP. JAMAAL BOWMAN (L) AND CHALLENGER GEORGE LATIMER, WESTCHESTER COUNTY EXECUTIVE, FACE OFF IN DEBATE ON MAY 13, 2024. SCREENSHOT.
A new poll from Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill shows that New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman could be in trouble later this month.
The survey says his primary challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, currently holds a 17-point lead over Bowman with less than two weeks till the race in New York’s 16th district.
Bowman has been outspent by millions of dollars in this campaign, and the vast majority of that money has come from AIPAC. The lobbying group has made Bowman one of its major targets because of his consistent calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and his criticisms of Israel.
The $13 million that AIPAC has put down on the Bowman race is just a fraction of the more than $100 million it plans to spend on 2024 elections overall.
Mondoweiss spoke with political consultant Peter Feld on AIPAC’s strategy, the Bowman race, and whether Gaza will have an impact on Biden’s reelection.
We went into this election cycle knowing that AIPAC was going to spend more than $100 million on races. What have you thought about their efforts so far? Has anything stood out or surprised you?
I think you can contrast what they did two years ago with what they’re doing now.
Two years ago they really left The Squad alone and their main focus was to really rein in the liberal Zionists, like [Former Michigan Representative] Andy Levin. These are people who might, in a different universe, be okay to AIPAC and they would have left them alone, but I think that they were trying to show that any deviation wasn’t going to be tolerated. They leaned into the Andy Levin race and I think he was going to lose anyway. They were really able to put their efforts behind things that were already leaning their way.
This time around, I think it’s more grim if you support Palestine and it is more serious.
They didn’t go after [Pennsylvania Rep] Summer Lee. They’re not going after [Minnesota Rep. Ilhan] Omar or [Michigan Rep. Rashida] Tlaib. They’re not obviously going after AOC [New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], but they went after a number of races in progressive areas.
There were two races in Oregon where they officially stayed out, but they guided money into them through other groups and they were undefeated in those two races. Susheela Jayapal and Jamie McLeod-Skinner. Both lost primaries their primaries. McLeod-Skinner had won two years earlier. Jayapal was the favorite.
They won those races in liberal areas. So, their message is, “The Empire Strikes Back.”
So now they’re spending millions on the Jamal Bowman race in New York’s 16th district, and I think we’re going to expect the same thing in Missouri for Cori Bush’s primary in August. I think that they are picking bolder targets. They’re going after multiple members of The Squad.
I want to follow up on the Jayapal race. They spent all this money backing her opponent, Maxine Dexter, who has barely mentioned Israel on the campaign trail and seems to be halfway decent on the issue.
What’s the strategy when they back candidates that aren’t vocally pro-Israel? Is it more about simply stopping an Israel critic from winning or do they think they can endorse candidates who haven’t said much on issue and get them to come around?
I can’t really speak to Dexter’s potential evolution in Congress, but as far as the first part of your question goes, I would say yes, they’re much more interested in takedowns than they are in necessarily electing somebody who is super sympathetic.
Frankly, that’s good strategy that I think the pro-Palestine side needs to look at too. This idea of takedowns and putting the fear of defeat into politicians is gonna give you more bang for the buck than simply electing somebody that happens to agree with you. If you do elect somebody who happens to agree with you, that’s all the better.
I don’t know if Dexter is going become another [Senator John] Fetterman or any of the several other names that we can mention. I would say that I think [former New York Congress member and current candidate] Mondaire Jones is headed that way. It’s a different dynamic because he has no primary, but he seems to be positioning himself as one of these people like Fetterman or [New York Rep.] Richie Torres, who’s gonna be an active and vocal thorn in the side of the progressive left and the Palestine-supporting left. I don’t know for a fact that Dexter’s gonna head that way, but I would say her ads and her website wouldn’t give us necessarily a clue about that if she were.
Speaking of [former New York Rep.] Mondaire Jones, what did you make of his recent decision to break with Bowman and endorse George Latimer? What do you make of that race overall?
I think what Mondaire Jones did is probably more significant to him than it will be in Bowman’s district. I think the Bowman/Latimer race is really where the rubber is going to meet the road this year. I think Cori Bush will be too, particularly if Bowman doesn’t win, Bush is really going to be the last big all hands on deck battle, most likely. Although there are primaries in the fall, but Bowman and Bush are really the marquee races that AIPAC is after.
With Bowman I think they just see vulnerability. Frankly, Bowman won his last race, but he was running against divided opposition and he scored 54.4%. That’s a pretty good warning sign for an incumbent if you’re that close to 50. It wouldn’t take that many negatives to drive you under 50, which means that you’re losing a two-way race.
I think that’s what AIPAC, its PACs, and Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) sees, they see vulnerability. They also see the opportunity to really extend and evolve the playbook that they ran against Nina Turner during Ohio’s special election back in 2021. They focus on things that are not Israel.
They’re going into things like Bowman voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill. They’re running high-volume ads. I watched the news last night, and there were multiple ads within an hour for Latimer. There was one 15-second ad for Bowman. So you see the mismatch right away with the difference in spending. I think the number I last heard for the race is $13 million for Latimer and Bowman’s going to have $2 million. I’m not sure how much the outside groups that might come in on his behalf are going to spend, but maybe that’s included in the $2 million.
Right now the lobbying groups are running a message against Bowman that claims he’s against Biden, that he opposes Biden’s agenda and he’s hurting New York. One of the ads says he has repeatedly attacked Biden, which I don’t even think is true, but maybe they’re extrapolating that from Bowman’s criticisms of the assault on Gaza.
However, the ads are about progressives wanting to vote on the infrastructure bill and Build Back Better Act together.
Can you talk about that?
Back in 2021, there was a commitment by Biden and by [CA Rep. Nancy] Pelosi, and I think by [NY Sen. Chuck] Schumer. They had a trifecta. They had both chambers of Congress to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but only if it was tethered to the Build Back Better bill. The Build Back Better bill had all the social spending that was so important to a lot of constituencies that supported Biden in 2020.
Biden campaigned on all these things like the Child Tax Credit and Paid Family Leave. Through the fall there was a group of Democrats that were trying to sabotage that. Again, this has nothing to do with Israel or Palestine, but this push came from [NJ Rep.] Josh Gottheimer and this group, the Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress. There was a nine of them and they called themselves the Unbreakable Nine. They were backed by No Labels, which is a corporate-backed, supposedly centrist, but often right-leaning lobby.
These groups were really pushing hard to make sure that Build Back Better wouldn’t be included with the vote because there was all the climate legislation and all the the social spending in there. Those people ran a really hardline campaign to get those things stripped out.
Pelosi and Biden basically caved, then Bowman and other members of The Squad stood firm and said, “No, these two bills should be tethered to each other.”
That opened an angle for groups like AIPAC to attack him. They can claim he voted against President Biden’s bill to replace lead pipes, that he voted against Biden’s debt deal and put Social Security at risk. These are the kind of very hard-hitting attacks that Bowman’s getting right now as a result of this drama that happened in 2021.
This all seems to be working. A new poll from Emerson shows Latimer has a 17-point lead over Bowman right now. These attack ads are very effective. They tell a very simple story. Jamal Bowman is harming New York. He follows his own agenda. He wouldn’t even compromise with President Biden. He voted no on the bipartisan infrastructure bill just to stick it to President Biden. Like I said, none of this has to do with Israel but the money is coming from entirely pro-Israel sources.
Unfortunately, I think the other problem is that progressives have weaker messaging. Bowman’s has an ad up that is just too busy. It tries to do 15 things in 30 seconds. Tell you he’s dad, a legislator, a principal. Why are they spending money against him? They don’t really answer. It’s not a clear story. It doesn’t really respond directly to anything that he’s being attacked over. It also doesn’t have anything to do with what the election is really about.
We don’t know for a fact that how much voters in this district care about Gaza, but if you look at polling, 77% of Democrats would like to see military aid to Israel cut off. It’s just paradoxical that that’s no help in a matchup like this.
So unfortunately Bowman’s not only being outspent, but to some degree, he’s also being out messaged. Like I said, the polls shows that it’s working. It’s very effective and it’s a huge wake-up call to, I think, the entire pro-Palestine movement because what they’re doing is they’re taking two progressive black members of Congress, Bowman and Bush, and targeting them for defeat. They’re doing it with issues unrelated to Israel, but they’re sending out a warning: “If you speak up on this issue, you will be targeted.”
It’s an extremely effective strategy if your goal is to chill support for Palestine in Congress and send the message that it’s just too toxic to support Palestine right now.
You mentioned that AIPAC doesn’t bring up Israel in its ads. There was an exception to that rule recently. They ran an attack ad on him, featuring Elie Wiesel’s son and he condemns Bowman for pushing back against some of the Israeli government’s narratives surrounding the October 7th attack. What did you make of that ad and do you think something like that could have an impact?
And connected to that, the numbers say Democratic voters are growing more skeptical of Israel and they support a ceasefire, but are they making their voting decisions based on that position?
This is the really the key question and it’s interesting.
So let’s start with the online ads. The online ads are obviously are not going to have the reach of television ads and sometimes they are done to drive free media. They might also be doing it partly to rebut the criticism that they never mention Israel and they can do it on the cheap because digital ads are a much smaller cost than the television ads.
But then you’re asking a big question, which is, are people voting on Gaza?
I would say it’s a paradox. They’re not voting on Gaza right now, partly because nobody’s willing to really bring it into the race, with the exception of the ad that you just mentioned, but like I said, I think that that’s a small targeted ad with at least one eye toward free media.
We just saw this poll last weekend that came from CBS News and YouGov that shows that’s pretty telling. Among Americans, not just Democrats and not just primary voters but all Americans, its 61% want to stop sending weapons to Israel. That’s a pretty big turnaround from what people might’ve thought was the case before all this happened. If you look at Democrats, 77% of Democrats want to stop sending weapons to Israel. If you look at black voters, it’s very similar. It’s 75 to 25. If you look at young voters, or pretty much everybody under 65, they want the U.S. to stop sending weapons to Israel, and the younger you get, the more intense it is.
You have to separate the primaries from the general election. In the primaries it could be factor, but it’s not because nobody’s really running ads on it. I think the pro-ceasefire side could be making this an issue, but they are mostly choosing not to. They may be scared of the issue.
This sets up a scenario where somebody may lose an election and AIPAC gets to come in the next day and say, like they did with Dexter, “See?” Like you said, Dexter didn’t really mention Israel, but after she wins AIPAC’s out there with this tweet saying, “Once again, we find out that supporting Israel is good policy and good politics.” That’s their mantra and, undoubtedly, if Bowman loses, they’re going to say the same thing.
If it is good politics, it’s not because of the actual issue, it’s because AIPAC’s willing to come in and and spend $13 million dollars.
Now, it may be that Bowman can use this issue differently. He can use it in in his field organizing, in his canvassing, and get people in certain parts of the district really riled up about this. They hint at it when they say, why are these groups attacking Jamal Bowman? Or they’ll say, AIPAC is attacking Jamal Bowman, but they’ll identify AIPAC as a MAGA Republican PAC and not even touch the issue of of Israel. Or they will touch it in speeches and interviews with the press, as I think he’s just done, but not in the TV ads that reach everybody.
So it’s really hard to say there’s a lot of votes over Gaza because it just hasn’t been elevated as an issue. The fight’s not really being joined, so it’s really hard to say. And then if you look at the fall, which will be a completely different dynamic, I think it will be an issue, but not in a way that helps Democrats.
Basically, you’ve got Biden doing everything he can to support Israel, while making some gestures toward a ceasefire. He’s got a very angry part of his base and he also has a very demoralized and disengaged part of his base. They probably won’t express themselves by voting for Trump, who people would think will probably be worse on this issue if it’s possible to be worse, but people can stay home.
That’s something that has yet to play out, but I think it’s baked into Biden’s abysmally low job approval rating right now, which is under 38%.
Do you think the Uncommitted Movement threatens Democrats more broadly? I’ve seen polls where Congressional Dems are outperforming Biden in states. Is it possible that Trump wins, but we still see some progressive victories?
Well, several things could happen.
I think that the most active and vocal people, the ones that were voting Uncommitted in the primary are probably not Biden’s biggest problem. They may stay home or leave the presidential option blank and vote for congressional Democrats underneath. I wouldn’t be shocked about that, but generally people who vote in primaries are the most loyal voters in the fall, and they tend to turn out because primaries are a much higher threshold of turnout than a general election, which has maximum turnout.
So, I’m not sure if leftists will be Biden’s biggest problem. There’s a broader demoralization among less engaged voters who could stay home entirely, and if they do, that won’t help down-ballot Democrats.
I don’t really see too many gains for progressives after what’s happened, mainly just because AIPAC’s won the primaries. So if this phenomenon that you talk about, where Democrats are, down-ballot Democrats are over-performing Biden, if that plays out and that persists, then it’s going to elect more Democrats and maybe give Democrats a shot at holding the Senate or taking back the House, which is right on the bubble right now.
But if people stay home, it’s not going to help any Democrat. That’s the big danger, that people will just throw their hands up in places like Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, places that have large communities of color, and in some cases, especially Michigan, have large Muslim and Arab American communities. Even in New York, which is not a swing state, I saw an Emerson poll that shows Biden leading Trump only 47 to 41. That’s pretty terrible for Democrats in New York state because it means that instead of having a shot at taking back the five seats that they lost.
Democrats lost those New York seats 2022 with Governor Kathy Hochul at the top of the picket and she was considered to be not a very inspiring candidate. She won her governorship by only six points, which is very, very narrow when you look at the fact Biden won New York State by 24 points in 2020.
What changed between 2020 and 2022 in New York? Republican turnout in 2022 was 63%, whereas Democratic turnout was only 48%. That’s a huge enthusiasm gap. Democrats lost all these House seats on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley and it was decisive to the Democrats not holding the House nationally. Now, if that happens again in New York State this year, if Biden is only up by six points in a state that he carried by 24 points the last time, then it means that those House seats are probably not gonna come back to the Democrats.
So even in solid blue states like New York and California, where we saw a similar phenomenon in 2022, it’s a big danger for Democrats.
Can they get them back? We have a number of months to go and you know we’ll see what happens, but I think there’s a danger of dispirited and demoralized Democrats not voting in a presidential year. That’s an existential threat, not just to Biden’s reelection, but to Democrats down ballot. Now, on the other hand, you know, there may be this over performance and we might see, you know, some strength for for Democrats down ballot that that doesn’t help Biden. And that’s bad also because for Democrats, because obviously if Biden doesn’t win, we’re heading into a very a serious situation where where Trump is going to be very, very focused in taking over a lot of parts of the Executive Branch, which he didn’t manage to do the last time he was in office.
We’re looking at a really existential situation, and I can’t predict at this point which way it’s going to go.
What did you think of the Bowman/Latimer debate this week? Latimer has been accused of using an anti-Arab dog whistle because he said Bowman’s support was coming from Dearborn.
Latimer, because of the the dynamics that he thinks are at play, considers himself very empowered to make an unadorned expression for anti-Palestinian racism. He said that Jamal Bowman’s constituency was not in Harrison, Scarsdale, and Tuckahoe, so now he’s really talking about the whitest and richest parts of this district. Your constituency, he said to Bowman, is in Dearborn, Michigan, which we all know has the highest percentage of Muslims and Arab Americans in in in the country.
To feel like that’s an okay thing to say in the middle of a debate just shows that this whole phenomenon, that I call the Empire Strikes Back, where AIPAC is just coming into Portland and crushing progressives, coming into deep blue New York state and Jamal Bowman’s district and trying to crush progressive Democrats who support Palestine. I think the impact is that people like Richie Torres and [NY Rep.] Dan Goldman feel like there’s just no downside at all toward expressing the most hardcore support of Israel that they can. Not only voting for weapons to Israel, but voting to censure Rashida Talib, voting to sanction the ICC, voting for the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act.
That’s going to be the consequence if AIPAC plows through this primary cycle like a hot knife through butter. We’re going to see a very unconstrained period, and that’s just so ironic at a time where, as we’ve said, Democrats, by a margin of 77 to 23, want to stop sending aid to Israel and also overwhelmingly support a ceasefire.
By Michael Arria
