He joked on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” traded poetry with rapper Cash Cobain the next day and spent Friday on friendly terms with a well-known ally, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The final leg was scheduled for Saturday, when New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman was due to hold a rally in the Bronx with two prominent figures on the left, Mr. Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Bowman, who enjoys overwhelming support on air but trails in the polls, is leaning heavily on his national star power in a last-minute bid to change the trajectory of what is expected to be the most competitive Democratic primary in the country.
“They have the money,” Mr. Bowman, 48, gushed Friday at an event he hosted with Mr. Sanders in Hastings-on-Hudson, just north of his hometown of Yonkers. “We have a lot of people.”
The megawatt event drew a stark contrast between the congressman and his rival, George Latimer, but also demonstrated how the two candidates are betting on very different paths to victory in a district divided between affluent suburbs and working-class areas, and among white, black and Latino voters.
Rather than moving closer to the party’s center, Bowman has repeated the left-wing positions that made him a national celebrity, blasting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for giving record money to him and the establishment in an effort to boost voter turnout among progressives and people of color.
Latimer, a centrist Democrat and Westchester County mayor, is pushing hard ahead of Tuesday’s primary election without any fanfare.
Mr. Latimer was confident enough in his old suburban base that he made multiple trips to Co-op City in the Bronx and to Mr. Bowman’s backyard in the final days of the campaign to pitch himself as a drama-free alternative to the two-term incumbent. As pro-Israel political groups bombarded Mr. Bowman with $15 million in negative ads, Mr. Latimer, 70, did little more than stay out of the news.
He delivered an astonishingly smooth rendition of “Like a Girl” from “My Fair Lady” to several hundred senior citizens at the Ukrainian Youth Center in Yonkers.
Clearly, the song had a message.
“That’s the whole difference between us,” Latimer said afterward, gesturing to the ballroom surrounding him. “I’m a local guy. It seems counterintuitive when you look at our age and our demographic. But he’s someone who’s cultivated more of a national image.”
Latimer entered the race last fall largely after Jewish leaders urged him to oppose Bowman’s public criticism of Israel’s war with Hamas. But he has consistently emphasized local issues, criticizing Bowman for voting against a major Biden infrastructure bill that promised to rebuild roads and replace old water mains in his district, as well as for neglecting some of his predominantly white neighborhoods.
Bowman, the first Black member of Congress to represent the district, was outraged by the portrayal and accused Latimer of being a racist.
But lately Mr. Bowman has tried to incorporate lighter elements, from rapping and bopping onstage at a concert his campaign threw to inspire young voters in Latino neighborhoods to playing basketball with boys in the Bronx, all captured on camera by a high-tech videographer.
Sanders’ first precinct outing, held in sweltering heat on Friday, was brief but underscored its importance to the left.
“Even if you don’t agree with Jamal on this issue or that issue, vote for Jamal,” he told several hundred supporters gathered at a seaside park. “The most important thing in this election is that we the people have the courage to stand up to the oligarchs and tell the billionaires that they can’t control our government.”
The message resonated with Bowman’s supporters, some of whom said they are Jewish.
“AIPAC’s funding of Latimer definitely puts me off,” said Sasha Fuller, 23. “He’s more of a traditional corporate Democrat, so I’m not a big supporter of his politics.”
Sharon Diamond, 75, said the whole contest was disappointing.
“I was shocked when AIPAC put George Latimer on the ballot,” she said. “My opinion is that Democrats should be focused on November at this point, not on someone challenging an incumbent who has worked hard and done well for this district.”
Saturday’s rally with Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, held a few miles south of Bowman’s district, was again scheduled to focus on AIPAC’s role in the primary.
But in a sign of how deeply the conflict has divided the left, organizers were also lining up a protest by the pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime.
In a post promoting the protests on social media site “X,” the group called all three “traitorous politicians who sell Palestinian lives in exchange for votes.”
AIPAC’s involvement in the election has highlighted interest among Jewish voters, and there are signs of strong early voter turnout from this demographic, which is likely to bode well for Latimer.
The Teach Coalition, a group that promotes the interests of yeshivas and other Jewish schools, spent $1 million this election to register 2,000 Republicans and independents as Democrats in an effort to boost Jewish voter turnout.
The group estimated Friday that Jewish voters likely accounted for 36% of all early votes, even though they make up just 9% of the district’s overall electorate.
Coalition leader Maury Litwak stressed that the voter turnout drive was bipartisan, but added that “anyone who has watched this race will tell you the overwhelming sentiment in the Jewish community is leaning toward Latimer, not Bowman.”
Latimer was also well-received by the diverse group of older people he met in Yonkers, who greeted him with applause, many of whom said they had followed his career for decades.
“He’s a uniter, not a divider,” said Susan Greenberg, a retired health care administrator from Hastings-on-Hudson. “That’s been going on for a long time.”
“The race has been tough to watch,” said Kenneth Diaz, a Yonkers real estate agent and self-described “Bernie nut” who attended Latimer’s event. Diaz has been a vocal supporter of Bowman and believes he’s right about the Gaza war.
But Diaz said he saw Bowman lose dignity when he pulled a fire alarm in a congressional office building last fall while rushing to the Capitol — a false alarm that sparked chaos in Congress and led to a misdemeanor charge — another embarrassment for a nation that fears Diaz is losing touch with civility.
“It was a stupid thing to do,” he said, “and I understand why he did it, but it still doesn’t make him fit for that position.”
