Jamaal Bowman has decided to close out his race for the Democratic nomination in New York’s 16th congressional district by running as if his opponent was named “AIPAC.” At a rally over the weekend, he shouted, “I’m gonna show f***ing AIPAC the power of f***ing South Bronx!” teeth This is where the rally was held, but it is not in his constituency.
One reason for this odd strategic choice is that Bowman is trying to intensify the ideological and socio-economic fault lines of his base and push them outside of its geographic boundaries. Another reason is that Bowman, who was trailing by 17 points in the last poll, realizes his impending defeat and blames AIPAC for it, preparing for a job in professional protest organizing.
But the theory that makes the most sense to me is that Bowman was so enthralled with the logic of the progressive movement that he missed any real opportunities to build an electoral coalition rooted in the liberal wing of the intra-Jewish debate. (This is also the loosely-defined theory suggested by Daniel Marans in his excellent analysis of the election.)
The role of the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC has received considerable attention in coverage of the race between Bowman and current Westchester County Mayor George Latimer, and it is true that AIPAC has poured significant funds into the race in hopes of defeating Bowman, who has taken an increasingly hostile stance since October 7.
But AIPAC also spent heavily against Bowman when he first ran and won, defeating longtime Israel champion Eliot Engel in 2020. The reason Bowman overcame the influence of AIPAC’s funding four years ago but is struggling now is because he has moved significantly left on the Israel issue. As a result of that ongoing shift, Bowman has attracted an attractive challenger, Latimer, into the race, making his challenge even more difficult.
The easiest way to gauge change is that in 2020, Bowman earned the endorsement of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group that has a fraction of AIPAC’s budget and lacks the decades-long organizational ties to the Jewish community. But J Street, which believes in a two-state solution and holds the Israeli government largely responsible for its failure to materialize, represents a sizable and growing segment of Jewish opinion.
This year, J Street withdrew its support for Bowman, a shocking move after he repeatedly made statements aligning him with left-wing protesters rather than liberal Zionists. The biggest blow to the group was that Bowman is a vocal critic of Israel, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Bowman apologized for the episode, but it followed a series of comments, including one in which he said on a podcast that “funding Israel is just supporting another settler-colonial project that Israel is running” – a phrase that evokes left-wing theories of anti-Semitism.
The tragedy of Bowman’s alienation from liberal Jewish opinion is that he squandered what was once a golden opportunity to reshape the political direction of his community.
Though it has a budget, AIPAC’s claim to represent Jewish opinion is very weak indeed. Many American Jews, as well as the vocal claims of Israel’s Jewish minority, consider Benjamin Netanyahu’s one-state vision a threat to Israel’s long-term survival. AIPAC supports the position of the government in power in Israel, an approach that by definition excludes the possibility that Israel’s own government poses a threat to it. In the past, when Labor and Likud parties regularly alternated in power in Israel, AIPAC’s ecumenical position was somewhat agnostic about whether Israel should pursue peace with the Palestinians. The right’s domination of the Israeli electorate over the past 15 years has transformed AIPAC into a functionally conservative organization.
The political opportunity Bowman seized four years ago, and has now squandered, was to position himself as a defender of J Street-style liberal Zionism, a viable niche in the Jewish community, but in opposition to AIPAC. and J Street is a formula for giving up the Jewish vote.
A rough comparison is how black voters approach affirmative action. The community is more divided than advocacy groups suggest. Just over half of black Americans supported the Supreme Court decision that struck down preferential treatment in admissions. Democrats who oppose preferential treatment may be able to attract black votes if they have a different connection to the community. A candidate who is fixated on the evils of affirmative action and tries to turn the election into a referendum on quotas probably won’t. A liberal Jew who opposes AIPAC may suspect that someone who portrays AIPAC as the greatest force of evil in the world harbors a deeper level of hostility toward their community.
Bowman is a flawed candidate, making a series of bizarre statements that set off fire alarms in the Capitol for reasons he struggles to explain, but that appear to have been a clumsy attempt to delay a vote. But Latimer, for all his polish, has hardly run a flawless campaign. His awkward portrayal of Bowman’s identity politics (“Does he have a clear ethnic interest? Yes.”) sounds dated.
Latimer also made what would normally be a fatal gaffe when he spoke out against raising taxes on the wealthy, putting him in a position that was unpopular not just with Democratic primary voters but with the electorate at large. But despite efforts to exploit this rift in the debate, Bowman chose to focus on AIPAC.
Bowman seems to crave political martyrdom, but if he loses, his death would more accurately be characterized as political suicide.
