Hello! Today we’re going to cover the political battle that has become a major battle for the future of the Democratic Party, and then we’ll take you behind the scenes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s raven photo shoot. First up is my colleague Nicholas Fandos, who covers New York politics. Jess Bidgood
This time last year, Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York seemed to have finally found his groove: He’d become a cable news star thanks to his outspoken take-offs with conservative Republicans and was even considering a run for mayor of New York City.
Tuesday’s New York congressional primary could leave him searching for a new job.
The rapid change of course has captivated the political world, not only because Bowman will be the first person from the House’s prominent left-leaning “bloc” to lose his seat, but his primary also marks one of the clearest indicators of the divisions in the Democratic coalition over Gaza and how far the party needs to move left this election year.
Bowman’s troubles began last fall, when after Oct. 7 he began to emerge as one of Congress’ leading critics of Israel’s war with Hamas. His support for a ceasefire and opposition to U.S. military aid energized younger Democrats and the party’s left wing.
But it also stoked a backlash in Jewish neighborhoods, led Jewish leaders to field a strong opponent in the primary, George Latimer, and pro-Israel lobbying groups to pour a record-breaking $15 million into the race, ultimately reigniting old tensions over race, class and ideology.
Ugly intraparty disputes
Bowman, who is black, has repeatedly accused his white opponents of being racist and claims they are trying to silence him not only because of his stance on the war, but also because his politics are a threat to the business and political establishment.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders parachute in to try to save him.
But this time, the establishment is likely to prevail. Mr. Latimer is a popular, moderate liberal. He has made a broader case, casting the incumbent as an attention-seeking sidekick who is at odds with the district that includes the Bronx and parts of Westchester County. Polls suggest voters might agree, but reliable polls are scarce.
Whatever the outcome, Democrats on both sides of the aisle agree that neither is particularly good news for them, as the party struggles to rebuild the ideologically and demographically diverse coalition that helped elect President Biden.
“If Jamaal Bowman loses, it threatens to demoralize the very base that we need to vote for in November,” Ocasio-Cortez, who is campaigning for both Biden and Bowman, told me this week.
Progressive agitator
Bowman, an gregarious former middle school principal, is no stranger to intraparty battles: He won his seat four years ago, beating an older, conservative incumbent in a Democratic primary rocked by the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd.
He arrived in Washington as a walking symbol of the rise of the left and has disagreed with Democratic leadership on a range of issues, including Biden’s infrastructure bill and attempts to ban TikTok.
Still, Bowman seemed headed for reelection last fall — until the Israel-Hamas war opened up a major rift in the Democratic Party.
While other politicians in similar districts have sensed the political turmoil and resorted to carefully worded statements or stuck to their party’s center, Ms. Bowman has jumped headfirst into the fray.
He expressed his opposition to Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of civilians, many of them children, in moral terms.
“You have to understand that the reason I ran for office in the first place was because kids in the Bronx were being killed, either by suicide or kids killing each other, and no one was talking about the trauma,” Bowman told me recently.
But his opponents, including some who supported him in previous elections, say his attacks on Israel have gone too far and that he sometimes leans into anti-Semitic tropes.
Call for a ceasefire
Bowman called for a ceasefire just days after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, and just as Israel was beginning to strike back. At one point, Bowman received a report over a video call that Hamas had sexually abused Israeli women during “propaganda” for the attack. (Bowman later said he believed the documented allegations.)
In response, a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee launched the largest outside-funded campaign in the history of that organization, or any organization for that matter.
The ads rarely focus on the war itself, instead prioritizing issues that appeal to the Democratic base as a whole. Most of them criticize Bowman for voting against the infrastructure bill and Biden’s debt ceiling deal, portraying him as a purveyor of “dispute, confusion and intrigue.”
Rather than toning down his platform, Bowman has instead turned to combat AIPAC, arguing that the pro-Israel lobby is laundering Republican donations to skew his chances in the race.
Highly vulnerable candidates
But Bowman was in an extremely vulnerable position, including for reasons of his own making, even before the group began spending.
Last fall, he said, he set off a fire alarm in a House office building and tried to open a locked door as he rushed to the Capitol. But there was no fire. His actions briefly disrupted Congress, led to misdemeanor charges and were used by his opponents in a flurry of advertisements.
Opposition researchers have uncovered old blog posts and poems that hint at conspiracy theories about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
And at a time when other politicians are turning to trusted local surrogates, Bowman has received surprisingly little support: It’s Latimer, the Westchester County mayor, who has won the support of nearly every local Democratic Party, including Bowman’s hometown of Yonkers.
Several prominent Democrats and the president of Westchester County’s major business council told me they barely listened to Bowman during his four years in office (Bowman’s defenders say that’s in part because he prioritized poor black and brown communities over wealthier, whiter suburban areas).
Meanwhile, Latimer is ubiquitous in her hometown: A recent Politico article called her “the Cher of suburban New York.”
He has also made a number of gaffes and made comments on race that seem, at best, generationally outdated.But many of the voters I spoke to seemed happy to embrace Latimer’s campaign’s central claim: a reliable, drama-free liberal vote.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, an Afro-Latino Democrat from New York who was elected with Bowman in 2020, summed up his colleague Bowman’s problem by quoting an old Biden joke about Rudolph W. Giuliani making Sept. 11 a presidential campaign theme a few years later.
“Jamaal Bowman’s campaign is ‘the noun, the verb, AIPAC,'” said Torres, who has close ties to the group. “His campaign has done nothing but scapegoat AIPAC, instead of taking seriously its role in undermining voter trust.”
Behind the photo
Take Off
New York Times photographer Ruth Flemson has been covering politics since 1992 and has seen a lot, but she’s never seen a presidential candidate repeatedly try and fail to include a pet crow in a photo shoot.
That’s exactly what happened last week when Ruth visited Los Angeles with Rebecca Davis O’Brien to write a story about the flamboyant associates of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In the hard-earned photograph, Kennedy is reclining in a patio chair, looking somewhat defeated, reluctantly accepting bits of steak that have been scattered across the patio by one of his tame crows.
I asked Ruth to talk about it; our conversation has been edited and condensed.
Have you ever photographed a crow before?
No. This was one of my least cooperative subjects. And that sets the crow apart from Kennedy himself, because Kennedy was unusually easy to photograph. Usually candidates are surrounded by reps and staff who worry about how their bosses will see them. Kennedy was just open. “This is my home. This is my office. This is my stuffed turtle.” He said that when the turtle died, he put it in the freezer for two years before stuffing it.
That’s a really weird detail, but I think it was just weird overall.
Many would find trying to tame a crow a bit odd – understandably, other candidates’ staffers would advise them not to go public with the idea – but Kennedy seemed quite comfortable with his own eccentricities, casually mentioning to Rebecca that he had a pet emu – and he didn’t think it was anything unusual!
Yes. So Kennedy threw meat onto the patio to get the crow to come down from the tree. But the crow didn’t accept it. What did you do?
At one point, Kennedy told me that my camera was making the birds uneasy and encouraged me to go inside, which I thought was a stupid thing to do. When I went back outside, he scolded me. I told him that if he couldn’t see the crows, he couldn’t take their pictures. Then I tried to stay as hidden as possible and take the pictures without disturbing the crows. It was all very secretive.
Suitable for crows.
I crouched down on the stone steps and took the photo through the vegetation. Kennedy called out to get the crows out of the tree. Finally one came down. It was a moment of panic for me. It wasn’t an ideal composition. You could have driven a truck between Kennedy and the crow. But we couldn’t move without scaring the crow, so it was the best we could do.
Who were some of the people who didn’t help you with your photoshoot?
Susan Sontag. I feel like people aren’t really afraid of me as a photographer, except maybe for her.
Thanks for reading! I’ll be back on Monday. – Jess Dec 23 ’13 at 14:45
