The Empire Strikes Back: Latimer v Bowman Goes Down to the Wire

A last look at the Democratic primary in my home district as the political circus really comes to town.

As the most expensive House primary this cycle enters its final weekend before Election Day next Tuesday, it’s striking how much it has been nationalized and now mirrors, in miniature, the unresolved split inside the Democratic Party. Party institutionalists like Westchester resident Hillary Clinton are on one side, backing challenger George Latimer, the county executive. So are nearly all the local Democratic elected officials. On the other side, party insurrectionists, led by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have endorsed incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman. So have most of the nonprofit community organizations that make up the activist left, starting with the Working Families Party, an important player in New York politics. The old slogan of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is backing her colleague Bowman, is being shouted again: “They’ve got money, but we’ve got people.” Or as the Bowman campaign puts it, “The many vs the money.”

We’ll see about that. This time, on top of the overwhelming amount of money being spent by AIPAC’s United Democracy Project superPAC to tilt this race to Latimer there are three complicating facts: the advantages that any incumbent holds over a challenger have been neutered by Latimer holding the most powerful local elected seat in Westchester County, where most of the district’s voters live; the role of organized people in this district tilts toward the institutionalists, not the insurrectionists; and Bowman has chosen–for reasons of principle–to vocally identify with an issue that plays mostly to his opponent’s strength. So, while there is always a chance for a surprise Tuesday night, I’m not expecting one.

Early turnout is already high; I’ve heard predictions of it reaching 90,000, which would be more than double from two years ago. Latimer’s allies in the Jewish community have built a massive turnout machine alongside AIPAC’s air war against him; on the other hand, Bowman and his allies on the progressive left have built a small army of doorknockers. According to the tracking firm AdImpact, one AIPAC TV ad has been seen 180 million times. And those ads, which mostly attack Bowman for voting against President Biden’s infrastructure bill, are definitely hurting him. On the other hand, yesterday, a Bowman canvasser told me that a Hispanic voter they talked to in New Rochelle had seen the ads and wondered why so much money was being spent on them; when the canvasser said, we don’t have the money, but we do have people going door-to-door, the penny dropped and that voter decided to support Bowman. Big money can become a liability, in other words, especially if you can talk to enough working-class people in time.

All that said, if Bowman somehow wins, it will be fair to say that we’re witnessing a revolution in Westchester’s politics. It’s far more likely that what we’re experiencing is more of a restoration, a return of the ancien regime that never really got dislodged from power four years ago when Bowman first won this seat. And the way that regime is winning is ugly. The scars from this primary will take a long time to heal.

How this primary got started

It’s worth remembering that, back in mid-October 2023, when 26 local rabbis from across the denominational spectrum of American Judaism wrote privately to county executive Latimer begging him to primary Bowman, they opened their letter with these words: “For over three decades, our community was represented in Congress by a Democratic champion who consistently delivered for the people of Westchester and represented our core values in Washington, especially in unwavering support for Israel’s safety and security.” [Emphasis added.] The champion they were referring to was, of course, Eliot Engel, whose longevity in Congress was rewarded in 2018 by his elevation to the chairmanship of the powerful House Foreign Affairs committee. The rabbis letter went on to argue that Bowman “brought a deeply concerning agenda to Washington,” “disregarded” their attempts to engage him and instead “doubled down on his anti-Israel policy positions and messaging.” They concluded, “your election would be a vital course correction from the last three years.”

Note what was being asked for here: a return to Engel’s approach to Israel, which can fairly be described as solidly rightwing Zionist. One of Engel’s first acts upon entering Congress in 1989 was to write a resolution declaring that the city of Jerusalem, newly unified via an annexation of East Jerusalem that none of the world has ever recognized, was Israel’s eternal capital. That is something that didn’t become official US policy until 2019, when President Trump moved the US embassy there. In 2009, Engel vocally opposed President Obama’s effort to get Israel to agree to a freeze on building settlements in the West Bank, instead insisting that they be allowed to keep growing. In 2010, Engel was one of four Jewish Democrats in Congress who pushed through a resolution demanding the President veto any Security Council attempt to recognize a Palestinian state that wasn’t the product of negotiations with Israel; their resolution made no mention of Israel’s continuing expansion of West Bank settlements. When President Obama was lining up support for the Iran nuclear deal, Engel came out against it, aligning himself with Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who worked in concert with Republicans to try to undermine it. In 2018, Engel gave a speech to a NY AIPAC gathering at the Temple Israel Center in Westchester where he said, “I want to tell you that I sit down with AIPAC on every piece of legislation that comes out. I think it’s very, very important. In the past 30 years I have attended 31 consecutive AIPAC conferences in March, I haven’t missed one.” 

It didn’t bother the rabbis that Engel—who started his political career with a reputation for strong community service—had actually stopped living in the district, claiming a house in Potomac, Maryland as his primary residence for many years and collecting thousands of dollars in tax breaks by doing so. Nor did they care that the district had been majority-minority for years. What they wanted was a restoration of the old status quo. And in Latimer, who has been careful throughout this primary to avoid saying anything precise about Israeli policy, they are likely to get it. At the last TV debate of the primary, held Tuesday night on PIX11, Latimer danced adroitly away from saying if he thought it was time for Netanyahu to face new elections, blandly declared that he supported a two-state solution, but indicated that he thought the burden was on the Arab world to come to the table with Israel—saying nothing about decades of Israeli expansionist policy in the occupied territories. These positions are all completely consonant with AIPAC talking points. For someone who asserts that command of the details of public policy are one of his strong points, Latimer’s decided refusal to wade into the details of Israel-Palestine is quite telling.

I’m not the only one to have noticed this; Brian Lehrer, the veteran host of WNYC’s morning talk show, interviewed both candidates in the last week and made this observation about Latimer in his new newsletter:

During the show, he came off as being closer to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s camp than to Biden’s. I asked Latimer if he would urge Netanyahu to publicly accept the Biden cease-fire plan if Hamas does. All Latimer would say was, “I urge both sides to take careful note of what Secretary Blinken is doing by going from country-to-country.” I asked Latimer if he supports Senator Schumer’s call for new elections in Israel. Latimer said, “That is not for me to argue for one way or the other.” I asked if he wants to be associated so closely with AIPAC, which New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls “Bibi's sock puppet” and that the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz says "much of the US Jewish community has grown resentful of." Latimer responded: “If John Doe, who lives in Westchester County donates to me, and he did it through an AIPAC portal, I don't believe it ties into the national donors to AIPAC, or the international positions of AIPAC.” 

Frankly, that’s very hard to believe. When I asked Latimer if he was critical of Netanyahu in any way — which Biden has increasingly become — Latimer said, “I have not criticized any individual player in the game.” Bottom line: In all cases, Latimer avoided taking any position that distanced himself from the current Israeli leadership regarding the war, in ways that Biden and Schumer have now repeatedly done.

How leftist purism is backfiring

As for Bowman’s approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict, Lehrer said, “Bowman is clearly to the left of President Biden on Israel/Gaza policy,” which is absolutely true. He refers to Israel’s war as “a genocide,” which I wish he wouldn’t do because it’s not. And he talks about achieving a permanent ceasefire without any clear explanation of how that could be achieved. But I’ve noticed a shift in the last week or so that suggests he is still trying to reach undecided voters, including Jews who feel an attachment to Israel but don’t like AIPAC or Netanyahu.

Asked during the PIX11 debate about his position on US military aid to Israel, Bowman didn’t deny that he wants to halt it completely right now, in the hopes of stopping the Gaza war before famine sets in amongst two million Palestinian civilians. But he emphasized that his opposition was more against aiding Netanyahu, who he said may be a war criminal. In addition to reiterating his support for a two-state solution, he also went out of his way to remind viewers that Israel has imposed military rule on Palestinians for 75 years and that the presence of 700,000 settlers in the West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem was a huge obstacle to a two-state solution. He’s also taken to saying that the only way for Israel to live in peace and security is with a “Free Palestine,” which in theory could be a way for progressives like him to square their alliance with the pro-Palestine campus-centered solidarity movement while reassuring liberal Jews that they are not anti-Israel. (You can listen to him make that argument directly to undecided Jewish voters here, during an interview he did with Cynthia Nixon, a prominent NY progressive activist.)

Like his Squad colleague Ocasio-Cortez, who has also tried to demonstrate distance from the “We don’t want two-state, we want ‘48” crowd (in part because she wants to be a responsible national progressive but also because she may someday run for higher office), Bowman is caught between commitments he has made to the Palestine solidarity movement and electoral realities on the ground. Unfortunately, too much of that Palestine solidarity movement is interested in expressive activism (a meaner way of describing it would be “performative politics”) rather than serious organizing. A big part of that movement is committed to ending the existence of the Jewish state rather than coexistence alongside it, after all. That’s as genocidal an intention as anything Israel is doing to Gaza.

As Nathan Newman pointed on his Substack Left Future this week, the pro-Palestine movement has largely ignored the battle for power in Congress. He writes of this spring’s wave of campus encampments, “Despite Columbia University being a relatively short train ride away from Bowman’s district, there was little effort to send volunteers to walk his district and campaign against the AIPAC candidate. In fact, if you look at the websites of the ANSWER coalition, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace, or the national Democratic Socialists of America - four groups leading these campus and street protests - none of them even mention Bowman’s race or any of the other pro-Palestinian House members being targeted for defeat by AIPAC-backed candidates.” Even worse, as Newman notes, those same campus activists keep applying radical purity tests rather than build alliances that can win and hold onto power. He writes, “Despite AOC being one of the handful of House members to vote against the Iron Dome and every other dollar sent to the Israeli military, you still have groups like the Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine lying that she did--and refusing to work with her in any common cause.”

Indeed, tomorrow AOC is holding a turnout rally in the Bronx for Bowman, which Bernie Sanders is also joining, and the far-left Within Our Lifetime group has decided to attack the rally. “THE BRONX STANDS WITH PALESTINE AGAINST SELL-OUT POLITICIANS WHO TRADE PALESTINIAN LIVES FOR VOTES,” the group tweeted, over a poster showing Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman as “’Progressives’ who endorse Genocide Joe.” When Rafael Shuminov, a local Jewish activist who is hardly a Zionist, suggested online that Within Our Lifetime was objectively helping AIPAC defeat Bowman, its leader Nerdeen Kiswani slammed him and asked, “Do you need to be dog walked again?” Within Our Lifetime is the same group that recently protested the Nova exhibit in downtown Manhattan, claiming that the commemoration of the October 7 massacre was “manufacturing consent for genocide” and asserting that the hundreds of murdered dancers had held a “rave next to a concentration camp.” They are deeply hurting the Palestinian cause, not helping it.

But most voters here don’t tend to see the kind of distinctions elected officials Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman are trying to make between tough criticism of Netanyahu and the blatant antisemitism of groups like Within Our Lifetime. As I write these words, my little village of Hastings-on-Hudson is getting its knickers twisted over a turnout rally featuring Bernie Sanders that the Bowman campaign has put together for this afternoon along the waterfront. A nice old Jewish man is coming to speak here and more than 100 residents have signed an online petition questioning why such an event has been allowed by the town’s elected officials, questioning its legality, worrying about thousands of attendees flooding in including “paid agitators” (more on that in a second), demanding that it not be allowed because it will be “divisive,” and expressing fear that it will lead to violence. (You can read the petition here in its original form, or here, in case it gets taken down.) In one of the local Facebook pages for the village’s zipcode, people are comparing the rally to a Proud Boys event and ranting about “how the village is using our public park as a home base for a man who has used his power to normalize antisemitism and rape denial.” So much for the First Amendment.

Life is still all about high school

Two days ago, Latimer made a post to his Facebook page that circulated widely before he took it down. In it, he amplified a tweet that has been going around claiming that some young activists who protested outside of a Latimer fundraiser in leafy Armonk were actually “paid agitators” from the Bowman campaign. He also vented his frustration with the divisiveness of the primary, asserting that it was all due to his opponent’s tenure in office. As is his practice, he made no mention of the intensely divisive ads and mailers that his AIPAC allies have been paying for. And he ended his post with a threat: “I won’t forget what was done and said and tolerated on [Bowman’s] behalf.”

The “paid agitators” charge specifically refers to organizers who work for groups like If Not Now and the Sunrise Movement, but Latimer has also used it in reference to other activists who have tried to ask him questions about his AIPAC support at other public events. Instead of answering them, he’s repeatedly brushed them off, in one case nudging a young woman who was pestering him out into the pouring rain. Now, I get that interacting with the public can be annoying, but he’s running to be our representative in Congress and handling hostile questions comes with that territory—or at least it does for people who claim to be supporters of democracy. “Paid agitators” is a charge that southern racists threw at civil rights organizers; grown-ups in a Democratic primary ought to do better than use it here.

Sadly, over the course of this, yes, divisive campaign, our county executive has shown himself to be remarkably ill-humored and thin-skinned. In each debate, he has not only argued that his brand of pragmatic progressivism was more in tune with the electorate, he has gone out of his way to sneer at Bowman’s idealism and slam his basic competence as a legislator. There’s been a cruelness to Latimer’s public rhetoric that has surprised many here, including people who worked hard to elect him county executive back in 2017 and again in 2021. I think it is mirrored and reinforced by how most of the county’s regular Democrats talk about Bowman in private, as someone who “cut the line” instead waiting his turn to run for high office and as someone who doesn’t show up at party events to schmooze and kiss rings.

The pecking order and shows of respect seem to be very important to Westchester’s regular Democrats. At every monthly meeting of NYCD-16 Indivisible, a local group I helped start back in 2017, whenever an elected official was asked to speak, the first thing they would do is call out and recognize all the other elected officials in the room—something that would regularly eat up minutes of common time. Latimer would often show up and just sit quietly in the back, not expecting to be asked to speak but offering answers when appropriate. I thought that modesty was one of his better qualities. And in 2022, after Democrats were shellacked statewide because Governor Kathy Hochul and the state party ran a dismal campaign, Latimer got up and spoke extemporaneously about how in Westchester, local Democratic officials and grassroots activists like the Indivisible folks in the room had learned how to work productively with each other. That comity is now badly broken.

Latimer also keeps saying things about the role of race in the primary that suggest he doesn’t understand what it means to represent a diverse district that is majority-minority. Most recently, in an interview with Punchbowl News, he said, “Is [Bowman] going to get at least 40% of the vote? Yes. Does he have an obvious ethnic benefit? Yes.” This compounds earlier remarks he made about Bowman’s original victory in 2020 over Engel being “skewed” by high turnout from the Black community in the wake of the George Floyd murder. And none of these gaffes can be excused by arguing that Bowman is also emphasizing race as he tries to defend his seat; this is a contest for power, after all. When you add these to his history of slow-walking desegregation in Westchester, amply documented by Branko Marcetic in Jacobin, as well as his stated reluctance to raise taxes on the wealthy, it’s not a pretty picture. Restoration of the ancien regime, anyone?

Instead, Latimer’s behavior on the campaign trail reminds me of nothing more than the old white headmaster of a private school demanding order and respect from his unruly students. Whenever he’s been confronted by an activist with questions about his relationship to AIPAC, he’s behaved like it was beneath him to engage the topic. Of course, given how much $20 million in outside spending can stink up a room, I get why he’d rather talk about anything else. But Latimer hasn’t been a passive victim of AIPAC spending; as the Washington Post reported months ago, he has gone out of his way to keep that money flowing by making surprise appearances at DC AIPAC events.

But if Latimer is the school’s headmaster, Bowman is the kid who pulled the fire alarm. And not just literally. In the movie Animal House, being the prankster who made the authorities look old and square made John Belushi cool. If the only people who were voting next Tuesday were young people, Bowman’s informality and willingness to break rules would not be a liability. Hell, if the electorate was just twenty-somethings, describing himself and his Squad colleagues multiple times as “motherfucking” (sorry Mom!) at last September’s climate march, where he gave a passionate off-the-cuff speech, would just demonstrate that he cares about stopping climate change with the intensity that it deserves. But if you watch the clip, you see something else—that getting famous as a rabble-rouser and basking in left-wing social media echo chambers is also intoxicating. And at the end of the day, Bowman isn’t running to be an influencer, he’s running to hold and use a share of power in Congress.

The fire alarm episode is not the only character issue dogging him here. I’ve seen posts attacking him for showing up late at a formal church celebration dressed in shorts; I heard from Democrats who were annoyed that he showed up at a recent county party meeting and spent most of his time on his phone, ignoring his junior officeholders. When Latimer brags about knowing the names of every mayor and town selectman, and when this or that local political breakfast club meets at exactly which diner, he’s showing off a type of political mastery that Bowman has not tried to practice. But it too goes with the territory.

When the post-mortems on this primary are written, I hope progressives in particular don’t simply say, what did you expect, AIPAC bought this seat in order to prove, like the NRA, that members of Congress who cross its line will be decimated. That would be oversimplifying the picture. Choices Bowman made on how to conduct himself the last three years also made the conditions for a challenger like Latimer especially propitious. And here we are.