WAR COMES HOME

Israel Critic Jamaal Bowman Loses Most Expensive House Primary Ever

Jamaal Bowman lost to George Latimer in a $22 million proxy battle over the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY)—a Squad member and fierce opponent of Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza—has lost his primary, marking a huge win for the country’s U.S. backers, who spent nearly $15 million to boost his Democratic rival George Latimer.

Multiple outlets called the race some 40 minutes after polls closed in the district spanning the north edge of the Bronx and adjacent suburbs.

Bowman had failed to pull sufficient votes in his urban bases to overcome Latimer, who serves as Westchester County executive. With more than $22 million spent across both camps and supportive political action committees, the primary was the costliest in American history, and marked a dispute not just between pro-Israel and anti-Israel factions but between the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party itself.

Progressives, especially those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, bemoaned Bowman’s defeat—blaming the spending from a PAC backed by the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee for the loss.

Bowman enjoyed the backing not just of fellow members of the Squad, but also Sen. Bernie Sanders—while Latimer had the support of Hillary Clinton, indicating the aftershocks of the pair’s 2016 collision still reverberate today. The older, white Latimer’s victory over Bowman, a Black Democratic Socialists of America member with strong youth support, is a blow to the hopes of building a durable pro-Palestinian left-wing bloc in Congress.

Bowman remained defiant in his concession speech Tuesday night, blaring from a dais in suburban White Plains, New York, that he would “never stand for the bombing and killing of babies in Gaza” and “when we say ‘Free Palestine’ it is not antisemitic.”

According to The New York Times, he apologized for using “foul language” and ultimately conceded that he had lost the race, but promised to continue fighting for his causes in the years to come.

“We have to look at the arguments of the far right and the far left and say, ‘You cannot destroy this country with your rhetoric and your arguments,’” he said.

The first stirrings of Latimer’s challenge to Bowman began last July, but Hamas’ bloody raid into Israeli territory on Oct. 7 set the agenda for the contest. The incumbent, who unseated the strongly pro-Israel Rep. Eliot Engel in 2020, was among a small group of House lawmakers to vote against a solidarity resolution with the Jewish state and one of the first to urge a ceasefire after Israeli began its devastating counterattack.

The congressman also provoked outrage by calling initial reports of sexual assault Hamas committed during its initial incursion “propaganda,” a position he later recanted in the face of overwhelming evidence collected by the United Nations. But he continued to enrage pro-Israel organizations, including constituents in his district, by calling the deadly Israeli assault on Gaza’s urban centers “genocide.”

A series of remarks Bowman made about “the Jews” in his district further fomented allegations of antisemitism. His rhetoric escalated in tandem with heavy spending by the PAC AIPAC created to oppose his re-election and elevate Latimer, and toward the end of the race Bowman even vouched his support to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

In a last-leg rally, Bowman accused AIPAC of “destroying our democracy” by pumping so much cash into the primary.

The organization in turn trumpeted Latimer’s victory in a statement Tuesday night, writing: “The outcome in this race once again shows that the pro-Israel position is both good policy and good politics — for both parties,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in a statement to NBC New York.

But the Israeli-Palestinian issue was hardly the only source of controversy. In January, The Daily Beast discovered Bowman had promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories during his pre-congressional career. Then, in May, The Daily Beast found that while in Congress he had followed an array of unhinged YouTube accounts that promoted everything from flat-earth content to claims about aliens and time travel to Chinese and Russian disinformation.

Latimer, meanwhile, faced allegations of racism for his casting of Bowman as a radical and for remarks he made about the incumbent’s “ethnic benefit” in the race.

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William BreddermanSenior Researcher

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