Head for the (fire) exit, Jamaal!
Westchester County Executive George Latimer sent Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) packing from Congress Tuesday night, defeating the far-left “Squad” member in the 16th District’s Democratic primary.
Latimer, 70, will be heavily favored to defeat Republican Madeline Brame in the Nov. 5 election to represent the deep-blue Bronx and Westchester constituency.
Bowman’s four-year House tenure will come to an end following the most expensive congressional primary ever in terms of ad spending – a race which pitted pro-Bowman groups like Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party against an alliance of moderates turned off by the incumbent’s stances, mainly on Israel.
The incumbent took an early lead Tuesday night after the first results came in from the Bronx portion of the district, where Bowman racked up 83% of the vote.
But the picture changed as the Westchester precincts reported an overwhelming vote for Latimer. With 62% of the estimated vote tabulated as of 9:50 p.m., Latimer led Bowman by 10.4 percentage points.
Latimer’s coalition of well-funded backers included the United Democracy Project, a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that spent a staggering $14 million in the race, and a cryptocurrency group called Fair Shake that bankrolled another $2 million worth of spots.
The race quickly developed into a referendum on the Israel-Hamas war and Bowman’s public comments about the Jewish state and followers of that religion.
Last week, in an interview with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, Bowman accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
In that same interview, Bowman belatedly apologized for denying the horrific rapes of Israeli women during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that killed an estimated 1,200 people — including 33 Americans.
Over the weekend, Politico quoted Bowman as saying that Jews had “segregated” themselves from the rest of Westchester, and had “made a decision to do that for their own reasons,” drawing the ire of South Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY)
“There’s a word for this scapegoating: antisemitism,” Torres posted to X Sunday.
Latimer benefitted not only from financial support from AIPAC, which pounded Bowman with millions of dollars in attack ads, but by an extraordinary grassroots organizing effort from rabbis and the Jewish community in the district repulsed by the congressman’s open disdain for Israel in the face of rising antisemitism.
“George Latimer’s victory and Jamaal Bowman’s defeat proves in dramatic fashion that being pro-Israel is not just wise policy, but also smart politics,” Mark Mellman, President of Democratic Majority for Israel, wrote in a statement.
The Teach New York Coalition/Westchester United — a group affiliated with the Orthodox Jewish Union — helped mobilize congregants at three dozen synagogues in Westchester to vote in the primary. The Jewish turnout initiative was officially “nonpartisan” but clearly the sentiment was pro-Latimer, anti-Bowman.
“The turnout we’ve generated will be a model for Jewish communities across the country,” said Teach New York founder and CEO Maury Litwack.
Rabbi Evan Hoffman, past president of the Westchester Board of Rabbis and head of the Anshe Sholom synagogue in New Rochelle, was another key figure in the voter mobilization effort.
He voted for Latimer and said “100%” of his congregants did as well.
“Bowman is opposed to Israel and, more subtly, to the Jews in his own district,” the rabbi said.
Bowman, a former high school principal, embarrassed the 16th District in other ways following his election in 2020, after which he aligned himself with the far-left bloc that included Bronx and Queens Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)
On Dec. 7, Bowman became the 27th House member to be censured by his colleagues — and only the fifth so far this century — after pulling a fire alarm in a Capitol Hill office building Sept. 30 in order to delay a vote to avert a government shutdown.
He pleaded guilty on Oct. 26 to a misdemeanor count of raising a false fire alarm and agreed to pay a $1,000 fine and write an apology letter to the chief of the US Capitol Police.
At the time, Bowman said he “thought the alarm would open the door” and pulled it by “accident,” adding that he “was just trying to get to my vote and the door that’s usually open wasn’t open, it was closed.”
However, security camera footage showed Bowman pulling down two emergency exit signs from the doors before pulling the alarm — and then running away.
A Capitol Police investigator who looked into the incident said other security footage showed Bowman “jogging” down a staircase after tripping the alarm and “walking at a normal pace” when exiting onto New Jersey Avenue.
Bowman later passed seven Capitol Police officers without telling them about his “accident,” which forced an evacuation of the building that lasted for an hour and a half, the investigator said.
This past January, Bowman was criticized after The Daily Beast revealed that he kept a personal blog that espoused conspiracy theories related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
In May, the same outlet reported that Bowman maintained a personal YouTube page that subscribed to channels promoting conspiracy theories about UFOs and flat Earth theory — as well as Chinese and Russian propaganda.
