Jamaal Bowman’s Quixotic Quest to Stay in Congress (2024)

Jamaal Bowman’s shot wasn’t sinking. The second-term congressman from New York was playing two-on-two on a brightly colored outdoor basketball court in Westchester County, and the kids opposite him—one 18 years old, the other 23—were winning handily.

Bowman is an athletic guy—last year he bench-pressed 405 pounds in a video posted on X—but he wasn’t exactly outfitted for hoops. The game was the first stop of a nonstop itinerary of events scheduled for the first day of early voting in New York’s 16^th District, where a hotly contested Democratic primary is playing out across an area that includes the wealthy river towns along the Hudson and the much more racially diverse Bronx. Bowman’s challenger is the 70-year-old county executive George Latimer, a white, much more conservative candidate with name recognition in Westchester County and an astonishing war chest.

On the court, Bowman had a steal and a few assists, but there was no getting around the fact that he was up against a formidable and much younger duo. “He’s an IQ player, he sees it, he has the vision on the court,” said Ntyjhali Francis, his teammate, an 18-year-old recent graduate of New Rochelle High School. Francis had played football in high school; because of his age, though, he had never voted before. His first ballot would be for Bowman.

To see Bowman among the youth is to see him in his element. He made his career and reputation working with kids, as founder and former principal of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a public middle school in the Bronx. His embrace of youth-favored policies, including Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, tax increases for the wealthy, and, recently, his unstinting call for a cease-fire in Gaza, has made him a darling of the young and politically active, who buoyed his first campaign and have turned out in droves to support his reelection for a third term.

When I pulled up to the playground, in the suburb of New Rochelle, the first two people I spoke to were college kids who were home for the summer and volunteering for the campaign. They had graduated from high school in nearby Larchmont, and as part of a civics class a few years back, they had had to volunteer for a political campaign. Both had volunteered for George Latimer’s 2021 reelection run for county executive. Now the women were planning to spend the next two weeks going all out to stop him from unseating Bowman.

At 48, Bowman is young himself, in Washington years at least—especially for an incumbent congressional Democrat, a group for whom the median age is over 60. In a different era, he’d probably be heralded as a rising star—a young, Black politician with exceptional stage presence and real ties to the community, an elected official with a bead on the constituencies Democrats are terribly afraid are falling out of their orbit: young voters and Black male voters.

Except Bowman is now on the ropes, likely to lose reelection, facing down the most money that has ever been spent in a congressional primary, 80percent of it coming as campaign ads against him or boosting his opponent. What went wrong?

Well, for one thing, he pulled a fire alarm in the U.S. Capitol building, an infraction more fit for a middle school student than a principal. He advocates strongly for progressive causes. He joined the Squad. And he has unabashedly criticized the far-right government of Israel and America’s unconditional support for it, moving further left on the issue throughout his time in Congress while simultaneously representing a district with a large Jewish population—resulting, not infrequently, in tensions with local Jewish leaders. The all-powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee has made knocking out Bowman its top electoral priority in the 2024 cycle, or maybe ever—it has never spent more in a race in its 60-year history. (In fact, no outside group has ever spent more on a congressional race, according to the New York Times.)

The push to unseat Bowman has also meant that a flood of opposition research has been hand-delivered to the press: Stories have abounded this year of wacky posts unearthed from an old, deactivated blog Bowman once kept (at least one poem implied a conspiracy theory about 9/11); the questionable YouTube channels he has subscribed to (also featuring conspiracy theories); his placement of Black Panther Assata Shakur on the Wall of Honor at the middle school he ran; and his attendance record on House votes. His campaign staff expressed exasperation to me about just how much of it had made its way into print, especially because some of it was factually dubious and had to be walked back.

A few more minutes on the court, and Bowman was starting to get winded. “Next basket wins,” he declared. Then, he leaned on the one advantage of his that he hadn’t been using: his size. Hoisting a shot from just inside the free-throw line, he banked it off the backboard and rattled the ball into the net, victorious. The game ended, and with it my hopes of getting some time on the court myself.

“Oh, man, my shape is not good. I was not getting anything,” he told me afterward.

A battery of youth volunteers, from groups including Jews for Economic and Racial Justice, If Not Now, and Jews for Jamaal, started scrambling to get the shuttle bus ready to head to the polling station. One group, Protect Our Power, had been formed just in the past few months to protect youth-aligned members of Congress from the incoming big-money blitz that seeks to knock left-wing members out of the House.

Some of the volunteers had traveled in from out of state, were crashing at friends’ places, and were working remotely by day and volunteering feverishly on nights and weekends. Some had even quit their jobs to dedicate themselves to protecting the incumbents they felt so strongly about. Protect Our Power had first formed to defend Summer Lee, whom AIPAC had frenziedly recruited to run a challenger against. (Lee’s eventual challenger was deemed too weak, and AIPAC didn’t formally get in the race; Lee won.) Then the group set to work for Bowman. Next stop would be St. Louis, for Rep. Cori Bush. The kids spoke glowingly of the congressman, whom no one referred to as “Congressman.” (Everyone was calling him Bowman or Jamaal.)

“He’s the candidate who’s inspiring young people,” said 21-year-old Ella Weber, of Protect Our Power, who had come up from Washington. “Especially with the increased apathy among young people, these are the people we get inspired by, and it’s really frustrating that the Democratic Party doesn’t care.”

“Politics is not as hype as it used to be,” said Francis. “But he’s genuine.”

Bowman spoke to some TV cameras and dapped up a guy who had come to the playground with two pit bulls, encouraging him to vote. He chatted up another parkgoer, who was watching a five-on-five game that was running full court on the court adjacent to where Bowman had played, seemingly unaware that he, the basketball observer, was in the middle of a campaign event.

“You registered to vote?” Bowman asked him.

“Yeah,” he said.

“As a Democrat?” Bowman followed.

“Yeah,” he said, shrugging.

“Then, come vote, man—come on. We need your help, man.”

The kids were organized and disciplined. They were on message and they were believers. It was all very heartwarming and sweet. But the real question remained: Was this group ruthless enough to beat the most powerful Washington lobbying group, which was spending the most money it had ever spent?

All available polling showed Bowman down; the most recent major survey, conducted for the pro-Latimer Democratic Majority for Israel group, had him trailing by an astonishing 17 points. Could this team of volunteers really spring what would be one of the biggest political upsets in American politics?

Bowman stood up at the front of the bus, which was readying to take a batch of voters to the polling station. He thanked his volunteers. He turned to Weber, said she was doing a great job, and admitted he didn’t remember her name. “A lot of them I don’t know because they just be in the streets,” he said, laughing. With that, we drove off.

The $25 million that has been sunk into this congressional primary is about Israel—but also possibly about the changing rules the New York Democratic machine seems to cycle through to stave off progressives.

When Bowman first ran for Congress, at 44 years old, he took on an incumbent, the then-73-year-old Democrat Eliot Engel. Engel was older and white and notoriously absent from the district.

Engel was also the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He was hawkish and he loved AIPAC, and it loved him. But this was before the lobbying group began spending actively in elections; perhaps it didn’t realize just how much trouble its man was in until it was too late.

Bowman’s challenge to Engel was a shock—received even as an insult in some corners—and Democrats came out of the woodwork to stop him from taking on the incumbent. Hillary Clinton gave Engel her very first House endorsem*nt of the 2020 cycle. The Congressional Black Caucus also endorsed the white Engel against Bowman, during the height of the George Floyd protests.

None of this was personal, Democrats said. No hard feelings! It wasn’t because Bowman was Black, and it definitely wasn’t because Bowman was progressive. It was because incumbency is the most important thing in the Democratic Party, and Democrats protect their own. It was wrong, the establishment Democrats suggested, that anyone securely in office would face a primary challenge; it mattered not that it was from the left, but that Democrat-on-Democrat squabbling detracted from the party’s larger political goals. “Every dime we spend in a primary between two Democrats is money we don’t spend winning the White House. Picking up the US Senate,” George Latimer himself wrote on Facebook in July 2019.

Bowman won anyway, a result of a grassroots groundswell and backlash to incredible gaffes by Engel, who was caught on a hot mic saying “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care,” about attending a local event about police brutality just days before the election.

One election cycle later, in 2022, AIPAC began really putting money into campaigns. The group targeted Democratic primaries, boosting more conservative candidates in deep-blue districts and in open seats. By spending exorbitantly, it was able to help a lot of its preferred candidates win, thus moving the entire Democratic caucus to the right.

For the 2024 cycle, AIPAC drew up plans for an even more ambitious blitz to unseat incumbent progressives, targeting in particular the group known as the Squad. Taking out an incumbent is hard work, which means more money; AIPAC, in late 2023, was prepared to spend $100million. The group sourced the cash from Republican billionaires and megadonors, who make up the overwhelming majority of the top 10 recent contributors to the group’s United Democracy Project PAC. (These conservative donors seem to recognize that AIPAC’s plan helps them with their shared goal of moving Congress to the right; Trump-backing billionaires like Nelson Peltz are also now donating directly to Latimer, and there’s an ongoing campaign to re-register district Republicans as Democrats to vote on Latimer’s behalf.) AIPAC began recruiting Latimer to take out Bowman last July, several months before Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

A longtime politician, Latimer has served as a city councilor in Rye, a county legislator in Westchester, and a state assemblyman, and he is well known throughout the district. He joined the race officially on Dec. 6.

Since then, he has been running a campaign premised on “uplifting all communities” and protecting a woman’s right to choose. AIPAC is by far his largest donor; he is AIPAC’s largest recipient of donations this cycle. Over $14.5million in spending has come from AIPAC’s United Democracy Project PAC alone.

Now that Bowman is the incumbent, though, establishment Democrats seem largely unmoved by his being targeted for removal. Clinton endorsed Latimer against Bowman. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which in 2020 blacklisted any vendor who worked for a primary challenger, has a bunch of alums working for Latimer. State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs donated to Latimer. The Congressional Black Caucus did endorse Bowman this time but has done little on his behalf. (Hakeem Jeffries also technically endorsed Bowman, with a whisper, and donated some money: $5,000 in January; $2,000 in June.)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, has said the race is her most pressing electoral priority. It’s one thing to knock off a handful of absentee incumbents or win a few open seats. It’s another to defend them, and for progressives it’s been all hands on deck. (Bernie Sanders spent the weekend before the primary campaigning for Bowman too.) One of the few establishment groups that have come to Bowman’s aid is the College Democrats of America, which is effectively an internal organ of the Democratic National Committee, not remotely radical, that has chafed against Biden over his Israel policy.

One more surprise ally: the Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA’s New York City chapter defiantly withdrew its endorsem*nt from Bowman after his 2020 campaign after finding him to be insufficiently critical of Israel. Now, in part because of the threat from AIPAC, the DSA has done an about-face: The group recently re-endorsed him and has been running independent door-knocking efforts on his behalf.

Still, the flood of negative campaign ads against Bowman have been truly massive: the airwaves, the phone lines, and every mailbox in Westchester County are jammed with messaging claiming that Bowman is a rogue of contemptible character who has undermined Joe Biden and the Democratic Party at every turn. Because Bowman’s calls for a cease-fire are popular among large swaths of the Democratic electorate, none of the major AIPAC-backed television ads makes mention of Israel. (The group does have a digital ad that mentions Bowman’s record on Israel and alleges that he is antisemitic.)

Instead, the main narrative revolves around a deeply misleading account of the 2021 infrastructure bill vote and a claim that Bowman worked with Republicans to sabotage the president.

The opposite is closer to the truth. Back in 2021, the White House had endeavored to tie the president’s infrastructure bill to its much more ambitious Build Back Better Act, which featured basically the entire Biden agenda, including universal pre-K, huge spending on child care, housing, free college, and climate spending. Progressives worked closely with White House chief of staff Ron Klain on a strategy to withhold a vote on the infrastructure deal until Build Back Better was first passed, so that the two would get passed together. A handful of conservative Democrats worked with Republicans to demand that the infrastructure bill get a stand-alone vote. When negotiations broke down, the two bills got uncoupled, and infrastructure came up on its own first. Bowman voted against it—along with a number of other progressives—hoping to rescue the Biden agenda in Build Back Better. The infrastructure bill passed with Republican support, and Build Back Better, the majority of the Biden agenda, died. (Bowman votes with Biden 94percent of the time.)

It’s hard to make that pithy, which is probably why the simpler narrative—that Bowman somehow voted against Biden—has gained so much traction. When I talked to Weber, of Protect Our Power, and Thomas Mande, of Jews for Jamaal, they said that this was the biggest misconception they were combating while out door knocking.* The AIPAC-funded misrepresentation of Bowman’s infrastructure vote has really stuck.

Latimer is not experiencing the same deluge of negative advertising, though he has long bragged about his close relationships with local Republicans, including how he has supported them at the ballot box. He has also pledged not to raise taxes on the rich, in opposition to a huge theme of Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. He has said, of Bowman, that the congressman has an “obvious ethnic benefit” and, during a debate, referred to Bowman’s constituency as “San Francisco” and “Dearborn”—the latter a reference to the Michigan city with the largest Arab population in the country, where there is outrage and frustration over Biden’s Israel policy (but almost no Bowman donors). After Latimer’s comments were condemned as racist, Islamophobic, or just wrong, Latimer told Good Morning America that Bowman was trying to “play the ethnic game.”

The bus ride was short and delivered us to the New Rochelle City Annex, a polling site. I sat next to a CNN producer, who had just come from a Latimer event that morning.

She showed me video of the event on her phone. Some 300 members of the Carpenters union had packed a venue seemingly to capacity. All of them wore matching bright orange shirts. “Couldn’t have been more different,” she told me of the two campaign events. Latimer’s was everything the sparsely attended Bowman event was not: polished, formal, crowded. You wouldn’t have guessed we were riding with the incumbent.

Behind me, I overheard two Bowman volunteers making conversation.

“When were you born?” asked one.

“2002,” said the other.

“2004,” said the first.

We disembarked from the bus, and Bowman walked down the block with another 18-year-old Black graduate of New Rochelle High School, who had never before voted. When the cameras circled up in front of the annex, waiting for Bowman to go in and cast his vote, he put his arm around the teenager, front and center.

“This young man is the star of the show. First-time voter. We should clap for that.” Then, he beckoned his 18-year-old basketball partner to join him. “Both Black young men. You see, this is the people that the Democratic Party is trying to bring in.” Then, all three entered to cast their votes.

Immediately, there were problems. Bowman’s vote got logged, but neither one of the teenagers came up in the system. Both, I was told, had registered to vote at the high school, but there was evidently some breakdown along the line, and neither was appearing as a registered, eligible voter.

There were grumbles in the press scrum. The Bowman volunteers scrambled to figure it out. “Thankfully it’s the last day of registration,” said Weber. “We’ve got people inside helping,” said another volunteer.

Then another crisis broke out. “There is a problem at the polling site,” said Lawrence Wang, the Bowman campaign staffer managing the event. “The Carpenters union is intimidating voters at Will Library in Yonkers. I called the poll watchers there, but they’re feeling very outnumbered.”

He ran off to take a call. “It’s Carpenters guys, well within the 100-foot boundary of the polling site, intimidating voters,” he told me. “We called the voter protection team.”

Not long after, Rev. Frank Coleman, president of the Yonkers branch of the NAACP, and a local pastor, Margaret Coleman, uploaded a video claiming that before they were able to cast their votes, members of the Carpenters union had blocked their entry into the polling site; as Frank Coleman put it, they “wouldn’t let me through.” “Voter intimidation,” Margaret Coleman says in the video, “it’s a real thing.” I tried to verify the allegation with the Colemans and the Bowman and Latimer campaigns, but didn’t hear back. When I reached out to the Carpenters union to find out more, Kevin Elkins, political director of the New York City Carpenters, responded: “If I was down 17 points, I’d smear everyone against me with bullsh*t too.”

Correction, June 25, 2024: This piece originally misidentified Thomas Mande as Thomas Monde.