New York’s primary elections are on Tuesday, and there’s no shortage of races that Jewish Americans should be keeping an eye on.
In New York City, several congressional seats are up for grabs, including the most Jewish district in the country, NY-12. Plus, will it be a rabbi or a Jewish lawyer who wins a state Assembly race on the Upper West Side?
Meanwhile, as a pair of pro-Israel congressmen take on Zohran Mamdani-backed progressives who are vocally pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel, Tuesday’s results will provide the latest reflection of where Democratic voters fall on the issue.
Outside the city, a Democratic primary will decide who will challenge pro-Israel Republican Congressman Mike Lawler for the NY-17 swing seat in November.
NY-12: The crown jewel
Rep. Jerry Nadler, a progressive stalwart and Congress’s most senior Jewish member, announced last fall that he would retire at the end of this term, leaving an open seat in the crown jewel district of New York politics: NY-12, which covers the Upper West and Upper East Sides, as well as midtown Manhattan. It is the most heavily Jewish district in the country, and a deep-blue district whose Democratic nominee is sure to succeed Nadler in Congress.
Four candidates (with double-digit polling numbers) are left standing: Micah Lasher, Alex Bores, Jack Schlossberg, and George Conway.
Lasher and Bores, both members of the State Assembly, are leading in the polls and are seen in many ways as very similar candidates, including in their pro-Israel, anti-Netanyahu stances. They’ve also both supported much of the same state-level legislation aimed at combating antisemitism.
Lasher, however, has the support of his former boss, Nadler, and much of the West Side political establishment. Bores, meanwhile, has built a coalition that includes both pro-Israel moderates and progressive groups critical of the Jewish state.
NY-10: Jewish incumbent vs. Jewish challenger
Many wondered what would become of former City Comptroller Brad Lander after he reportedly stumped for Zohran Mamdani in hopes of a role in his administration that he didn’t receive.
Now Lander, who was Mamdani’s most prominent Jewish ally, has the mayor’s full-throated support in his run to supplant incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in NY-10, which includes Lower Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn, for which Lander was a three-term City Council member.
Lander has homed in on Goldman’s endorsement from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group that’s become anathema for progressives. (Goldman’s AIPAC endorsement has also been a sticking point for a number of his progressive critics.) Goldman, in turn, has emphasized that he’s endorsed by both AIPAC and the progressive J Street, two ideologically dissimilar pro-Israel groups, as evidence that he comes by his views independently.
The two candidates have made similar commitments to issues like fighting the Trump administration and ICE, but Lander has separated himself on the issue of Israel.
While Goldman has resisted growing calls for Democratic politicians to support conditioning military aid to Israel, Lander says Israel has committed genocide and opposes aid to Israel for both offensive weapons and the Iron Dome defensive missile system.
The latest poll, conducted in mid-May, had Lander ahead by 34 percentage points.
NY-13: From Columbia encampment to Congress?
Darializa Avila Chevalier is a Mamdani-backed, pro-Palestinian progressive who’s launching a challenge against incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a more moderate, pro-Israel lawmaker endorsed by AIPAC. Israel and AIPAC have been front and center in Avila Chevalier’s campaign in upper Manhattan and the Bronx, and she has said she would sign onto the Block the Bombs to Israel Act and oppose all military aid to the country.
Avila Chevalier attended an anti-Israel rally, which the Democratic Socialists of America had promoted, the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Other DSA members like Mamdani have distanced themselves from the gathering, which drove some former DSA members like Lander away from the organization.
“She went to celebrate the death of innocent people in Israel right after the attack,” Espaillat said during a recent televised debate.
“I was there at that rally on Oct. 8 because I remembered what happened in 2014,” Avila Chevalier replied, referring to Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2014, which occurred shortly after she returned from an internship in the West Bank. “And I knew the reaction would be an outsized reaction that would cause the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people.”
One recent poll had Espaillat leading by 8 percentage points, while another survey, commissioned by a group that’s backing Avila Chevalier, had her ahead by 4.
NY-7: Valdez, Reynoso, and AIPAC in the “Commie Corridor”
There is no pro-Israel candidate in the primary for NY-7, the deeply progressive district that covers parts of Brooklyn and Queens, including the so-called Commie Corridor. But that hasn’t stopped AIPAC from becoming a central topic of the race, which is between three progressives who each accuse Israel of committing genocide.
State Assembly member Claire Valdez, who’s backed by Mamdani and the DSA and is the farthest-left candidate in the contest, suggested that her opponent, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, was being boosted by AIPAC expenditures. Valdez’s comments backfired after AIPAC was reported to be uninvolved with the super PAC boosting Reynoso.
Meanwhile, Reynoso and City Council member Julie Won, who’s running in third place, have criticized Valdez for benefiting from outside spending by super PACs, including the pro-Palestinian group American Priorities.
According to the latest poll from May, Valdez and Reynoso have 23% and 21% of the vote, with Won trailing at 13%. Forty-three percent remain undecided. The poll has a margin of error of 5.2%.
Valdez and Reynoso both oppose sending offensive and defensive military subsidies to Israel, and say they would sign onto the Block the Bombs Act.
Valdez has a longer history of involvement with pro-Palestinian advocacy and criticized Reynoso for accusing Israel of genocide only after he launched his campaign for Congress. She has attended a number of protests organized by the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace in the last three years. She also cosponsored the reintroduction of Mamdani’s failed “Not on our dime!” act in the State Assembly, which is aimed at blocking nonprofits from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Reynoso has the backing of the district’s outgoing Rep. Nydia Velazquez, as well as Rep. Jerrold Nadler, state Attorney General Letitia James, and the left-wing Working Families Party. He’s also been endorsed by Hasidic leaders in Williamsburg’s heavily Orthodox community and has been campaigning alongside progressive City Council member Lincoln Restler, who is Jewish, to mobilize the community’s voting bloc.
NY-17: Lawler vs.?
In a swing district just north of New York City, three Democrats are battling it out for the opportunity to unseat Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in November. The district is heavily Jewish and includes Rockland and Putnam Counties, as well as parts of Westchester and Dutchess Counties.
Two of the three major candidates, Cait Conley and Beth Davidson, are occupying a more moderate space, attempting to appeal to constituents as supporters of Israel who oppose President Donald Trump and his administration. Effie Phillips-Staley, who has been polling consistently in third place, is a staunchly pro-Palestinian progressive who traveled to the West Bank this year and drew criticism after appearing on streamer Hasan Piker’s show to discuss her experience.
Conley, a former Biden national security adviser who has led in the latest polls, was endorsed by the pro-Israel group Democratic Majority for Israel.
Davidson, who’s Jewish, was a board member at her family’s synagogue and has credited that experience with driving her public service. She told JTA that she wants her campaign to be a “home” for Jews who’ve “felt lost in the Democratic Party.”
The primary’s winner will go on to face Lawler, who has the backing of AIPAC, and its super PAC’s $95-million war chest, and the Republican Jewish Coalition. The seat is regarded as one of the Democrats’ best chances for a pickup in the fall.
State Assembly: A rabbi and a Jewish lawyer walk into a polling place …
As he runs for Congress, Lasher is vacating his Upper West Side 69th Assembly district seat. The two candidates facing off (literally) to replace him are Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay, who’s been an associate dean at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary for 10 years, and Eli Northrup, a Jewish lawyer who is policy director for the Bronx Defenders.
Both candidates describe themselves as progressives. While Ruskay has been backed by a good deal of the West Side’s political establishment, Northrup has more left-wing support, with endorsements from Mamdani and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
In an interview, Ruskay told JTA that she views joining the State Assembly as “an extension of my rabbinate” and discussed the centrality of justice to her work in the Jewish professional world. If successful, she would be the first female rabbi elected to office in New York.
Northrup detailed his complicated views on the term “Zionism” in an interview with JTA, echoing the analysis in a Moment Magazine piece that the terms Zionism and Zionist have “outlived their usefulness both as concepts and as terms.”
It’s on in Albany: Hochul vs. Blakeman
Gov. Kathy Hochul and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman are shoo-ins to win their respective primaries Tuesday, officially setting up a November gubernatorial election between the two.
Blakeman, who is Jewish, has framed his candidacy as a fight against not only Hochul but also against Mayor Mamdani. In speaking to Jewish voters who oppose the mayor, he has used Hochul’s endorsement and collaboration with Mamdani against her.
“I am running for governor because we can’t afford to have four more years of Comrade Kathy with three more years of Mamdani the Commie,” Blakeman said at a recent RJC event. Blakeman pointed to his record of coming down hard on pro-Palestinian protesters in Nassau County and blasted Mamdani for skipping the Israel Day parade.
Hochul, meanwhile, signed a bill creating 50-foot “buffer zones” outside houses of worship in New York and wrote that she was “proud to march alongside thousands of New Yorkers at the Israel Day Parade” the same day as the RJC event. A number of people marching were seen holding Blakeman campaign signs.
