Yesterday, John covered liberal New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman's apparent mental breakdown during a rally with AOC and Bernie Sanders this weekend. The F-bombs were flying and Bowman appeared to be enraged that the voters in his district might be prepared to oust him from his seat in today's Democratic primary election. Never mind the fact that the rally wasn't even held in his district and there were perhaps 300 people there at most. (AOC attempted to claim there were 1,200.) Bowman is facing off against Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who has received strong backing from AIPAC in his campaign. Bowman seems to be even more incensed that his voters may be preparing to replace him with a white guy. Such a thing would have been unthinkable not very long ago, but Bowman is a new breed of politician not previously seen even in blue New York City, and the last time we checked, Latimer was leading him by a whopping 17 points in the polls. This should be interesting, to put it mildly. (Associated Press)

Rep. Jamaal Bowman, one of the most liberal members of Congress, will try to fight off a strong Democratic primary challenge Tuesday from moderate county executive George Latimer in a New York race that has put a spotlight on the party’s divides over the Israel-Hamas war.

Latimer got into the race at the urging of Jewish leaders upset with Bowman’s criticism of Israel.

An exorbitant amount of money, mostly tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has flooded into the race to oppose Bowman after he accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, where over 37,000 Palestinians have been killed. Bowman also opposed a symbolic House resolution to support Israel after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

Most analysts are characterizing this race as being between Bowman and AIPAC rather than Bowman and Latimer, which is probably a fair assessment. AIPAC has flushed more than 15 million dollars into advertising in support of Latimer, which is a very large amount of cash to show up in a primary race in a virtually uncontested Democratic district. And why wouldn't they dip a very big toe into this race? New York City's Jewish population is sizable and influential. There are more than 180 orthodox synagogues in the Big Apple. Latimer has offered unconditional support for Israel. Bowman supports Hamas. This was obviously a no-brainer for AIPAC.

Simply dumping campaign cash into a race doesn't automatically change the outcome, however. Many well-funded campaigns have failed in the past. A polling gap as wide as the one we are observing suggests there has been a sea change among the electorate. In addition to the strong Jewish presence in the community, Israel is broadly supported by a significant majority of non-Jewish voters. Most people are put off by the increasingly violent pro-Hamas protests and riots taking place around the country. If we wanted to define this as a single-issue primary election, the situation in Gaza and the United States response to it would be a logical choice.

The AP is trying to make hay out of the racial angle in this race. They point out that the district was almost evenly split between Black and white voters prior to the drawing of the new map following the last census. Now the district is 21% Black and 42% non-Hispanic white, taking in a larger section of the suburbs. But those same voters had no problem supporting Black candidates in previous elections. This is still New York City, after all. I rather doubt that race is a significant factor here.

But is it really that simple? Even before Hamas attacked Israel last year, Jamaal Bowman had already become something of an embarrassment to his own party. You will recall that Bowman was charged by the DC Attorney General for falsely pulling a fire alarm in Congress and he went on to be censured for it in December. He has made numerous outrageous statements on the floor of the House as he sought to embed himself with the Squad. Meanwhile, Latimer, at age 70, is seen as a centrist Democrat who is seeking to secure more federal resources for his home district while largely avoiding the limelight. Could the voters of Westchester County simply have grown tired of Bowman's clown show and started looking at other options?

None of this is official until the actual voting is concluded, of course. Turnout tends to be low in primary elections meaning that unexpected outcomes are always possible. But it's rare to see the polls being off by nearly twenty points. It will be surprising - at least to me - if we wake up tomorrow morning and learn that Jamaal Bowman is once again his party's candidate for that House seat. What could be very interesting, however, is if he loses the primary and decides to run for the seat as an independent. I doubt he could muster enough votes to defeat Latimer, but he might be able to bleed off enough of them to flip the seat to the GOP.