NYC democratic socialist primary sweep
During the 2025 NYC mayoral race, two right-wing phenomena united in a campaign to sabotage Zohran Mamdani, the Muslim-American immigrant democratic socialist candidate. They were the Israel Lobby and the billionaire class. The media have covered them extensively as separate stories. But they are parallel and related. The Lobby is the equivalent of Zionist (ie. white) privilege. It consist largely of wealthy, right-wing, male donors. They target progressive insurgents with hundreds of millions in attack ads. Theirs is a similar (and often overlapping) profile to the billionaire class funding campaigns against populist democratic socialist or progressive candidates, who threaten their pocketbooks and lifestyle.
In the 2025 election, they wrung their hands, proclaiming that radical/anti-Semitic politics would poison the city for its wealthy white/Jewish residents, who would abandon the city in droves. The billionaire cohort, including the usual suspects (Bloomberg, Walton, Tisch, Diller, Lauder, Ackman, etc.) alone pumped over $20-million into a campaign to boost the corporate candidate, Andrew Cuomo, and attack Mamdani.
Of course, neither claim was legitimate. The sky didn’t fall. Capital didn’t flee. The oligarchs enjoyed their business and personal privilege in NYC too much to do that. Jews remained safe. The barbarians (immigrants) weren’t at the gates. Mamdani didn’t turn the city into a gulag or collective farm.
After Mamdani’s mayoral victory, there was a truculent response from the Lobby and its local self-appointed “Jewish leaders.” While they conceded his victory, they also urged him to restrain his attacks on Israel and warned that they’d be watching him. They even created a tip-line for Jews to report anti-Semitic acts, which presumably they could blame on the mayor for either inciting or failing to prevent. All this posturing was meant as a shot across the bow.
But unfortunately for them, fully one-third of the city’s views voted for Mamdani. Additionally, the new mayor had already forged his own alliances with alternate sectors of the Jewish community, including anti-Zionist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Zohran, and the ultra-Orthodox (anti-Zionist) Satmar sect; and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. So it was difficult to take the veiled threats terribly seriously.
Mamdani’s primary victory surge
Primary election results this week confirmed and amplified the success of the new progressive movement. Of the eight candidates Mamdani endorsed for federal and state offices, seven won. All the three Congressional candidates defeated incumbents One was a Jewish progressive who beat a pro-Israel candidate with close ties to Aipac.
You might think that this would lead the Democratic Establishment to engage in some stock-taking and adapt to the new politics in some way. Perhaps to reach out to Mamdani and progressives, welcome them into their new roles, and seek to adopt or even co-opt their issues which brought success at the ballot box. You would be wrong.
Those proverbial “Jewish leaders” (awarded the title by MSM outlets like the New York Times), renewed their dire warnings about the campaign’s supposed anti-Semitic dog whistles. Apparently calling the Gaza war a “genocide” constitutes anti-Semitism and physically endangers Jews. Denying one of those pro-Israel candidates a cup of coffee because of his links to Aipac, becomes an exemplar of Jew hatred sweeping the city.
Among the pearl-clutchers, was this former NYC rabbi who opposes Mamdani:
Rabbi Bachman said the primary results might also be an expression of a decades-long pattern among Jewish Americans, which he characterized as “an erosion of attachment to a sense of Jewish peoplehood, language, culture, land — the things that really bound us together for generations.”
“When those wear away, what’s left are universalist values,” he said. “And Israel doesn’t represent universalist values for a whole swath of younger American Jews.”
Yes and no. In fact, the disgust among American Jews against Israeli crimes is not an indication of an “erosion” of Jewish values. Just the opposite. It is an expression of Jewish values. It is an affirmation that Judaism–including peoplehood, language, liturgy, culture–is not everything Israel has become: apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc. Jews celebrate these values as both particular to Judaism and universal as well. The distinction which Bachman attempts to make between them is a false one.
Aipac’s toxic role in national races
Aipac too refused to acknowledge the primary victories. Instead, it trumpeted its successes in national races in which they largely supported and funded incumbents, who are rarely unseated regardless of who is supporting them. It treated the NYC races as a mere blip on the radar screen.
That doesn’t mean it’s resting on its laurels. On the contrary, Aipac and its sister-PAC, Democratic Majority for Israel, plan to spend over $100-million defeating progressives in Democratic primaries and general elections. They’ve targeted Arab and Muslim-Americans like Abdul Al-Sayed, running for governor of Michigan, who is sharply critical of Israeli aggression and genocide. Similarly, they’ve put a target on the back of Graham Platner, seeking to defeat a six-term Senate Republican, Susan Collins. He is an avowed democratic socialist endorsed by Bernie Sanders. He too readily tells campaign audiences he opposes Israeli wars of aggression in the Middle East. Additionally, he criticizes the for-sale sign the Israel Lobby has hung over American elections.
The billionaire class has taken especial umbrage at Platner’s attacks on crony capitalism and his analysis of its economic oligarchy. 97 billionaires poured $9.5-million into the campaign. A stealth PAC established by Wall Street oligarchs has raised $24-million to prop up Collins and defeat Platner, the antichrist (a term of art adopted by Christo-fascist, Peter Thiel). Aipac has added $6-million to ensure Collins continues to provide her assured pro-Israel votes for weapons for Israel. As of last February, fully 20% of her donations have come from Aipac and its donors.
You might expect liberal Democratic Jewish PACs like J Street to rally behind Platner. How can there be any hesitation to defeat Collins and provide what might be the crucial vote to ensure a new Democratic Senate majority? Nevertheless, the group has refused to support him because of a purported Nazi tattoo he once sported on his body.
In Michigan, Aipac is dumping nearly $20-million (so far) to defeat Arab-American, Abdul al-Sayed, another progressive candidate critical of Israel. He placed first in the three-way primary. He’s called for a cut-off of military aid for Israel. The group has a longstanding relationship with his primary opponent, Haley Stevens. It contributed $5-million to her 2022 campaign to oust Rep. Andy Levin, a liberal Zionist who ran afoul of the Lobby.
If Platner or Al-Sayed (or both) beat their Lobby-backed opponents it will, along with the NYC primary results, add further evidence of the waning of Zionist power in American politics. These high profile races are critical testing grounds. They will determine whether it maintains a stranglehold over Israel-related discourse; or the power it has exercised for generations to cow candidates, compel obedience and squelch dissent, will continue unabated.
Over the past decades, chinks in the Lobby’s armor have emerged. Some of its chosen candidates fell to progressive challengers. Others defied Aipac, taking increasingly critical stances and votes against Israeli interests in Congress. These defeats and defiance were a shock to the system after which it vowed to redouble their efforts. But the blood was in the water. American voters and politicians came to understand the Lobby wasn’t impregnable; that it had weaknesses.
The problem the Lobby faces is that a string of election victories for its candidates loses significance when it faces a single loss, as it did in a New Jersey primary. It spent $2.3-million to defeat a liberal Zionist Democratic candidate, while its own fell far short. Though that sufficiently suppressed the former’s vote tally, it enabled a democratic socialist to sweep in and win the Congressional seat. The result has been a black eye and an increasing impression of poor campaign strategy and hubris.
Israel itself weakened these efforts with its bloody war in Gaza killing nearly 100,000 Palestinians, including 20,000 children. Its invasions of Syria and Lebanon, along with its war of aggression against Iran, have deepened disgusted among many voters. Israel’s support has cratered in US polls. This has emboldened candidates, enabling them to voice views hitherto considered anathema: using the G-word for the first time concerning Israel; advocating cutting military aid; sanctioning radical settlers and ministers, etc. Further, these are not just lone voices in the House and Senate. There are now substantial pockets of resistance to the Lobby, and the billions in weapons we supply to Israel for these forever wars.
