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AIPAC’S DEFEAT OF JAMAAL BOWMAN DISGUISES ITS WEAKNESS  
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Branco Marcetic
June 26, 2024
Jacobin
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_ Lost in the triumphalism over Jamaal Bowman’s loss is that AIPAC
has had to drastically narrow its ambitions, targeting the most
already vulnerable of Israel critics in order to inflate its strength.
_

Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., speaks during a primary election night
watch party, Tuesday, June 25, 2024, in Yonkers, New York. , (AP
Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

 

Left-wing insurgent campaigns have hoped that while getting into
Congress might be extraordinarily hard, once in, they could rely on
the benefit of being incumbents to hang onto their seats and stay in
Congress. Last night’s Democratic primary race for New York’s
16th congressional district, which saw Squad member and two-term
representative Jamaal Bowman fall to Westchester county executive
George Latimer by nearly twenty points, shows this is no longer a safe
bet.

Last night’s result will be a boon for the Israel lobby group the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which, through its
super PAC United Democracy Project (UDP), poured nearly $15 million
into the race to unseat Bowman. It is arguably the crowning
achievement of a strategy that pro-Israel groups first pioneered
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years ago to deny Bernie Sanders’s campaign surrogate Nina Turner a
safe congressional seat in Ohio she was set to easily win.

Bowman’s loss will soon be used — in fact, already is
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was before the polls even closed
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and other pro-war forces to scare less courageous candidates and
members of Congress into line. Pro-Israel groups have framed the race
as a referendum on Bowman’s and the rest of the Squad’s stance on
the Gaza war US-Israel policy and argued that these positions are out
of step with a more centrist Democratic electorate. They have been
assisted by much of the press, which you will soon see helpfully
spreading AIPAC’s preferred narrative in coverage of Latimer’s
victory.

US politicians were already terrified of AIPAC when it ramped up the
scale of its political interference in 2022 by entering Democratic
primaries directly and funneling massive amounts of cash against
progressive candidates critical of Israel, however mild or tangential
to their candidacy those criticisms were. As several people involved
in progressive campaigns told me
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this year, candidates and politicians often privately say they have to
hide or walk back their disgust toward Israel’s actions in case they
get primaried over it. The goal with the Bowman result is to wield it
as a cautionary tale of what can happen to your political career if
you defy the pro-Israel lobby, whether by voting against US military
aid to Israel or even simply backing a cease-fire, both of which
Bowman did.

This gambit of using Bowman’s loss to convince others that
criticizing Israel will end their careers may well work. But it really
shouldn’t. In reality, AIPAC’s threat is more of a bluff than it
seems.

Hidden Weakness

AIPAC’s high-profile involvement in Bowman’s primary (and its plan
to do the same to fellow Squad member Representative Cori Bush
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August) was, in reality, a carefully calibrated public relations move
meant to inflate its own fearsome reputation on Capitol Hill while
disguising a less-than-stellar track record this year. It’s easy to
forget, but the media narrative for much of the past eight months was
that the Squad was facing an extinction-level event: an “electoral
bloodbath
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with at least four members (Bowman, Bush, and representatives Summer
Lee and Ilhan Omar) facing “brutal
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and “competitive primaries
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not to mention the entire bloc “grappling with one
career-threatening problem or another,” such as Representative
Rashida Tlaib’s November censure by the House
[[link removed]].AIPAC’s
high-profile involvement in Bowman’s primary was, in reality, a
carefully calibrated public relations move meant to inflate its own
fearsome reputation on Capitol Hill while disguising a
less-than-stellar track record this year.

“There is a 100% chance that members of the Squad are going to be
tagged with these far-left positions that are out of sync with the
mainstream of the party and the general public,” one Democratic
strategist said
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October.

That hasn’t really worked out. Despite her censure and generally
becoming a lightning rod for pro-Israel attacks, Tlaib is safe in her
seat, with no serious challenger
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in Michigan, with AIPAC having failed to recruit a challenger to run
against her despite dangling
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million
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front of them. Omar has won
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state Democratic Party endorsement — and has a fundraising advantage
— over her primary challenger in a race the pro-Israel lobby has
been pointedly absent from
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far.

The lobby has also fallen flat on its face in non-Squad-involved
races, blowing $4.6 million on beating centrist representative Dave
Min in March over his mild criticisms
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Israeli policy; the $
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set on fire running ads against Representative Thomas Massie, a
prominent GOP critic
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Israel, didn’t move the needle an inch in that race, which Massie
won with nearly 76 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, much
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public
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particularly Democratic voters
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to_ the Squad’s positions
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the Gaza war and US-Israel policy since October, contrary to what
AIPAC and its allies were rubbing their hands imagining eight months
ago — and contrary to neoliberal Democratic representative Josh
Gottheimer’s hopeful claim
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morning that “the Squad politics are on the way out, not the way
in.”

But AIPAC’s biggest failure this cycle was in fellow Squad member
Summer Lee’s reelection for the 12th District in Pennsylvania just
two months ago. Lee’s race, which she won by more than twenty
points, had many of the same factors that AIPAC and its boosters are
arguing doomed Bowman: her district had a significant Jewish
population; she didn’t mince words
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it came to Israel and its war; she was criticized
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some local Jewish leaders who even accused her
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being an antisemite; she voted against 
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aid to Israel; and, in theory, she had a precarious grip on her seat,
having only served one term after just barely scraping through
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win the Democratic primary two years earlier, when a tidal wave of
AIPAC spending obliterated her early lead.

And yet, this year, AIPAC preemptively bowed out of
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race despite big plans to spend $10 to 20 million to beat her,
because at least four people
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lobby feverishly tried to recruit in Pittsburgh said no, deciding she
wasn’t beatable. As Lee told me, “AIPAC lost because they
couldn’t win.”

This is part of a pattern: in both Pennsylvania and across the
country
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AIPAC endorsed candidates who tended to be in noncompetitive districts
or even running unopposed. That way, when its endorsees won,
regardless of whether or not their AIPAC endorsement actually figured
in the race, the lobby could then swoop in and loudly take
credit, publicize
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reverse-engineered 100 percent
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it) success [[link removed]] rate
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pro-Israel is good policy and good politics.”

That’s exactly why UDP scrambled to publicize
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defeat of Kina Collins this past March in Illinois’ 7th District at
the hands of a fourteen-term incumbent, calling her a “Justice
Democrats candidate” whose loss “was a significant defeat for the
Squad and the anti-Israel fringe.” In reality, Collins was neither a
Justice Democrats endorsee
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cent of outside spending backing her campaign, unlike two years ago
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But UDP spent
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half a million dollars on a race in which Collins came a distant
third
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so it could claim victory over pro-Palestinian activists.

None of this paints an image of an indomitable force assured of its
own power or the popularity of its ideas. And AIPAC’s involvement in
Bowman’s race fit squarely in this public relations–minded
strategy. The two-term congressman became such a major target of
AIPAC’s spending barrage not because he was a critic of Israel, but
because he was one of the few critics of Israel the organization could
actually beat.

Bowman’s Vulnerabilities

What made Bowman such a vulnerable candidate?

It’s hard to argue it was because his challenger’s position on the
Gaza war — which Latimer made a habit of not giving a straight
answer
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— was more popular than Bowman’s support for a cease-fire and
cutting off US military aid. An Emerson College poll
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voters in the district from early this month found that more voters
favored a candidate who backed a Gaza cease-fire than vice versa, and
that far more (50 percent) believed the United States was spending too
much on aid to Israel in its war than too little (17 percent) or the
right amount (33 percent). Yet despite this, voters also said they
were more aligned with Latimer on the war by a nearly sixteen-point
margin.

In fact, Bowman wasn’t even disliked in the district, with voters
holding a favorable opinion of him by a fifty-three to forty-one
margin. It’s just that Latimer was better liked: 65 percent viewed
him favorably, compared to 23 percent who gave an unfavorable view.

Bowman’s disadvantage went well beyond the issue of Israel. Having
come out of nowhere to win the seat in 2020, he was never secure in
the district. As the _Huffington Post_’s Daniel Marans reported
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Bowman won reelection handily in 2022 largely because the
establishment vote was split between two candidates.

Latimer, meanwhile, was a local boy who had spent decades in
Westchester and New York politics serving in various political posts:
Rye city councilman, Westchester county legislator and board chairman,
county Democratic Party chair, New York state assemblyman and senator,
and Westchester county executive. This helps explain Latimer’s
advantage in name recognition and favorability in the district, as
well as the unusual amount
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local official and party endorsements
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an incumbent.

It’s not a coincidence that Squad members like Tlaib and Lee — who
came to their seats by first rising through state politics and, in
Lee’s case, riding a progressive wave
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put several progressive allies in key posts — managed to ward off
similar local challengers. The victorious Lee was even endorsed by her
two AIPAC-backed senators, Bob Casey and John Fetterman, both of whom
oppose a cease-fire. A former Bowman advisor told
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“he did not make the kind of connections and build out the coalition
like he needed to in the district” — a district that had been
redrawn since his 2020 win to include wealthier, whiter parts of the
county.

Bowman was also hamstrung by a preexisting, widely covered, and
non-Israel-related scandal: pulling a fire alarm in the middle of a
House session, for which he earned a censure from the Republican-led
lower chamber and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. The embarrassing
incident made national and local headlines for many months.

AIPAC’s spending onslaught may have taken advantage of these
vulnerabilities, but it also had an impact in itself. The sheer scale
of anti-Bowman money poured into the race — a total of $18 million
from anti-Bowman outside groups, which made it the most expensive
House primary in history
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and, as one observer pointed out
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more than three times the total amount raised in the entire British
election taking place right now — funded a relentless stream of
negative ads that played on this scandal and highlighted Bowman’s
other missteps. Those included opposition research that had him
espousing fringe views before he was an elected official and, most
prominently, his vote against the president’s infrastructure bill.

That vote, in reality, stayed true to the legislative strategy
Democratic leadership had themselves devised to get the president’s
ambitious agenda across the finish line. But shorn of context, the
attacks sent a message that AIPAC had first devised way back in 2021
against Turner, and which pointedly never actually mentioned Israel:
progressives and the Squad were incompetent, fringe extremists
disloyal to the party and not serious about legislating. It was an
effective message in a solidly blue district where 87 percent voted
for Biden in 2020. The pro-Bowman side simply could not match that
firepower to counteract this wall-to-wall narrative and redefine him
in the voters’ eyes, having been outspent by a massive more than
seven-to-one ratio
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It’s also impossible to deny that, in a heavily Jewish district
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the outcome was affected by Bowman’s positions on Israel. More
specifically, as Marans pointed out
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the Congressman made several unforced errors, including failing to
turn up to post-October 7 vigils and arrange meetings with local
Jewish leaders and constituents, and using rhetoric of questionable
political wisdom to criticize Israel’s war that made it easier for
opponents to smear him as a fringe extremist. These errors alienated
persuadable middle-of-the-road pro-Israel voters, including the
liberal Zionist group J Street, which had worked with Bowman in
previous elections. Some of it came as a last-minute attempt to shore
up his left flank and drive up turnout. But some of it predated the
election, seemingly in response to pressure to move left on the issue.

The result was a double-edged sword. Bowman ended the race as a
candidate whose rhetoric and positions more closely matched those of
activists, while campaigning in a district that had become more
conservative than the one he had first won with more moderate
posturing. Whether forcing Bowman to shift constitutes a bigger win
than keeping in Congress one of the few members willing to vote
against military aid to Israel and one of its most prominent
pro-cease-fire advocates will be up for internal left-wing debate.

Make Them Realize

No one, not even the staunchest liberal supporters of Israel or its
current war, should come away feeling good about the Bowman race. As
many have correctly pointed out
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the unprecedented sum of money UDP blasted into the district to defeat
him came from pro-Trump Republican megadonors who hold repugnant views
at odds with most of those who voted against Bowman, whether on labor
rights
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taxing the rich or abortion rights and the legitimacy of the 2020
election result. Through AIPAC, these donors have jerry-rigged a way
to interfere in and shape the Democratic Party.

There’s no reason to believe this playbook is going to stay limited
to the pro-Israel lobby. As former representative Andy Levin told me
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“This may have been pioneered by AIPAC, but Big Pharma isn’t
stupid, the tobacco industry isn’t stupid, the fossil fuel industry
isn’t stupid. Why won’t they just say: ‘Great idea, AIPAC. Thank
you very much. We will pick the nominee of both parties and that’ll
be great for us to advance our interests.’”

Meanwhile, to the extent that anyone believed it in the first place,
no one should take seriously anymore the Democratic establishment’s
claims that it believes in diversity, protecting incumbents, and
passing the torch to a new generation. Party bigwigs enabled
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and in some cases
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assisted, the replacement of an exciting, young, black educator with a
seventy-year-old, white career politician who had a history
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obstructing federal desegregation efforts.

Bowman’s challenger’s campaign also happened to be one of the more
shockingly racist ones in recent history, with Latimer accusing Bowman
of having an “ethnic benefit
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of having the heavily Arab American town of Dearborn, Michigan, as his
“constituency
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“taking money from Hamas
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to name just a few
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Press coverage fixated on Bowman’s scandals while largely sidelining
Latimer’s numerous missteps
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including missing a budget vote because he was on a trip with a woman
who wasn’t his wife, whom he also set up with a six-figure
government job — a black mark on the supposed objectivity of the
mainstream media.

Bowman was defiant and morally clear-eyed in conceding defeat, as he
has been throughout the past eight months. “We will never stand for
the bombing and killing of babies in Gaza,” he told supporters.
“Our opponents . . . may have won this round at this time in this
race. But this will be a battle for our humanity and justice for the
rest of our lives.” We will never know if he might have overcome his
disadvantages had events gone a little differently here and there, or
if he had made a handful of different choices. But overcoming is also
a lot harder with the weight of nearly $20 million on your neck.

Bowman’s loss is a projection of AIPAC’s financial strength, but
also, paradoxically, a sign of the limits of its ability to defeat
Israel critics despite the ungodly sums of money at its disposal.
After giddily anticipating the Squad’s obliteration last October and
a firm swing in public opinion toward its positions, the lobby has
serially failed to defeat its targets and had to drastically narrow
its electoral ambitions in the face of its left-wing opponents’
strength, all while watching the US public turn against Israel’s
ghastly war and US support for it in ever larger numbers.

The Left’s first job is to recognize this. Its next job, whether
through Representative Bush’s upcoming primary election or future
contests, is to make the rest of the political establishment realize
it too.

_Branko Marcetic is a Jacobin staff writer _

* Jamaal Bowman
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* AIPAC
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* Democratic primary
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