Progressive Newcomer Defeats Powerful New York Congressman

Political novice Jamaal Bowman scored an upset victory over veteran House Democrat Eliot Engel in New York’s primary, part of a show of strength by progressives in the state that is replacing some longtime incumbents with younger, more diverse candidates.

Bowman, 44, was declared the winner in the contest, all but assuring him election in November from the solidly Democratic district representing parts of the Bronx and Westchester County.

The results were released more than three weeks after the June 23 primary as election officials were deluged with mailed-in ballots cast by voters seeking to avoid public polling places because of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus. In the latest tally, Bowman had 55% of the vote to 40% or Engel, according to the Associated Press.

Bowman’s campaign took as its template progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 surprise win of a House seat in an adjacent district against another seemingly entrenched incumbent, Joseph Crowley.

The Black former middle school principal’s victory over the 16-term congressman also was propelled by the focus on racial and economic inequalities that has grown out of nationwide protests over the death of a Black man, George Floyd, while in custody of Minneapolis police.

Progressive candidates made inroads in the New York Democratic primary, riding the same wave of support that brought Ocasio-Cortez to office, who coasted to her primary win over several challengers.

Another Black progressive candidate, Mondaire Jones, won the eight-way race to replace 16-term Representative Nita Lowey, who is retiring. New York City Councilman Ritchie Torres had a significant edge in another crowded contest to succeed Representative Jose Serrano, who was first elected in 1990 and also is retiring.

If Torres is declared the victor and he and Jones win in November in the heavily Democratic districts, they also would be notable for being the first openly gay Black members of Congress.

Representative Carolyn Maloney, like Engel a committee chairman and a veteran New York politician, was still locked in a tight race with progressive candidate Suraj Patel for the seat representing Manhattan’s East Side and part of Queens.

Another Old Guard Casualty

Bowman’s win, like Ocasio-Cortez’s victory against Crowley, was a dramatic loss for another White incumbent who had become a power broker on Capitol Hill but came under criticism that he was out of touch with a changing district.

Ocasio-Cortez and other well-known progressives like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders had endorsed Bowman’s candidacy, while Engel was backed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Governor Andrew Cuomo and a list of other established party leaders.

From the start, the narrative of the race was that Bowman represented another challenge to the Democratic Party’s establishment from a left-learning activist, on issues ranging from the environment to economic equality to higher education.

There had been some dimming in recent months of the movement’s expectations that Ocasio-Cortez’ 2018 victory was really a harbinger of broader national transformational change for the party, following Sanders’ defeat in the Democratic presidential contest and House primary setbacks in other states.

Bowman’s win re-energizes that movement to some degree, as a statement victory the progressives were seeking.

“Jamaal is the fourth challenger backed by Justice Democrats to unseat an out-of-touch incumbent,” Alexandra Rojas, executive director of the progressive group Justice Democrats, said in a statement. “He’s one of the first candidates being swept into Congress by the movement in the streets right now, and he won’t be the last.”

Bowman was able to capitalize on some of the same trends among voters that Ocasio-Cortez tapped in her race: a leftward drift, particularly among young voters, on a variety of issues and demands for a new generation of party leaders who are more representative of the parties base of minority voters.

Engel, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, also provided openings for opponents about the considerable time he spends in Washington, particularly as New Rochelle, a Westchester County city within the district in became an early hot-spot for the coronavirus pandemic. Bowman and his backers cast him as an absentee representative.

Engel, a top Pelosi lieutenant and the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, cast himself as someone who could continue to use his seniority to benefit the district.

Bowman cast himself as a voice for the working class New Yorker. But as much as anything, say analysts, he benefited from the sweeping, renewed focus on race and civil rights protests across America, in a district where demographics had shifted dramatically since Engel’s first election and is now 63% non-white.

“There are still a lot of very senior White ranking democrats in Congress that represent majority minority seats,” said David Wasserman, the House editor of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, who added that, nationally, the Democratic primary electorate overall “is still quite moderate.”

But he said the focus on race in the past couple of months has driven a demand for more descriptive representation, particularly “in urban, progressive districts where socialism is no longer a dirty word.”

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