Relationships, Institutions, & Why All Politics Is Local
How institutions and local relationships dictate political power and electoral outcomes in New York City - spanning Bedford-Stuyvesant, the Upper West Side, Co-op City and Westchester County.
To catch a glimpse of the competing cross-currents defining modern-day Bedford-Stuyvesant, one can look to the quiet corner of Lewis Avenue and MacDonough Street.
In the heart of Brooklyn, underneath the brown-colored street signs denoting the landmarked historic district of Stuyvesant Heights, sat three distinct fliers, carefully taped to the backside of the pedestrian walk light on the street’s southeast corner.
Attached to this oft-overlooked piece of “free” real estate was not the predictable “Messiah Is Here” advertisement (frequently seen throughout the city on similar structures). Rather, these images focused on the messages of Black Political Power, Palestine Solidarity, and Anti-Gentrification.
Emblazoned on a green banner beneath a cartoon rendering of the late Al Vann – an early advocate of community control of public schools who was integral in building Black political power in Central Brooklyn during his quarter-century of public service in the State Legislature – were the words: “HERO”; even larger and bolder than the name of the hero himself.
Perhaps no figure embodied the political history of Bedford-Stuyvesant better than Al Vann.
Hailed as a progressive, Vann was at the forefront of the school decentralization fight which roiled Ocean Hill-Brownsville in the late 60’s, wrestled political power away from the white Democratic establishment in the early 70’s, helped lay the framework for the Black and Latino “Rainbow Coalitions” of Jesse Jackson and David Dinkins (later paving the way for Eric Adams), and was fundamental in shifting the nexus of Black political power from Harlem to Brooklyn. When a clerical error struck him from the ballot in 1980, Vann, powerful and popular, was nonetheless re-elected on the Liberal Party ballot line over the candidate of the nascent political machine. As liberalism wilted under Guliani, the statesman of Bedford-Stuyvesant politics “left behind the revolutionary rhetoric.” A decade later, Vann went from organizing against the Republican Mayor to supporting his successor’s bid to extend term limits. Across a storied career, he had gone from an “insurgent” and “rebel assemblyman” to defending himself from young and hungry challengers, who questioned his desire to still do the job, themselves ironically “represented a generation Mr. Vann helped draw into politics.” The Vanguard Independent Democratic Association (VIDA), which he founded in 1972, still exists to this day.
Opposite Vann read the statement: “For Us. By Us. Not Without Us.” A nod to Daymond John notwithstanding, the message was not steeped in fashion, but rather the gentrification that has significantly altered the racial and class composition of Bedford-Stuyvesant over the past fifteen years — borne out not only in the proliferation of coffee shops which cater to the young urban professional or the rising tide of Douglas Elliman “For Sale” signs that litter the neighborhood’s coveted brownstones and row houses, but in the declining power of neighborhood institutions.
Institutions — the word which appears over fifty times throughout this piece — can take on many forms in politics that vary in effectiveness: opaque entities whose strength is owed to their vast financial capital, and requisite ability to bankroll six and seven-figure negative advertisements; local Democratic organizations with deep-seated ties to a neighborhood, where power is relational, not ideological; a district’s influential Congressman, who can bestow a powerful endorsement. While cut from different cloth, these political institutions ultimately have the same objective: to move voters; either directly through their own power with the electorate, or more indirectly, by pressuring other institutions to act in accordance with their wishes.
Yet, the latter two words affixed as the poster’s punchline: “Without Us” — demarcated from the green fonted text that came before by a bright blood red — remained partially obscured behind a smaller flier that was posted over.
“End The Genocide. Free Palestine.”
While over five thousand miles separate Brooklyn from Palestine, the War in Gaza has nonetheless deepened existing divides throughout the Democratic coalition. While this rift, defined by the intervention of large outside spending in Democratic Primaries at the behest of Pro-Israel interest groups, attracted considerable attention in Westchester County and St. Louis, the tree-lined streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant did not escape this phenomena.
Younger voters – the same faces moving to once redlined neighborhoods in the traditionally working class quarters of New York City’s outer boroughs, like Bedford-Stuyvesant – remain consistently more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Each flier told a small story about the psyche of Bedford-Stuyvesant, while serving as a timely snapshot of a historically-Black neighborhood — squeezed by burgeoning housing costs and the commodification of “Brooklyn,” on the frontlines of a socialist, unequivocally pro-Palestinian electoral project at the heart of the House Democratic Leader’s Congressional district — forced to reckon with a realignment of political and institutional power.
In this context — and all that came before it — sprung the latest chapter in the ongoing proxy war between Hakeem Jeffries and NYC-DSA – with retail worker Eon Huntley pitted against two-term incumbent Stefani Zinerman.
The political landscape of Bedford-Stuyvesant changed drastically during the protest summer of 2020, as democratic socialist Jabari Brisport stole headlines across Central Brooklyn upon his resounding election to the State Senate. However, said election also saw Stefani Zinerman quietly replace the outgoing Tremaine Wright (who was handily defeated by Brisport in the aforementioned Senate Primary) in the 56th Assembly District — a less gentrified, more economically marginalized section of Bed-Stuy and Northern Crown Heights stretching from Nostrand to Ralph.
To do so, Zinerman outlasted activist Justin Cohen, a white candidate running on a platform of police abolition, by a modest, yet relatively unimpressive margin. Despite counting the full complement of Bed-Stuy’s sitting elected officials in her corner, Zinerman was not only out-raised by Cohen, but saw him best her in several of the district’s public housing developments, who ultimately finishing with over 7,700 votes, almost 43% — despite little institutional backing from the left, as neither NYC-DSA nor the Working Families Party supported his campaign.
Zinerman’s shaky performance, Brisport’s commanding victory (and landslide re-election), and progressive Chi Ossé’s City Council win over Henry Butler (President of the Vanguard Independent Democratic Association, and close ally of Zinerman) provided proof-of-concept that Bedford-Stuyvesant was a neighborhood amidst political transition.
On a post-election podcast, the new City Council Member disclosed he didn’t even know who his predecessor was before running for the office himself. Such an admission from an aspiring politician in the tight-knit, hierarchical world of Central Brooklyn would have been unheard of even a decade prior. Ossé and Brisport not only bypassed the traditional political institutions of Bedford-Stuyvesant and suffered little consequence to their ambitions, they represented new institutions building political power for the burgeoning Brooklyn left.
The Vanguard Independent Democrats, fifty-years removed from their Vann-led inception, had routinely counted members of the City Council, State Senate, and State Assembly not only on their club member rolls, but as active participants and leaders within their organization.
Now, Stefani Zinerman was the only one left in elected office.
Yet, Stefani Zinerman was not bereft of powerful allies.
Hakeem Jeffries, engaged in a tit-for-tat proxy war with NYC-DSA since the latter dispatched the former’s protégé four years prior, remained determined to preserve the incumbent’s position at all costs.
The long shadow of Jeffries — who began his career as a progressive insurgent in the neighboring Assembly District, only to be Nancy Pelosi’s successor as House Democratic Leader two decades later — loomed large in Central Brooklyn.
Increasingly a national figure since his ascension to House Democratic leadership six years ago, nonetheless stung by bitter defeats and weary from several close-calls throughout his political backyard, Jeffries was no longer naive to the decline of local, institutional political power during the Trump era, and the rise of a political movement untethered to the organs of old — the conditions which abruptly and infamously felled the man who, before Jeffries, was tapped to succeed Pelosi atop the Speaker’s Chair, Rep. Joseph Crowley.
From the outset, Jeffries was “deeply involved.” Yet, the House Democratic Leader’s influence cannot be measured solely by what was done for Zinerman – significant financial support from Independent Expenditures and Organized Labor was a given for any (scandal-free) besieged incumbent. Rather, the specter of Jeffries’ power can be best observed by what was not done to aid Huntley’s insurgent effort. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, despite backing both Claire Valdez and Jonathan Soto, declined to endorse Huntley – a move POLITICO’s Jeff Coltin posited as, “presumably a gesture of respect to Jeffries, her oft-uneasy ally.”
The Working Families Party, which had routinely provided key support to Brisport and other socialist insurgents, as well as Bed-Stuy’s charismatic and media-savvy Gen-Z Council Member, Chi Ossé, both stayed neutral too. While the left had built considerable institutional power throughout Central Brooklyn, the full breadth of that power was not behind Eon Huntley.
Other prominent, progressive-aligned politicians based in Central Brooklyn – like Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and State Senator (and Mayoral aspirant) Zellnor Myrie – flocked to Zinerman’s defense.
Both candidates, born and raised in public housing, charged one another as beholden to outside interests that threatened the long-term security of the district’s working class residents.
The incumbent proudly touted her roots as a “third-generation” resident of the neighborhood, while reminding voters and the press alike that her opponent resided in the adjacent district – despite the fact that Huntley moved to Bed-Stuy three years before she did. Under New York State’s newly-adopted matching funds program, it was the insurgent Huntley who claimed considerably more in-district donations than the incumbent.
Zinerman refused to co-sponsor “Good Cause Eviction” out of deference to New York’s powerful Real Estate lobby — who rewarded her loyalty by bankrolling six-figure independent expenditures — saying the legislation would compromise the neighborhood’s remaining Black homeowners, many of whom anchor the landmarked blocks of Jefferson, Macon, MacDonough, and Decatur. Huntley championed the bill as a potential boon to the three-quarters of district residents (including Zinerman) who remain renters, and are, in turn, most vulnerable to displacement amidst the city’s precarious housing market.
The votes of homeowners in the historic “Stuyvesant Heights” section of the district could be consistently counted upon in historically-low-turnout Democratic Primaries. Yet, among the district’s renters, who skew younger, more economically stagnant, and most critically, remain entirely untethered to the neighborhood’s political institutions — of whom Eon Huntley desperately needed to win, and win big — voter participation in Democratic primaries was infrequent at best, and unreliable at worst.
In a neighborhood where over one-third of Democratic voters in April’s Presidential Primary left their ballot blank in protest of Joe Biden’s handling of the War in Gaza – Palestine was on the ballot. Following October 7th, Jeffries' allies planned to mount a serious challenge to Jabari Brisport, boasting to POLITICO New York that “he’s next,” while going so far as to recruit a challenger who ultimately filed to run for his seat (only to drop out). While the effort to oust Brisport ultimately failed to materialize, New York Solidarity PAC — the New York State analogous of AIPAC —formed the following Spring, took a keen interest in ensuring Zinerman’s re-election, in an effort to quell any Pro-Palestinian organizing momentum that could be generated by NYC-DSA.
All told, almost three-hundred thousand dollars in Independent Expenditures would be spent against Huntley. When asked, Zinerman said, “Everyone is spending money on the district, so as far as I’m concerned it’s reparations.”
Yet, the decline of local institutional power in Bedford-Stuyvesant is what necessitated the intervention of considerable outside spending — funded by billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Walmart CEO Jim Walton — to preserve the incumbent’s seat.
Undoubtedly, the final margin would be close.
Four years ago, Brisport had only won Zinerman’s district by three-percent, albeit against the then-incumbent, while Ossé fared slightly better, besting another VIDA club member in the 56th Assembly District by six points. Both aforementioned campaigns boasted record voter turnout in Central Brooklyn — owed to the macro conditions of the 2020 Presidential Election, the surge in activism and political engagement following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and a highly-competitive and publicized Mayoral race at the top-of-the-ticket the following year. Since that high watermark, the wave of increased civic participation in New York City elections — which began in 2018 and crested in 2020; redefining the political landscape of the Empire State in the process — has steadily declined.
Aided by historical forces far beyond the Hudson River, what was once a “movement moment” had given way to less-salient conditions: an increasingly leaderless left in the post-Bernie Sanders era; the War in Gaza, coupled with the deep-divisions it has exposed within the Democratic coalition; and humbling electoral setbacks at the local, state and federal level — all forces that would have a pronounced effect on the continued enthusiasm, involvement, and participation of young people in politics.
As favorable conditions for insurgency recede, institutional power fills the void.
On Primary Day, nowhere was this current felt more than in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where Stefani Zinerman ultimately prevailed over Eon Huntley by 516 votes.
“Stuyvesant Heights,” the awe-inspiring historic district which remained one of the few remaining strongholds of Black homeownership in the neighborhood, was the bulwark of Zinerman’s defense, decisively backed their Macon Street neighbor to return to Albany. It was along these blocks, some of the most beautiful and storied across the entire neighborhood that, when compared to the past performance of fellow-socialist Jabari Brisport, where Eon Huntley struggled the most.
Yet, the Stefani Zinerman “coalition” — if you will — cannot be reduced to solely the Black homeowner. Along the district’s western blocks south of Myrtle Avenue, in proximity to the increasingly hip Tompkins Avenue, Huntley reliably won each election district, save for two.
The first, Sandy F. Ray Senior Housing, told a tale as old as time. In contrast to the crowd across the street basking in the youth of Herbert Von King Park, the residents of Sandy F. Ray, were, as the name suggests, much older — not only loyal to what they knew, but who they knew. For Stefani Zinerman, frequent visits to senior centers like Sandy F. Ray, and the relational politicking that comes with it, are the bread and butter of incumbency.
The second was several blocks north, where many Satmar Hasidim, broaching capacity in their traditional South Williamsburg enclave, have moved in the past decade, a thread of gentrification in Bedford-Stuyvesant discussed less often. On these blocks, the Satmar undoubtedly mobilized against Huntley, as voter turnout increased by two-hundred and seventy-five percent compared to two years prior, with Zinerman winning greater than eighty-percent of the vote.
Lastly, after struggling four years ago across the district’s thirteen NYCHA developments, Zinerman rebounded – significantly – winning all of the district’s public housing developments save for one: Stuyvesant Gardens. For Stefani Zinerman, four years had brought hundreds of visits to Tenant Associations.
The segment’s of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s mosaic where Stefani Zinerman performed best: homeowners in landmarked districts, low-income residents of public housing, fixed-income seniors, and the Satmar Hasidim; provide an important reflection of where institutional power holds weight in Central Brooklyn.
On Election Night, Huntley reckoned with this, telling Adlan Jackson of Hell’s Gate: "We need to make sure that we stay engaged. Stuyvesant Gardens, these are people that in a NYCHA building don't have working elevators. Go to Tompkins. Go to Marcy projects. They were very happy to be engaged in a way that they were not engaged before. How do we continue to organize these people? We can't just let them feel like we only come around when there's elections. We can't let them down."
This question — how to harness and maintain institutional power while building trust with communities outside of the left’s traditional orbit, and doing so outside of the election calendar — will help define the next decade of politics in New York State.
A world away from Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant rests Manhattan’s Upper West Side — a neighborhood, which has long stood as the liberal epicenter of New York City’s Jewish upper-middle class.
Into this world came Micah Lasher, whose romanticism of politics, government, and neighborhood can be seen from afar. But up close, one can glean that Lasher not only holds reverence for the many political giants who walked the streets of Central Park West and Riverside Drive before him — Bella Abzug, William Fitts Ryan, Ted Weiss, Ruth Messinger, Jerry Nadler — but fancies himself as worthy of carrying on their storied tradition of liberal politics and good-government.
However, beyond the romanticism laid a comprehensive understanding of political power, honed by over two-decades in the arena. For Lasher was no bureaucrat turned politician — rather, he was a seasoned operative turned candidate.
Yet, despite all the accolades — Lasher’s career, in some respects, had been defined by a degree of bad luck. Once a shoe-in for City Council in the late 2000’s, term limit extensions foiled his plan to run. Campaigning for a highly-coveted State Senate seat along Manhattan’s West Side several years later, Lasher fell short by three-hundred votes. A key advisor to both Scott Stringer and Eric Schneiderman for two decades – he was Schneiderman’s Chief of Staff in the Attorney General’s Office, and Stringer’s Campaign Manager during his ill-fated Mayoral run — two West Side politicos who ascended the ladder of City and State politics before personal scandal leveled their careers, Lasher’s own journey featured a growing list of What Ifs.
From his days at Stuyvesant High School, Lasher distinguished himself with his crisp attention-to-detail and relentless work-ethic. The ambitious teenager endeared himself to the various Democratic Clubs across Manhattan’s West Side, and amidst the late night and early morning hours of his NYU dormitory, Lasher founded SKDKnickerbocker, amassing a client list that spanned New York State (that would have certainly made a City & State Power Ranking or two), before he could legally drink.
Despite the growing success of his business, Lasher pivoted away from political consulting — selling his stake in SKDK and sliding into a legislative advisory role with Congressman Jerry Nadler, before being pulled into the Bloomberg Administration. A steadfast liberal, Lasher was forced to negotiate his personal and professional views — a line he carefully strayed for over a decade as a consultant. Now, as the Republican Mayor’s chief negotiator in Albany, responsible for pushing through legislation to increase the number of charter schools in New York State — Lasher was increasingly tied to the whims of Bloomberg, whose popularity was beginning to fray following the executive’s decision to ram through a controversial term limits extension (which, ironically, kneecapped Lasher’s plans to run for City Council).
But at twenty-eight, Lasher relished the responsibility and the engrossing nature of government work — capable of wielding policy and power outside of the voting booth — eventually drawing a rare profile from The New York Times, akin to an ordained blessing on his native Upper West Side, who speculated a run for office was imminent.
Instead, the man who helped Michael Bloomberg increase the number of charter schools in New York State became the Executive Director of StudentsFirstNY, a pro-charter advocacy group. As ED, Lasher penned a scathing op-ed in the New York Daily News criticizing the United Federation of Teachers for opposing “anything to improve a failed status quo.” Support for charter schools, once a component of Lasher’s public-facing responsibility in the Mayor’s office — government work which he steadfastly defends to this day — was now seen as his own personal politics.
Despite his brief tenure (eleven months) and resignation, the move may have cost Lasher something much greater.
A few years later, State Senator Adriano Espaillat won the Congressional Primary for New York’s 13th District, succeeding the retiring Lion of Harlem, Charlie Rangel. Consequently, Espaillat’s Senate seat — a gerrymandered district stretching from Hudson Yards to Inwood — was now available.
Once held by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, whom Lasher now reported to as Chief of Staff — the former encouraged the latter to run. Lasher obliged.
End-to-end, the district spanned over two-hundred blocks, with its niche cartography absorbing select neighborhoods while skirting others. Running north along the Hudson River, a handful of blocks from Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen gave way to the Upper West Side (but only west of Broadway), which receded into pieces of West Harlem and Hamilton Heights, before finally expanding to include the entirety of the narrow Upper Manhattan peninsula — which encompassed Washington Heights, Inwood, Hudson Heights, and Marble Hill.
Undoubtedly, Lasher would excel on his native Upper West Side, but with each block north, the competition for votes stiffened. Former City Council Member Robert Jackson, well-respected in progressive circles dating back to his founding of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity in New York City public schools, would be formidable in Washington Heights and the wealthier, landmarked district east of Broadway in Inwood, while running up his margins in the historically-Jewish, cooperator-heavy neighborhood of Hudson Heights, where he lived for over thirty years.
However, Lasher’s strongest opponent was headquartered farther north, along the low-income and Spanish-speaking blocks west of Broadway at the heart of Inwood’s Dominican community. Marisol Alcantara, a former union organizer, entered the race late and quickly amassed considerable momentum. The Independent Democratic Conference led by State Senator Jeff Klein, amidst a power-sharing agreement with Republicans in the upper chamber of the state legislature — behavior more tolerated in the pre-Trump era — pledged their support to Alcantara. With the help of Adriano Espaillat — whose election to Congress shifted the nexus of Upper Manhattan’s political power from historically-Black Harlem to Washington Heights and Inwood — Alcantara, his chosen successor, surged.
Most observers posited Alcantara as the slight favorite, with Lasher narrowly trailing, and Jackson not too far behind. Because of the district’s unique shape, there was little “contested” turf between the three candidates. Rather, the race would likely come down to who could most effectively turn out their political base: Lasher’s being the Upper West Side, with Jackson and Alcantara battling along both sides of Broadway farther uptown.
While the campaign was fought on relatively friendly terms — both Jackson and Lasher, when asked, remained critical of the IDC — one prominent negative story surfaced nonetheless. The subject: Lasher’s ties to the charter school industry, and his “change of tone” with respect to the teachers’ union on the campaign trail.
Lasher chalked this discrepancy up to “the fact that he’s finally free to formulate and express his own views,” telling POLITICO New York, “I’ve done a lot of things in my life over a 20-year period of activity in government and politics. And this is really the first time where I am out there speaking for myself, having taken the time to reflect on a wide range of issues and think about what I want to say about them and what I want my priorities to be in Albany.”
“We appreciate that Micah Lasher has changed his mind about some of the misguided educational ‘reform’ proposals he promoted when he worked for the Bloomberg administration and Students First,’ wrote UFT president Michael Mulgrew, in an email. ‘But we support Robert Jackson because he has consistently supported education policies that benefit students, teachers and families.’” (POLITICO New York)
A pivotal issue in a district with considerable UFT membership, said article proved damaging to Lasher. Despite directly benefiting Jackson, whose pro-teachers’ union bona fides were highlighted in the piece, Alcantara, with the formidable communications network of the IDC behind her, likely gained just as much — for each additional vote that went to Jackson came at Lasher’s expense.
Eleven days later, the race would be decided by one percentage point, with Alcantara narrowly prevailing – finishing with 8,469 votes (32.67%) compared to that of Lasher (8,175 votes – 31.54%) and Jackson (7,936 votes – 30.62%).
All told, the three candidates were separated by two-percentage points.
Such a close margin begs the question of whether Lasher could have won.
While Lasher achieved greater than two-thirds of the vote on the Upper West Side, to win, he would have needed to hold his own along a handful of Upper Manhattan blocks — in short, to pull liberal, Alcantara skeptical, voters away from Robert Jackson — west of Broadway. Micah Lasher knew this calculus, so much so that he stationed his campaign headquarters, not on the Broadway commercial strip a short walk from his Upper West Side apartment, but along Fort Washington Avenue at the heart of Hudson Heights. Armed with a The New York Times endorsement — back when the Editorial Board at the paper of record gave a damn about local politics — a stamp-of-approval welcomed in the charming hallways of Castle Village and Hudson View Gardens, Lasher could have credibly tailed the well-respected Jackson in Upper Manhattan’s affluent enclaves. However, amongst these vote-rich, pre-war blocks atop the high bluffs of Northern Manhattan, resided hundreds of teachers, both active and retired, who had settled into (for a fraction of the cost compared to those one hundred blocks south) — or simply never left — the inviting, but nonetheless modest cooperative housing nestled between the George Washington Bridge and Fort Tryon Park. Public Education, the issue so closely tied to Robert Jackson — himself a known quantity in this close-knit continual community — and the sole line-of-attack against the more-viable Lasher, was of the utmost importance here. And, on September 13th, 2016, the neighborhood of Hudson Heights would vote accordingly.
The work Micah Lasher did in government on behalf of the Bloomberg Administration, work which he so vigorously defended, coupled with an ill-fated eleven month tenure at a pro-charter outfit, had potentially cost him his best shot at elected office.
Now, the man who had invested his time since high school — professional and personal — to learning the ins and outs of politics on Manhattan’s West Side, would leave that work altogether; where Lasher would have likely remained indefinitely, if not for COVID-19. The pandemic, which simultaneously sidelined the Toronto-based company where Lasher was working at the time, had coincided with the early Mayoral machinations of his longtime confidant, Scott Stringer, who promptly asked Lasher to be his campaign manager, despite the latter not steering a race in well over a decade. Back in the game, Lasher accepted.
The campaign, relegated to Zoom and burdened by high expectations that proved increasingly elusive, was difficult even before Jean Kim’s allegation of Stringer’s past misconduct instantaneously sapped the effort of any viability. It would be Eric Adams, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, and the atrophying political machines of the outer boroughs — not Scott Stringer, Micah Lasher, and the liberal institutions that dominate Manhattan — who would be headlining press conferences at City Hall and charting the course of municipal government in New York City for the next four years.
One more What If.
Nonetheless, Lasher parlayed his return to politics into the administration of newly-elevated Governor Kathy Hochul, who had been thrust into the most powerful position in the state upon Andrew Cuomo’s resignation. More policy, and less politics. Such a fate, Lasher, a policy wonk in every sense of the word, not only accepted — but embraced.
The political orbit of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, parochial and close-knit, produces few genuine surprises to those who traffic among its corridors. However, the sudden announcement from State Assembly Member Daniel “Danny” O’Donnell that, after twenty years in the state legislature, he would not seek re-election — was just that.
A surprise it was — after all, O’Donnell, at the tender age of sixty-three, could still be considered a spring chicken. Having run in the Special Election for Public Advocate, finishing in a distant eighth-place, O’Donnell had found himself in a position familiar to the vast majority of Democrats in the state legislature: relatively insulated from a primary challenge, but lacking the requisite juice to advance beyond the Assembly. Thus, after two decades of commuting to Albany, the incumbent had decided to hang it up.
As Policy Director to the Governor, Lasher undoubtedly held considerable power in his current role, certainly more so than if he were a freshman member of the State Assembly. Nonetheless, it was at this opportunity, Micah Lasher — no longer considered a “political wunderkind”, and now the age forty-two with three kids — saw his last, best chance.
While tapped as the prohibitive favorite, Lasher would not be alone in his pursuit of the 69th Assembly District, as he would be joined by: Eli Northrup, policy advisor for Bronx Defenders; Carmen Quinones, tenant association president for Frederick Douglass Houses; Melissa Rosenburg, a real estate lobbyist.
The most promising of the aforementioned trio, Eli Northrup, a handsome thirty-eight year old sporting salt-and-pepper hair acquired from long hours in Bronx Criminal Court, worked quickly to establish himself to the frontrunner’s left. With the hope of carving out a lane for himself as the progressive candidate — in a district that had given past majorities to Zephyr Teachout and Jumaane Williams — Northrup sought to turn Lasher’s greatest strength, his overwhelming institutional support, against him. Key interest groups across the progressive left — like The Working Families Party, UAW, and the Jewish Vote — agreed, resoundingly backing Northrup.
Indeed, Lasher boasted a staggering amount of endorsements — owed to over two-decades of relationships up-and-down the West Side — including, but not limited to: two Mayoral candidates; the City Comptroller and his predecessor; the Manhattan Borough President, and his two predecessors; and both overlapping City Council Members. Furthermore, a series of neighborhood Democratic club forums produced unsurprising results: resounding endorsements for Lasher, which came together to the tune of 3,500 petition signatures (seven times the requirement for an Assembly race).
With little means, or will, to poll the race — each campaign hunkered down, increasingly reliant on anecdotal feedback and vibes. Such a dynamic can produce feedback loops, and with little interaction between the two campaigns — Northrup focused on Morningside Heights, while Lasher frequented farther south — the frontrunner saw little reason to sweat, let alone be concerned.
Then, came a pointed mailer from the Northrup campaign, which featured the classic “Compare v. Contrast” between the two candidates. Once again, Lasher’s pro-charter work for the Bloomberg Administration and StudentsFirstNY — which had dinged him eight years ago — was prominently highlighted. Privately, Lasher bristled at the mailer’s “negative” nature. But as the frontrunner, he had little reason to “go negative,” whereas Northrup, with less money and considerably less institutional support — had to differentiate himself. On the heels of this mailer came the first surprise of the primary, as the outgoing O’Donnell endorsed Northrup. Not long after, Helen Rosenthal, who had represented the Upper West Side in the City Council for eight years, backed the insurgent Northrup as well.
There would be no Rose Garden campaign for Lasher after all.
The mood on the ground had changed, and Lasher could feel it. Voters who were, at worst undecided a few weeks earlier, now took to him with a decidedly negative tone. Northrup, the progressive public defender, had momentum — most notably in-and-around Morningside Heights. Lasher, armed with a healthy campaign balance and sensing a change on the ground, commissioned his own poll to check the rising temperature.
Would all the elected endorsements, the landslide Democratic club votes, the half-a-million dollars raised, and four decades spent in the district — be for naught? Could the man who had helped countless others realize their dreams of elected office, be on the precipice of watching his own dream slip through his fingers?
For months, Lasher downplayed his bevy of endorsements in an effort to focus on highlighting his story through a series of mail pieces, with the hope of inoculating against charges he was the “establishment” or institutional candidate, inundating inboxes across the West Side in the process.
Now, such carefully crafted considerations would have to wait.
Promptly, Micah Lasher placed a call to Jerry Nadler and Ruth Messinger with an idea.
Messenger, an ex-Manhattan Borough President who ran a purposeful but doomed campaign against incumbent Mayor Rudy Guliani at the nadir of liberalism, along with Nadler, who has represented the Upper West Side in Washington for three decades — both agreed to help.
Editor’s Note: Bringing the piece full circle, while many Democrats defected from Messinger in 1997 to curry favor with Guliani – Al Vann did not.
Politically, one could surmise that Messinger was firmly to Lasher’s left — after all, the former was a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America during her mid-80’s tenure on the New York City Council, had co-hosted a fundraiser for Jamaal Bowman this May, and even met privately seven years ago with a promising, yet longshot candidate for Congress named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But, at that moment, ideological considerations between the two were immaterial. What mattered was their long standing relationship to one another.
Nadler, whom Lasher had previously worked for, had always been fond of his spectacled neighbor, dating back to the latter’s teenage years advising the congressman’s protege, Scott Stringer. Despite spending over three decades in Washington, Nadler remained a political force unparalleled on the Upper West Side. Two years ago, amidst a fight for his political life that pitted West versus East, the former representative of the 69th Assembly District handily defeated his colleague, Rep. Carolyn Maloney. In the three-candidate race, Nadler won seventy-two percent of the vote in the Sixty-Ninth Assembly District — his best performance, bar none, in the entire Congressional District.
And, for as much institutional support as Lasher counted in his corner, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Congressman Jerry Nadler was an institution unto himself.
And that institution, with all of its power in the hearts and minds of West Side voters, was entirely behind Micah Lasher.
Hence, when Democrats across the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights opened their mailboxes soon thereafter, they were greeted with an 8.5 x 22 brochure mailer bearing the following message:
Our neighborhood has a long tradition of spirited campaigns.
Not dishonest ones.
A Message from Congressman Jerry Nadler and former Borough President Ruth Messinger
When flipped over, to unveil the full text of “the letter,” it read:
"Eli Northrup has begun sending negative attack mailings that distort Micah Lasher's record and paint a picture of him that is fundamentally dishonest and unfair."
A message from Ruth & Jerry:
Dear Neighbor,
There's a chapter from our political lives that a lot of Democrats probably don't know: in 1976, we ran against each other for the 69th District seat in the New York State Assembly. It was an intense campaign through a long, hot summer of subway flyering and community forums. But there were no sneaky attack mailings. Where we differed on issues, we debated them civilly - and honestly.
Which is why what is happening now in the Assembly race to succeed Danny O’Donnell is so disheartening.
One of the candidates, Ell Northrup, has begun sending negative attack mailings that distort Micah Lasher’s record and paint a picture of him that is fundamentally dishonest and unfair.”
We’ve known Micah for years and can vouch fully not just for his progressive values, but his effectiveness in translating those values into progressive action and results. It's what separates him from the field.
While the letter would continue on, the damage was already done. Robert Jackson, once Lasher’s competition to reach Albany, was now highlighted as a key validator. The United Federation of Teachers, whose President shaded Lasher eight years earlier, had endorsed the “public school parent.” And, following the letter’s conclusion: “We're all confident Micah will be an extraordinary Assemblymember, one who'll continue the very best traditions of West Side progressive leadership. And we hope you'll join us in supporting him on June 25th!” — laid the signatures of Jerry Nadler and Ruth Messinger.
“Did I think I would be in a world where the congressman is sending a letter to everybody in the district calling me dishonest?” Northrup later quipped to Jeff Coltin. “The Letter” was as clear an example of institutional power — derived from the time-tested relationship of Micah Lasher and Jerry Nadler — as one could ask for.
Indeed, Lasher held an ace in the hole — one his opponent did not conceived of — playing this card to great effect, ultimately finishing with over fifty-three percent of the vote with five candidates on the ballot.
Notwithstanding, Northrup, against the headwinds of the Upper West Side’s liberal establishment — a cohort that, by and large, remain relatively well-liked by the populace they represent — performed rather admirably, himself winning thirty-four percent.
Perhaps, the Democratic Primary for the 69th Assembly District this summer offered a preview of both the present and future of the West Side. Rep. Jerry Nadler, powerful as ever, is nonetheless entering his eighteenth term in Congress next year at the age of seventy-seven, only a couple years younger than Joe Biden, whom Nadler called on to step aside — one of the first in the Democratic caucus to publicly do so. When the familial world of West Side politics convenes to settle on Nadler’s successor, Lasher will have as strong a chance as anyone of emerging from the field as the chosen candidate, to which, the neighborhood’s institutions would rally.
Potentially leaving Northrup, with a couple of extra years to navigate the neighborhood’s web of Democratic clubs, insular political networks, and power brokers — to build his own base within those institutions, or beyond them — on the way to Albany.
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A cursory glance of the East Bronx could lead one to discern that Michael Benedetto might be vulnerable under the right political conditions. Benedetto lacked any explicit ties to the district’s two largest voting blocs, the majority-Black bastion of middle-class life known as Co-op City or the rapidly-growing Puerto Rican population in Pelham Bay and Throggs Neck. His traditional base — the moderate, white ethnic homeowning communities east of the Throgs Neck Expressway — was steadily decreasing since the turn of the millennium, peeling off to the suburbs or defecting from the Democratic Party altogether. Two years prior, Benedetto had defeated two challengers, but had failed to crack 60% of the vote — a critical threshold in assessing incumbent vulnerability.
Despite residing the past two decades in a modest Pelham Bay cooperative along Bruckner Boulevard; and for the thirty years prior to that, across the expressway at the heart of the Italian enclave aptly named Country Club — the incumbent still knew where his bread was buttered: the civically-engaged cooperators throughout the dense Mitchell-Llama high rises along I-95.
If a challenger were to ever dethrone Benedetto, they could not do so without Co-op City.
On the surface, Benedetto may have been considered an odd person to represent the epicenter of Black political power in the Bronx — which had been added into the Assembly District as part of a Democratic gerrymander in the 1990’s. In fact, Benedetto owed his 2004 election to the State Assembly (in-part) to two Co-op City-based candidates splitting the Democratic Primary vote. However, the incumbent was nonetheless a well-respected teacher at P.S. 160 Walt Disney in Co-op City for twenty-seven years. Countless senior citizens, many of whom are reliably triple prime Democratic voters, remember Benedetto to this day as someone who taught their children.
Political ambition to ascend the ladders of power, the forbidden fruit that can derail even the most entrenched incumbent, was of little interest to Benedetto, who spent two decades in the State Assembly absent the slightest hint of flirtation with higher office. The allure of amassing and consolidating power had blinded fellow-East Bronx representatives like Joe Crowley in Washington and Jeff Klein in Albany to fast-changing political conditions on-the-grounds of their districts.
For Michael Benedetto, the unassuming Chair of the Education Committee, ambition was merely a distraction that would have taken him away from the glad-handing, retail politicking, and lobby visits he enjoyed so much.
A loyal lieutenant of State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who represents an adjacent district in the Northeast Bronx — Benedetto could count on the Speaker, notoriously close with organized labor and arguably the most powerful Democrat in New York State absent the Governor, to defend him at all costs if progressive insurgency ever came knocking at his door.
But, over fifteen years ago, it was Heastie who came to Benedetto for help. Attempting to overthrow Bronx Democratic Chair Jose Rivera, Benedetto was a “core” member of Heastie’s Rainbow Rebels (along with familiar faces Ruben Diaz Jr, Jeffrey Dinowitz, and Jimmy Vacca) who ultimately wrestled the County Chairmanship away from Rivera, accelerating Heastie’s trajectory to the top of State politics. While short memory plagues politics, Heastie has always been regarded as someone who will “follow through on what he promises“.
A powerful friendship, indeed.
Yet, the most overlooked factor in Benedetto’s sustained resonance was not the man himself, or his powerful friend one district over, but his retention of a reliable cadre of local surrogates, namely District Leaders Tremaine O’Garro and John Doyle — the former serving as the linchpin of Benedetto’s Co-op City office; the latter, a clam digger from City Island and trusted advisor, steered the incumbent’s 2022 re-election campaign through Soto’s first challenge. Doyle and O’Garro, staples of Benedetto’s government payroll, have been embedded in the East Bronx communities which the incumbent has represented for twenty years, since birth.
Everyone knows everyone is a weathered cliche far less salient in the transient corridors of New York City’s urban core. Yet, amidst many of the residential neighborhoods throughout the East Bronx, such a phrase is not cliche. Rather, it embodies and reflects what community is.
In neighborhoods where residency is measured in decades, Michael Benedetto was not only liked — he was known.
Whereas the institutional left (most notably NYC-DSA and the Working Families Party), who invested considerable resources in aiding Soto, nonetheless lacked a comparable base that could counter the deep relationships possessed by the “political establishment” — be it ideologically-aligned members, institutions capable of year-round political organizing, or in the era of matching funds, a grassroots donor base.
It is no accident that Soto performed best amongst the Latino and Bangla working-class of Westchester Square, an industrial neighborhood bordering Parkchester, where DRUM (Desis Rising Up & Moving) Beats — a social justice organization of South Asians & Indo-Caribbeans, and integral Soto endorser — maintains an active organizing presence year-round.
These factors, when brought together, have made the East Bronx into one of the hardest terrains for political insurgency amongst the four blue boroughs:
New York State Assembly District 82:
2024 Assembly
Michael Benedetto – 5,868 votes (61.7%)
Jonathan Soto – 3,612 votes (38%)
2022 Assembly
Michael Benedetto – 4,933 votes (56.3%)
Jonathan Soto – 3,167 votes (36%)
Algernon Quattlebaum – 661 votes (7.5%)
2022 NY Governor
Kathy Hochul – 5,792 votes (65.3%)
Jumaane Williams – 1,714 votes (19.3%)
Tom Suozzi – 1,336 votes (15.1%)
2022 NY Lieutenant Governor
Antonio Delgado – 6,081 votes (70.9%)
Ana Maria Archila – 2,333 votes (14.4%)
Diana Reyna – 2,336 votes (14.4%)
2021 NYC Mayor
Eric Adams – 6,360 votes (48.3%)
Kathryn Garcia – 2,172 votes (16.4%)
Maya Wiley – 2,943 votes (22.2%)
Andrew Yang – 1,767 votes (13.3%)
2021 NYC Comptroller
Brad Lander – 2,877 votes (23.6%)
Corey Johnson – 4,574 votes (37.5%)
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera – 3,193 votes (26.2%)
Brian Benjamin – 1,551 votes (12.7%)
2018 NY Governor
Andrew Cuomo – 12,936 votes (80.5%)
Cynthia Nixon – 3,104 votes (19.3%)
2018 NY Lieutenant Governor
Kathy Hochul – 8,906 votes (61.1%)
Jumaane Williams – 5,641 votes (38.7%)
2018 NY Attorney General
Letitia James – 10,225 votes (65.2%)
Zephyr Teachout – 1,601 votes (10.2%)
Sean Patrick Maloney – 3,450 votes (22%)
But with continuity, comes consolidation.
Many have prescribed the electoral success of New York City’s ascendant left to the appeal of said message amongst young, college-educated voters in gentrifying neighborhoods. While that analysis holds water, it neglects a crucial component of this phenomena. While gentrification typically brings an influx of residents with greater educational and economic means — said newcomers are not only more progressive than existing residents, they are largely untethered to the institutions that pre-exist their arrival. Transience — par for the course in the United States’ largest city — nonetheless dilutes the political power of existing institutions.
For much of the 20th Century, political machines in New York City were defined by their ability to cohere and integrate immigrants and newcomers into their existing ecosystem. Yet, for much of the 21st Century, that ethos — along with civic engagement altogether — has slowly frayed. Interest groups that have reached, organized, and cohered these newcomers of all backgrounds and orientations have not only adapted and survived, but built considerable power for themselves in a relatively short time frame.
Yet, the last vestiges of these “machines” — usually under the umbrella of the “County Democratic Party” — continue to exist (rather comfortably) throughout residential neighborhoods throughout the outer-boroughs — as they always have.
If one were leading the Bronx Democratic Party, and looking to not only build relationships, but consolidate and sustain political power across decades — would there be any better place to do so than Co-op City — North America’s largest naturally occurring retirement community and the neighborhood in the Bronx with the highest voter turnout?
Ideology may have polarized Democratic Party politics, but along the streets of Dreiser Loop and Bartow Avenue, the depth of one’s relationships continues to carry the day.
One more door-knocking pass through Co-op City cannot undo forty years worth of relationship-building.
Two years ago, the third place candidate, Algernon “Al” Quattlebaum, a conservative gentleman based in Co-op City, took over ten-percent of the vote in his home base – cutting into the incumbent’s margin significantly (and contributing to the narrative of potential vulnerability). Yet, as the campaign this year wore on, it became clearer that the “Quattlebaum Vote” did not represent a discernible dissatisfaction with incumbent, but rather the desire to see a (Black) member “of the [Co-op City] community” represent the district – as opposed to both Soto and Benedetto, who were based in Throggs Neck and Pelham Bay, respectively.
Come June 25th, without Quattlebaum on the ballot — the majority of his past supporters opted to return their support to the incumbent (as Quattlebaum himself did). Co-op City, over sixty-one percent of the electorate — which the Soto campaign hoped would be a genuine battleground — remained a Benedetto stronghold.
Voter turnout outside of Co-op City — despite the presence of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the top of the ticket and the promise of greater civic engagement that traditionally accompanies Presidential years — decreased compared to two years prior: a sleepy, bifurcated Democratic primary amidst a midterm cycle.
Four years ago, the 82nd Assembly District had also featured a competitive Congressional campaign in the 16th District (Co-op City), along with a semi-competitive race in the adjacent 14th District (Pelham Bay, Throggs Neck, Westchester Square, Country Club, City Island), while the Democratic electorate braced for a Biden-Trump matchup in November. Yet, this June, amongst similar aforementioned conditions, voter participation cratered in the southern portion of the district, falling by a staggering fifty-eight percent — whereas turnout in Co-op City decreased by a more-modest twenty-six percent — producing an electorate remarkably similar to that of two years prior.
While history is often written by the winners, the author would be remiss if he did not say a few words about Mr. Jonathan Soto.
Unlike other regions of New York City, the East Bronx, outside of a handful of blocks, lacks a discernible Democratic donator base. Certainly, it lacks any progressive or democratic socialist fundraising base altogether. However, under New York State’s recently introduced matching funds program — a promising step in the right direction that the author hopes will endure for future cycles — in-district donors were given considerable weight, with up to a twelve-to-one match. However, if one failed to qualify for matching funds — in the 82nd Assembly District, the requirements was 75 in-district donors and $4K raised — viability would be significantly curtailed.
While his opponent could solicit considerable checks from the gated communities of Silver Beach and Edgewater Park — Soto, bereft of connections to the district’s wealthiest enclaves, was forced to keep pace with the incumbent by earning small contributions, $5 and $10 at a time, from the working and middle-class residents of East Bronx. An in-district donor map of the 82nd Assembly District reveals as much: Benedetto contributions dominate Country Club, and line the waterfront streets of Shurz Avenue and Indian Trail, some of the most affluent blocks in Throggs Neck (the latter cannot be accessed by the public without residing in aforementioned Silver Beach); while the Soto donors come from Middletown Road, Bruckner Boulevard, Edison Avenue, and Westchester Square. Even within the continual and closely-networked community of Co-op City, Soto had sixty-two donors — hosting several “Sangria Socials,” where contributions were measured in five dollar increments. This was true grassroots fundraising.
Not only did Jonathan Soto qualify, he kept pace with a two-decade incumbent.
Soto’s service to his neighborhood and beyond — helping the Bronx recover from Superstorm Sandy, aiding Puerto Rico’s rebuilding following Hurricane Maria, or working to bring free tutoring to hundreds of children as a campaign staffer to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — came outside of a Community Board or the realm of traditional Bronx politics, but that does not make it any less worthwhile or impactful.
For whatever his future holds, Jonathan Soto deserves our utmost respect.
Editor’s Note: The Author served as Jonathan Soto’s Campaign Manager this cycle
Throughout the campaign for New York’s Sixteenth Congressional District, and in the vacuum following Jamaal Bowman’s eighteen-point defeat to George Latimer on June 25th, a lionshare of press coverage and post-mortem analysis has been devoted to the inordinate amount of outside spending against the incumbent — particularly the nearly fifteen million dollars spent by the AIPAC-affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project — and the role of said deluge in deciding the outcome of the race.
The advertising, which centered on Bowman’s 2021 vote against the bi-partisan infrastructure bill, was rather effective — sowing doubt, breaking trust, all while repeating, over and over again, the narrative that the incumbent was preoccupied with furthering his own image — “Jamaal Bowman has his own agenda, and he’s hurting New York” — at the expense of the district and the Democratic President. What some might argue as Bowman’s greatest strength, his outspoken and candid nature, was ruthlessly turned against him. For weeks on end, this message consistently dominated the airwaves of the New York media market.
Without a doubt, independent expenditures with blank checks — particularly those tied to dark money or financed by Republican donors — represent the worst consequences of the landmark Citizens United Supreme Court decision. The American Israeli Political Action Committee — the most powerful of the many Pro-Israel lobbying outfits in Washington — once content to limit their influence to the sphere of behind-the-scenes Beltway politics, has spent the last few years making a deliberate, well-funded foray into electoral politics.
However, said relentless advertising — effective as it was — was not the genesis of Jamaal Bowman’s vulnerability. Rather, it deepened an already-existing deficit in the incumbent’s coalition, that would have been very difficult to overcome regardless of any financial avalanche. The outside spending, akin to a Great White Shark smelling blood in the water, was a symptom of political weakness — designed to close the door at a time when the incumbent was desperately trying to claw back support.
According to the Huffington Post, Latimer’s internal polling had the Westchester County Executive ahead by ten points in January, an account confirmed by Rich Orsillo, Senior Vice President at Red Horse Strategies and Latimer’s Campaign Manager, who wrote in The New York Daily News that “polling showed Latimer starting ahead by ten points.”
All before a single dollar of outside money was spent against the besieged incumbent.
Which begs the question: why was Jamaal Bowman’s campaign in such dire straits six months before Election Day?
Four years ago, Jamaal Bowman was elected to Congress behind one of the most impressive progressive coalitions in the modern history of New York State — delivering a resounding, fifteen-point defeat to a sixteen-term incumbent.
Bowman’s win was ground-breaking, literally, for the ex-Middle School Principal had decisively won communities, neighborhoods, and zip codes — Black homeowners in Wakefield and Williamsbridge, middle-class co-operators throughout Co-op City, and the multi-racial working class across Westchester’s economically-marginalized cities, like Yonkers, Mount Vernon, and New Rochelle — where the left had never previously been competitive. This was not Astoria or Bushwick, there were no cadre DSA or WFP electeds down the ballot, and certainly no gentrifiers to speak of.
Yet, Bowman’s neighbors were not bereft of their own political power — in fact, they held it in spades. For the newly-minted Congressman shared a political backyard with the labor-aligned Speaker of the New York State Assembly, an ambitious State Senator who doubled as Chair of the Bronx Democratic Party (while remaining close to the aforementioned Speaker), the influential Majority Leader of the New York State Senate (tasked with decennial redistricting), and a well-connected Westchester County Executive known for relentless retail-politicking, who had never lost a campaign – all of whom had known one another, quite well, for several decades.
And now, they all had a new Member of Congress.
Furthermore, the man Bowman ousted, former Rep. Eliot Engel, a noted Israel hawk who chaired the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, resented his successor — and the political movement orbiting him. Engel, along with a handful of close allies, represented a small, but dogged contingent who never gave Bowman a chance, and began plotting their political revenge before his Inauguration Day.
Redistricting, two years later, would provide an opportunity to potentially alter the contours of New York’s 16th Congressional District, either sowing the seeds for the incumbent’s future defeat or cementing his place in Congress.
Yet, under the infamous “Hochul-mander” map, of which Carl Heastie and Andrea Stewart-Cousins maintained considerable influence, the core of Bowman’s district, historically Black communities throughout the Northeast Bronx, was preserved. The historically-Jewish, leafy pseudo-suburban Bronx neighborhoods of Riverdale, Fieldston and Spuyten-Duyvil (whom narrowly supported Engel in 2020) were all transitioned to the unabashedly Pro-Israel adjacent Congressman, Ritchie Torres; while the affluent, predominantly white communities along Westchester’s South Shore — like Larchmont, Mamaroneck, and Rye — who revolted en masse against Bowman two years later, were placed in the heavily gerrymandered Third Congressional District, which spanned five counties across the Long Island Sound.
Such a district, if passed, would have preserved Bowman’s political power indefinitely and swiftly neutralized any existing or emerging threats to his re-election. The powers that be in Albany had not only aided Bowman, they had insulated him.
However, this was not to be — as New York’s Court of Appeals deemed the Democrat-drawn map a Congressional gerrymander, with an Andrew Cuomo-appointed justice casting the deciding vote. The court-appointed Special Master, Jonathan Cervas, radically altered New York’s Congressional map — notably, uniting Manhattan’s East and West sides, long separated under the three-decade reigns of Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, while creating a new Lower Manhattan-Brownstone Brooklyn district — sparking two surprise, hyper-competitive Congressional primaries at the heart of New York City’s urban core.
Yet, this frenzy overshadowed the equally-radical changes to Jamaal Bowman’s district. The African-American and Afro-Caribbean middle and working-class communities throughout the Northeast Bronx, fundamental to Bowman’s upset and undoubtedly a “community of interest” under the Voting Rights Act, was nonetheless splintered into three – with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez receiving Co-op City and Baychester, and Ritchie Torres netting Williamsbridge and The Valley — reducing the Bronx portion of Bowman’s district down to the Wakefield neighborhood. The separation of these neighborhoods — nothing less than electoral strongholds for Bowman — largely tied together at the federal level for three decades, was a seismic development that did not receive proper attention at the time.
In 2020, the Bronx accounted for greater than forty-percent of the vote in New York’s 16th Congressional District. Two years later, as a consequence of redistricting, that number would free-fall to jaw-dropping six-percent.
Amidst this chaos, allies of Engel, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus, privately urged neighboring Rep. Mondaire Jones to swap districts and challenge Bowman, rather than face off against DCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney in his home district. Despite publicly posturing that he would never challenge a fellow-Black progressive, Jones polled the hypothetical matchup, and found himself down thirty-points to the popular Bowman.
This potent plan for an eleventh hour sneak attack – amidst a condensed electoral timeline and within a radically-altered district — featuring Jones, a well-known and ascending figure in his own right, had faltered before it had begun. Three months later, Bowman was re-elected comfortably by twenty-nine points.
Yet, Bowman’s prohibitive margin obscured an otherwise lackluster result, as the incumbent won only 54% of the vote against two, poorly-funded members of the Westchester County Legislature. In particular, the incumbent regressed considerably in Scarsdale, Mamaroneck, and Rye while failing to improve on his past margins in Greenburgh, New Rochelle and Pelham.
Both challengers, Vedat Gashi (Scarsdale) and Catherine Parker (Rye), were non-viable from the outset — possessing little name recognition outside of their respective legislative districts, lacking the financial capital to run television advertisements (tantamount to success in suburban districts), and notwithstanding, and splitting the “anti-Bowman” vote.
There was nothing preventing another challenger — someone with substantially higher name recognition, deeper political and institutional relationships throughout Westchester County, and the financial backing to not only compete with Bowman, but outspend him entirely — from emerging two years down the road.
Even against this tepid opposition, the extent of Bowman’s Westchester County endorsements was limited to just four elected officials: Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard, Mount Vernon Council President Derrick Thompson, New Rochelle Council Woman Martha Lopez, and Hastings Mayor Nikki Armacost. In his post-election recap, Daniel Marans of Huffington Post noted that “neither the Westchester County Democratic Committee nor the Bronx Democratic County Committee endorsed Bowman’s reelection [in 2022].”
Two years later, only Armacost and Thompson remained with Jamaal Bowman. Whereas all of the local Democratic committees from Eastchester, Rye City, Rye Town, White Plains, Pelham, Mamaroneck, Harrison, Scarsdale, Greenburgh, Yonkers and Mount Vernon supported George Latimer.
In hindsight, the August 2022 Primary result, and it’s reflection on Bowman’s standing, or lack thereof, within the district — should have inspired a Defcon 1 level reckoning throughout the progressive ecosystem, leading to an all-hands-on-deck effort to claw back support in preparation for a stronger, more well-funded opponent two years later. A formidable campaign war chest would have to be quickly assembled to make any prospective challengers think twice.
However, the financial faucet that had provided key assistance to Bowman and other progressives since 2018, was beginning to run dry amidst the midterm years of the Biden Administration. Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose fundraising prowess (outside of Bernie Sanders) remains unmatched on the progressive left, was raising forty-percent less than her first-term heyday. Justice Democrats, which once boasted a staff of twenty-three, was down to nine amidst a cash-crunch.
Foreshadowing trouble, earlier that calendar year saw AIPAC form their own Super PAC, the United Democracy Project, with the intention of spending in Democratic Primaries.
Yet, as of September 30th, 2023, with George Latimer preparing to enter the race and AIPAC circling — one week before October 7th, pre-dating the onslaught of opposition research, and months in advance of another round of redistricting that could determine his fate — Jamaal Bowman had less than $200K cash-on-hand.
Two years ago, leaders in Albany had looked to protect Bowman following his resounding entree into Congress. Now, amidst louder whispers of the incumbent’s vulnerability, there was little appetite to save Bowman — communities of interest and the Voting Rights Act be damned. In the horse-trading of redistricting, where even the most powerful members of Congress are subjected to the whims of Albany politicos, Bowman had little to offer leadership — while the progressive movement behind him, coming to terms with a changing political landscape that has curtailed their Trump-era momentum, was lacking in leverage. The return of Co-op City to the district, uncoincidentally the electoral stronghold of Bronx Democratic Chair Jamaal Bailey, was less about the marginal boost it would give to Bowman’s re-election, and more centered on the future Congressional prospects of Carl Heastie’s protege.
When it was all said and done, Latimer’s in-district support totaled three of the district’s former Congressmembers (Engel, Nita Lowey, Mondaire Jones), three members of the State Assembly, almost half of the Westchester County Legislature, five of the six White Plains City Council Members, half of the Yonkers City Council (including the Majority Leader), State Senator Shelley Meyer, along with Mayors of Yonkers, White Plains, Larchmont, and Port Chester.
Whereas some of Bowman’s few in-district “allies”, like Bronx Democratic Chair Jamaal Bailey, not only held their own future plans for New York’s 16th Congressional District (that failed to include the current representative), but were actively working against Bowman’s longstanding allies — The Working Families Party, JFREJ, Sunrise and NYC-DSA — in the aforementioned State Assembly campaign between Michael Benedetto and Jonathan Soto.
Jamaal Bowman’s re-election campaign was not lost in the six months of the campaign calendar, but across the sixteen months following his August 2022 result.
There is no doubt that an avalanche of spending from AIPAC is devastating in many respects. Yet, such forces — on their own — cannot manifest electoral weakness and vulnerability among Congressional incumbents.
“Vulnerability” — a word mentioned ten times throughout this piece — is the term used by pollster Mark Mellman, chief executive for the Democratic Majority for Israel, when asked about what primarily factored into his decision when targeting incumbents. In short, the best way to avoid the sledgehammer of AIPAC spending is to work tirelessly to maintain strength in one’s district — an advantage that comes with incumbency.
Yet, withstanding Bowman’s own missteps, the inability to build an in-district coalition necessary to survive re-election is not squarely on his shoulders. Realistically, the vast burden of such an undertaking cannot fall to just one man and his district office staff. Bowman’s first election was triumphant and exhilarating, but it did not represent a sea change in Westchester County politics — the way other insurgent victories had forecasted future gains. In 2020, progressives had tactfully overcome these structural disadvantages — they not only worked harder, but smarter — burying an incumbent who diagnosed his own vulnerability far too late. Unquestionably, Bowman himself resonated with the Black and Latino working class throughout the Northeast Bronx and Westchester County — but such fondness was grounded in relationship, not ideology. The institutional left, who had lacked a discernible base in Westchester County prior to Bowman’s initial victory, had made little progress four years later (admittedly, a very short timeline), and thus were hamstrung in their efforts to assist the incumbent during the fateful months that precipitated Latimer’s entry into the race.
Justice Democrats and other progressive organizations, while undeniably skilled at the art of insurgent political campaigns, lack the capacity to provide the aforementioned level of assistance during the interim period between primary elections — increasingly, the time where vulnerability reveals itself.
A movement can attain power, but it takes a machine to keep power.
Last week, Emma Vigeland, co-host of Majority FM, shared the following:
“Under-the-radar story: Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Summer Lee were all state reps before getting elected to Congress. They had institutional support within their state parties to fend off AIPAC.
Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush did not.”
Indeed, the correlation between institutional support and winning elections — much in line with the thesis of this piece — is undoubtedly important for the left to consider going forward. However, perhaps the most important case-study and lesson on this front rests with the high-profile “Squad” member not mentioned by Vigeland.
There was a time in the not so distant past, where many powerful interests fancied making newly-elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a one-term Congresswoman.
Less than eighteen months removed from defeating two-decade incumbent, Rep. Joe Crowley, critics posited that Ocasio-Cortez’s upset was a fluke, the result of lower voter turnout and Crowley’s apathy and disengagement. Opposition research books were pushed to the press — during her first term, the New York Post mentioned the House freshman in over seven hundred and fifty articles (including an astonishing twelve AOC-based stories in one day). While her district included the younger, and increasingly-left Western Queens enclaves of Astoria, Sunnyside and the Jackson Heights historic district — the remaining working class pockets, which Crowley failed to make inroads with and ultimately turn out to vote, held remarkably little progressive infrastructure, particularly in the Bronx portion of the district.
New York’s State Party Chair, Jay Jacobs, openly criticized Ocasio-Cortez for hurting Democrats in swing districts — back then, there was no primetime DNC speech from the polarizing freshman for him to fawn over. Opponent Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former Republican and CNBC's first Latina anchor, would ultimately spend close to three million dollars. Even a narrow victory would have precipitated serious trouble — a scenario Ocasio-Cortez herself outlined in an Instagram Live days after the election — given the following cycle held the wild-card of redistricting, and with it, the potential for a tsunami of outside money.
So, what did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez do?
Upon her election to Congress, freshman Rep. Ocasio-Cortez had — after accounting for rent, travel, and utilities – slightly more than three-hundred thousand dollars in staffing budget per quarter. While Members of Congress with high-ranking positions on powerful committees — namely those with the most seniority — are afforded extra cash, Ocasio-Cortez lacked such luxuries. Much of this budget is traditionally concentrated on the Congressional Staff in Washington D.C. — in turn, squeezing the member’s district office, which in this case, spanned two boroughs.
In the district office — particularly within one of New York City’s highest-need, lower-income districts — responding and addressing constituent casework, especially with respect to all things immigration (New York’s 14th Congressional District has one of the highest immigrant populations in the United States), consumes the majority of the staff time. Not to mention dealing with constant volume of out-of-district phone calls ranging from confused (but otherwise harmless) cranks to hostile death threats — all owed to their member’s burgeoning national profile.
However, this dynamic, because of its overwhelming nature and never-ending volume, was conducive to a reactive approach to interacting with the district. After hammering Crowley for his absence, Ocasio-Cortez — now the most visible Member of Congress, herself marooned in the nation’s capital for much of the year — needed to be proactive.
While Ocasio-Cortez could count on NYC-DSA, the Working Families Party, Make The Road Action and a host of other progressive-aligned organizations to throw down — nowhere more so than across the emerging leftist stronghold of Western Queens — the political interests and institutions who long-controlled Bronx politics skeptically eyed the talented freshman. To counter these existing institutions, Ocasio-Cortez would have to create her own institution.
Thus, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, flush with cash — she was, after all, the left’s most prodigious non-Bernie Sanders fundraiser — assembled a year-round campaign team that would be rooted in many different neighborhoods throughout her Congressional district.
However, these organizers were not deployed to aimlessly knock doors. Instead, they were tasked with not only building, but strengthening key relationships — among faith leaders, small business owners, county committee members, and potential surrogates and volunteers — across the two-dozen neighborhoods that made up the Fourteenth District mosaic. As the COVID-19 pandemic devastated working class communities in the Bronx and Queens, while Caruso-Cabrera attacked Ocasio-Cortez on Fox News, Team AOC pivoted to food distribution and mutual aid. Through Team AOC, one of those organizers, Jonathan Soto, helped establish a program that brought free one-on-one tutoring at the height of the pandemic to hundreds of families across the district.
This important base-building work, normally compressed into the final months of a campaign — if even done at all — was finally given room to properly breathe. Not only were these efforts beneficial to the communities of New York’s 14th Congressional District, it was also smart politics.
When the voters of New York’s 14th Congressional District cast their ballots — in the highest turnout primary this millennium — Ocasio-Cortez was re-elected by a margin of fifty-six percent, winning seventy-four percent of the vote in total. Of the district’s four-hundred precincts, the individual blocks each home to thousands of New Yorkers and hundreds of voters — she lost only four.
This strategy and it’s key ingredients — year-round organizing to cement relationships, which when combined with earned media can help inoculate against attacks, anchored by the financial resources to sustain such exhaustive work – not only helped Ocasio-Cortez thrash Caruso-Cabrera, but has dissuaded future challengers from even attempting to defeat her.
By no means is this a one-size (or one district) fits all approach. Undoubtedly, Ocasio-Cortez is blessed with significant financial advantages, chiefly, the ability to consistently and organically fundraise millions from grassroots donors sans call time, a derivative of her immense celebrity. Nonetheless, the foresight of both her and her campaign team — as well as the underlying fundamentals of their plan — remain sound. To this day, Ocasio-Cortez continues to do year-round organizing work through her campaign across New York’s 14th Congressional District.
Overlooked in the fanfare that follows Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wherever she goes, is the importance, effectiveness, and resonance–of this work.
In this June’s Democratic Primary, across New York City, the common thread that linked the victors; those discussed in this article — Micah Lasher, Michael Benedetto, Stefani Zinerman and George Latimer — and those, regrettably due to the author’s limits, who were not — Claire Valdez, Larinda Hooks and Jordan Wright; was their relational and institutional power.
When broken down, we can see what matters:
The Candidate’s personal relationships to the district’s voters: Larinda Hooks, a district leader who unseated an ally of Hiram Monserrate, was, just like her predecessor and mentor, an employee at Elmcor, the oldest Black-led human services nonprofit in Queens; The retail-politic enjoyers, Michael Benedetto and George Latimer, have spent, collectively, fifty-years in local office, representing communities in New York State that experience limited residential turnover; Micah Lasher has not only lived on the Upper West Side for four decades, but steeped himself in the neighborhood’s politics since the age of fifteen.
The Candidate’s relationship to powerful institutions, capable of moving voters: Both Stefani Zinerman and Micah Lasher undoubtedly benefited from the intervention of their respective Congressional allies; Assembly Member Jeff Aubry, a three-decade institution in East Elmhurst, blessed Hooks as his chosen successor; Jordan Wright, the next generation of the well-respected Harlem’s political family, was not only Yusef Salaam’s Campaign Manager, but then later his Chief of Staff in the City Council; Claire Valdez, who authored one of the strongest victories the left has seen in recent years, was supported early by both NYC-DSA and the Working Families Party, who, up-and-down the ballot, collectively hold the political power in Western Queens and North Brooklyn.
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Michael, kudos to you for a very well researched piece that is rich with history. I humbly offer a few thoughts:
I agree with your point on the need to be proactive once in office. However, I think there is an underrated issue at play in the Bush and Bowman losses. The left is eager to point to AIPAC or their lack of state/local level experience prior to Congress as explanations for their losses. But I think the answer is much simpler, and one which the left seems reluctant to confront: they were not good members of Congress. I say this with sadness as Bowman was someone I had high hopes for in the past. But ultimately, they said a lot of *weird shit*, not even related to Israel, like Bowman's 9/11 conspiracies and Bush's pray the covid away weirdness. Reading Bush's interviews in particular showed poor comprehension of many issues, which was disturbing to say the least.
I also humbly and with respect offer some quick suggestions for future pieces: there's too much italicization! And while your thesis was interesting, it got muddled a bit in the length of this piece.
I've really enjoyed your work and glad you're back writing. Can't wait for more from you
This piece is so full of wild mischaracterizations, I don't know where to start. To reduce Stefani Zinerman as a "proxy" for Hakeem Jeffries is dehumanizing. And as someone who fought against Jeffries hard when he won his race in 2006, to say that he was the "progressive insurgent" is an insult to facts. It's shameful that there are people so ignorant that they believe this revisionist history that serves the bourgeois narrative.