Pro-israel Politics Just Took A Huge Hit In New York

NEW YORK — Progressives who ran hard against the war in Gaza swept a trio of congressional primaries Tuesday in America’s most heavily Jewish city, turbocharging the Democratic Party’s yearslong shift away from Israel.

Brad Lander, a former city comptroller, ousted Rep. Dan Goldman in a turbulent race between two Jewish Democrats. Lander, the progressive challenger and self-styled “liberal Zionist,” made it a referendum on their differences over Israel — hammering the incumbent for not supporting legislation to block arms sales to the U.S. ally and for refusing to call its war in Gaza a genocide.

Democratic socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier toppled powerful Rep. Adriano Espaillat, whom she had relentlessly attacked for accepting donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Another democratic socialist, state lawmaker Claire Valdez, is on track to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez after criticizing her chief rival for taking too long to use the term “genocide” and attempting to tie him to AIPAC and its super PAC, United Democracy Project. UDP denied involvement in the race.

The results paint a picture of a Democratic Party rapidly shifting on an issue that was once considered a bipartisan prerequisite for success in the Big Apple and beyond. Progressives' victories show that harsh criticism of Israel is now not only politically survivable, but can be advantageous in New York City’s dominant party.

“In a Democratic primary, the people who are against the war in Gaza have a massive political advantage in 2026,” said Jon Paul Lupo, a longtime Democratic strategist in New York who served as an adviser to former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

In New York, progressives’ tour de force indicate the Israel criticism that powered Mayor Zohran Mamdani last year remains ascendent. Mamdani boosted Lander, Valdez and Avila Chevalier to victory on Tuesday.

The results will force Democrats’ New York-based congressional leaders — Israel-supporting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — to knit together a new, fractious coalition if they wish to be successful. And they will further empower progressives nationally who have worked for years to pull the Democratic Party away from Israel as the war in Gaza worsened and have accused its leaders of being increasingly out of step with its base.

“This signals a substantial shift in policy toward Israel,” said veteran New York-based Democratic strategist Basil Smikle. “This is something that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are going to have to wrestle with not just in New York, but nationally. They’re going to have to figure out a way to maintain an older coalition that includes a lot of Jewish leaders and voters that were very supportive of Israel, and find a way to work with a younger generation and younger elected officials that don’t have those ties and memory of what existed in New York.”

Pro-Israel Democrats cast the results as a warning shot from an influential blue bastion — one that, while not a perfect mirror of the national Democratic Party, is certainly a bellwether. They argue that the historically powerful pro-Israel groups need to recalibrate.

“Unfortunately, democratic socialism and anti-Israel Democrats are going to have a stronger footing than ever before,” said Alex Hoffman, a Democratic strategist and donor adviser who wasn’t involved in these campaigns. “For pro-Israel groups, there really needs to be a rethink of the strategy, the people involved and how money gets spent. Otherwise it’s going to hurt Democrats nationally.”

Progressives successfully used AIPAC as a cudgel against incumbents who had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash from the group, further proving its use as a bogeyman in Democratic primaries across the map this year as the party confronts rising backlash to Israel and dark-money influence in its politics. And they latched onto the possibility that United Democracy Project was involved with a pair of PACs that were playing in the New York races, turning it into an attack line and rallying cry.

At Valdez’s victory party in Brooklyn, the crowd erupted in a “fuck AIPAC” chant as Goldman’s concession speech in a nearby district played across television screens at the venue. Avila Chevalier told her supporters: “We know how scared we made AIPAC.” The crowd at one point began chanting “free, free Palestine.”

Lander railed against AIPAC and other dark-money spending in his victory speech and said Democrats “have to face up to” their divides over Israel.

"Our party needs to admit that Joe Biden’s 'hug Bibi' strategy was a catastrophic mistake,” Lander said of the former president’s uneasy alignment with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the country invaded Gaza in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Some Democrats believe that may have doomed their ticket in the 2024 presidential election.

“I believe it made us complicit in genocide. Bombs we paid for killed more than seventy thousand Palestinians — most of them women and children. Tanks we paid for left a million people homeless. Humanitarian aid still is not getting in.” Lander said.

Lander also nodded to rising antisemitism, saying that progressives “need to be the people who are standing against this, not looking away from it.”

Goldman acknowledged the Israel-Palestinian conflict played an “outsized role” in his race while speaking to reporters after his concession speech. He accused Lander of using “dangerous antisemitic tropes” to win — echoing some Jewish Democrats’ concerns about how progressives’ criticism of Israel could alienate Jewish voters the party has long counted as one of its core constituencies. Some Jewish Democrats also accused Mamdani, a staunch Israel critic who endorsed all three of Tuesday’s Israel-critical victors, of promoting antisemitic tropes after he said AIPAC moved “millions in dark money … to preserve their power” in the closing days of the campaign.

“Jews have given back so much to this country. As history has taught us, antisemitic tropes and stereotypes, some of which I heard personally on this campaign, will ultimately be the undoing of our democracy if we all don’t lean in and speak out — even if it’s not politically expedient,” Goldman warned in his speech. “The Democratic Party has always been at its strongest when it has welcomed a broad coalition of voices united by those shared democratic values of equal rights, social justice, human rights.”

The Democratic shift away from Israel is not uniform. Micah Lasher, a Jewish Democrat who won the contentious primary to succeed Jerry Nadler with the retiring representative’s endorsement, has said he would not support legislation banning weapons sales to Israel.

And in Maryland, state Del. Adrian Boafo won the race to replace retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer, a staunch Israel advocate and AIPAC ally. Boafo, Hoyer’s former campaign manager and his preferred successor, was buoyed by $5.7 million in spending by United Democracy Project. He had called to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship, but was also critical of Netanyahu. Notably, UDP’s ads in that race focused on issues other than Israel — a pattern that has played across its ad strategy in many other contests.

AIPAC, in a statement, said Boafo has “made clear his vision to carry forward the strong pro-Israel legacy of Congressman Steny Hoyer.” The group commended a slate of pro-Israel incumbents who won less competitive contests across New York, Maryland and Utah.

“While disappointed that some of our endorsed candidates did not prevail, our community is proud to support pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans who stand for our values, and we are encouraged that voters in races across the country this primary season continue to choose serious, thoughtful leaders who support a strong U.S.-Israel partnership,” the statement said.

Still, the surge of Israel-critical candidates in New York will have reverberations across the country, as the party heads into its final primary contests and turns toward November. Israel and AIPAC have long been flashpoints in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, for instance, where United Democracy Project is now uncorking millions of dollars to promote Rep. Haley Stevens.

“Critics of Israel on the left are having a moment, but that doesn’t mean they represent a majority of congressional Democrats in the country,” said former Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who chaired Democrats’ House campaign arm in 2012 and 2014. “Having said that, pro-Israel Democrats clearly need a better strategy before a handful of primaries approach a tipping point.”

Maya Kaufman contributed to this report.