But Bowman has also been reckless in stomping on ideological land mines. Among his greatest unforced errors was claiming that reports of Israeli women being raped on Oct. 7 were a “lie” used for “propaganda.” (He later apologized.) Though he says he continues to support a two-state solution, he’s fallen into the left-wing habit of using “Zionist” as an insult, such as when he referred to the “Zionist regime we call AIPAC.” Speaking to Politico, he complained about the “decision” some Jews have made to segregate themselves, which many saw as an insult to the Orthodox communities in his district. I suspect Bowman didn’t know that the idea of Jews as clannish is an antisemitic trope, but when you have lots of Jewish constituents, understanding their sensitivities is part of the job.
To be clear, Bowman isn’t the only one showing a lack of sensitivity. The campaign against him has been ugly and sometimes frankly racist. Latimer has accused Bowman of caring only about his “Black and brown” constituents and of having an “ethnic” advantage. After the candidates’ first debate, a vice chair of the Westchester County Democratic Committee called Bowman an “angry, lying Black man” on Latimer’s Facebook page, adding that she’d be glad to see him have a stroke. Before Friday’s rally with Sanders, which took place in the picturesque village of Hastings-on-Hudson, some residents sent a letter to local leaders fretting about the threat of “paid agitators” endangering the community.
They had nothing to fear; the rally, on a sweltering afternoon, was fairly small, with, at most, 200 attendees. The modest turnout was a reminder that much of Bowman’s fan base lives outside the district. “At the end of the day, political viability for whatever you’re saying has to flow from having a base that will keep you in office,” said the writer and organizer Micah Sifry, who helped found the group Jews for Jamaal, though he’s no longer involved with it. Bowman’s weakness, said Sifry, is “a combination of neglecting the hard work of relationship building with people who are critical of you, which is the bulk of the Jewish community here, as well as the hard work of base building with other local communities.”
Bowman is right to be outspoken about the suffering being inflicted on Gaza. But recently, as he’s leaned into anti-Zionist rhetoric — calling Israel, for example, a “settler-colonial project” — I’ve sometimes wondered if he’s given up trying to win, setting himself up instead as a political martyr. After Oct. 7, he condemned the Democratic Socialists of America for promoting a rally in which some speakers glorified the attacks, and he made it known that he had let his membership in the group lapse. But as The New York Times reported, last month he sought the group’s endorsement and promised, in a private video meeting, to come out for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. This decision baffled me. The Democratic Socialists of America is not going to help him win many votes in the 16th District, where Sanders fared worse in 2020 than he did in New York as a whole. And by aligning himself with the anti-Zionist boycott movement, even as he says publicly that he still believes Israel has a right to exist, Bowman confirms the fears of many of his local critics.