Congressman Jamaal Bowman is facing a strong primary challenge from Westchester County Executive George Latimer in New York’s 16th District. Despite national intra-party dynamics, local complications broaden the race beyond a simple clash between progressive and moderate Democrats. Differing electoral priorities of communities in Lower Westchester and the Bronx are driving the contest’s coalitions and the candidates’ strategies, turning this into one of the most heated primaries in recent memory.
The differences in communities often stem from divergences in settlement patterns. Suburbanization was slower, steadier, and began earlier in Lower Westchester than on Long Island. Instead of Levittowns and strip malls, Westchester’s inner-ring suburbs like Bronxville, Scarsdale, and Rye City were designed by and for White Protestants. Here, Catholics and Jews were actively discriminated against through the 1960s and 70s. The net result is that suburbs like Scarsdale — which became plurality Jewish by 1980 — are significantly more left-leaning than analogous suburbs on Long Island, such as the Village of Roslyn (which is also affluent and heavily Jewish).
The second thing to be aware of are the district’s racial and religious demographics, with the former being 39.7% White, 28.8% Hispanic, 25.2% Black, and 7.9% Asian. We also estimate — using data from a 2023 UJA-Federation of New York study — that the district is between 8.2% and 9.5% Jewish, with adults in Jewish households representing between 12.5% and 14.7% of the Voting Age Population (VAP). The data does not show the district’s high level of segregation (e.g. 52.29% of the Black population lives in Co-op City and the City of Mount Vernon).
The political careers of both Jamaal Bowman and George Latimer emerged from this environment, with the former founding a Bronx public school in 2009 — the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action — where he became principal. Later, in 2020, Bowman was drafted by local progressives to primary Rep. Elliot Engel, a sixteen term incumbent who Bowman defeated by 15 points. Westchester County Legislators Vedat Gashi and Catherine Parker then primaried him in 2022, but they split the vote and Bowman won by a large margin despite garnering only 54.38% of votes.
Latimer’s career path was less straightforward. In 2009, Republican Rob Astorino became Westchester County Executive in the wake of a controversial legal settlement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This, in combination with a strong GOP presence in the county’s Board of Legislators (BOL), made life difficult for local Democrats who suffered another defeat in the 2013 County Executive Race. Latimer, by then a longtime local politician who had served both as BOL Chair and as a member in both chambers of the state legislature, decided to run for County Executive in 2017, defeating then-County Legislator Ken Jenkins in a competitive primary. Latimer then defeated Astorino by thirteen points before leading county Democrats to successive victories in 2019, 2021, and 2023 that established a supermajority on the BOL and effectively dismantled the local GOP.
Challenges and Coalitions:
In the upcoming primary, it is likely that racial polarization will play a major role. This was previously seen in the district’s 2022 Democratic primary, where an election district’s Black VAP strongly correlated with support for Bowman, while White VAP strongly correlated with opposition to Bowman. There are also unclear relationships between support/opposition to Bowman and Asian & Hispanic VAP given the presence of confounding variables.
Race is not the only factor. It is particularly striking that Bowman did much worse in South-Central Westchester than in the Rivertowns or Pelham, which are similarly affluent and mainly-White. This can be attributed to the high Jewish population, which makes up around a third of all households and a potential majority of Democratic households in Scarsdale, Edgemont, and northern New Rochelle. Many of these voters opposed Bowman in both 2020 and 2022, and his support has precipitously declined since his initial victory.
While it is easy to pin this solely on Bowman’s policy positions towards Israel, it must be said that some Jewish voters and organizations — like J-Street, which rescinded its endorsement of Bowman in January — take just as much of an issue with “the rhetoric, the framing and the approach” championed by Bowman and groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, which some (but not all) Jews consider to be tokenizing and inflammatory.
This is compounded by a recent and sudden surge of hate crimes in the district, including one incident involving a man caught with semi-automatic weapons while driving around in a swastika-emblazoned car, so it is unsurprising that many Jewish voters consider Bowman’s comments unhelpful. An incident that cannot go unmentioned is when Bowman said (and later retracted) that “[t]here is still no evidence of beheaded babies or raped women [on October 7th], and they still keep using that lie [for] propaganda.” This, in combination with Bowman not visiting a synagogue since 10/7, has created the perception that Bowman does not take antisemitism seriously.
Similarly, it is likely that Latimer will struggle to win many of the district’s Black voters, who largely sided against him in the 2017 Democratic primary for County Executive and in favor of Bowman in both the 2020 and 2022 Congressional primaries. Latimer’s use of “colorblind” rhetoric — as well as more problematic comments — has also come under scrutiny, with some labeling it as impersonal and out of touch. While Latimer has tried to counteract this view by championing Black politicians he supports and referencing the multiracial neighborhood he grew up in, some Black voters see this as tokenizing in much the same way that some Jewish voters view Bowman’s attempted outreach. Other comments have not gone unnoticed, such as when Latimer compared (and later retracted) calls for Andrew Cuomo’s resignation to the lynching of Emmett Till.
Given these weaknesses, it is likely that the result will hinge on relative turnout. This is especially crucial for the Bowman campaign, given Latimer’s high levels of support in municipalities with generally higher turnout in Democratic Party primaries. There is no world in which Bowman wins without re-creating his wide margins in Mount Vernon, southern New Rochelle, and western Yonkers — in addition to winning big in Co-op City.
But there are also persuadable voters and swing communities. First, there are voters in heavily Latimer or Bowman areas who might be willing to vote for the candidate with less support but who have been routinely overlooked. Second, there are competitive municipalities such as the Rivertowns (e.g. Irvington, Dobbs Ferry, Hastings-on-Hudson), Pelham, Pelham Manor, Port Chester, Tuckahoe, and eastern Yonkers. These are either affluent and majority-White villages with relatively low Jewish populations; or middle-income areas with large Hispanic, Asian, and Italian populations. Each of these groupings had similar vote totals in 2022, so it is difficult to say whether one will be more important than the other.
For Latimer, the Rivertowns and Pelham/Pelham Manor could be more elastic than expected and/or that endorsements in Port Chester (which was part of Latimer’s State Senate district) and Yonkers could enhance his standing. Such a situation is especially plausible given recent polling, but it is far from certain. In the same vein, Bowman could maintain support in Working Families Party strongholds in the Rivertowns while improving his showing among voters in Yonkers, Port Chester, and Tuckahoe.
We must also note the fundraising gap between the two candidates, including the over fourteen million dollars spent by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on behalf of Latimer, who has historically struggled with fundraising. As stated above, both Bowman and Latimer have made missteps; however, the onslaught of anti-Bowman campaign ads has greatly increased awareness of Bowman’s errors while keeping many unaware of Latimer’s mistakes. Unlike the omnipresent anti-Bowman attack ads (including an un-skippable digital ad that replays Bowman’s aforementioned comments about Oct. 7th), anti-Latimer ads are very rare. Even Bowman campaign ads play defense, focusing on Bowman’s accomplishments in order to dispel Latimer’s argument that Bowman has done little to materially improve the district.
In sum, the primary has devolved into a tense, polarized race with two of Westchester Dems’ biggest support groups (Black voters and Jewish voters) often picking their candidates based on the other candidate’s perceived insensitivity towards them. This is Team Bowman’s third consecutive competitive primary and it is by far the most polarized. If this trend continues, then Bowman will eventually lose or continue to suck resources from other New York progressives. While Latimer does not plan to stay in Congress for long — and is thus less likely to care about the long-term implications of his campaign’s rhetoric — it is difficult to imagine moderates regaining their complete political hegemony in the district regardless of the result.
Latimer’s familiarity with voters and monetary advantage — in combination with Bowman’s repeated mistakes and subpar 2022 performance — give him the edge. A Bowman victory would not be a shock, but it would be a slight upset. No matter the result, there will be a tendency to treat the election as a national sign of either progressive survival or moderate resurgence. But we believe that would be a mistake; to some extent, all politics is local.