The Horse Race: Progressives Blame Outside Money as Bowman's Heated Anti-Israel Rhetoric Comes Back to Bite Him

The state of the campaign.

WITH BRITTANY BERNSTEIN & AUDREY FAHLBERG Wednesday, June 26, 2024 Progressives Blame Outside Money as Bowman's Heated Anti-Israel Rhetoric Comes Back to Bite Him Hours before vote tallies started trickling in Tuesday evening, Representative Jamaal Bowman's allies on Capitol Hill had already begun laying blame for his long-anticipated loss on the avalanche of outside spending against him — especially the $15 million spent by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) super PAC.   "It's hard to battle that type of money," Representative Maxwell Frost (D., Fla.) told National Review hours before Westchester County executive George Latimer romped to victory in New York's 16th congressional district. "For me, it's less of a referendum on any specific issue, but more of a stark reminder of the issue that we see with these large amounts of money coming into our primaries and our elections, and why we need to end Citizens United."   In 2020, Bowman's primary victory over longtime representative Eliot Engel was championed by the activist Left as evidence that the progressive movement is a force to be reckoned with in Democratic primaries. Just two terms later, the former Bronx middle-school principal went down in flames Tuesday evening with a 17-point loss to  Latimer, a mainstream Democrat and fixture in the district.    Bowman will spend his last few months on Capitol Hill wearing a new title — the first member of the far-left "Squad" to be ousted from office since the group's formation six years ago. And his tenure will be remembered for the controversial antics that ultimately attracted so much outside spending against him: pleading guilty to a misdemeanor for pulling a fire alarm in the U.S. Capitol during a vote to fund the government, calling Hamas's raping of women and beheading of babies "propaganda" weeks after the October 7 attack, publishing 9/11 truther poetry on a years-old personal blog, and getting into screaming matches with . . . READ MORE  > Join NRPLUS and get the full text of The Horse Race delivered straight to your inbox. ADVERTISEMENT 19 West 44th Street, Ste. 1701, New York, NY, 10036 Your Preferences | Unsubscribe | Privacy View this e-mail in your browser.