{"id":1625578,"date":"2024-04-23T09:40:49","date_gmt":"2024-04-23T09:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/04\/maga-bowman-democrats-latimer-congress\/"},"modified":"2024-04-23T10:38:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-23T10:38:19","slug":"maga-loves-jamaal-bowmans-opponent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/04\/23\/maga-loves-jamaal-bowmans-opponent\/","title":{"rendered":"MAGA Loves Jamaal Bowman\u2019s Opponent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Deep-pocketed right-wing Trump backers eager to drive a progressive from Congress are swelling the campaign coffers of George Latimer, Rep. Jamaal Bowman\u2019s challenger in the 16th congressional district of New York.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n George Latimer speaking in New York on August 7, 2023. (Lev Radin \/ Pacific Press\/LightRocket via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

\u201cHelp me defeat the Squad,\u201d Republican Steve Louro wrote, announcing a May 16 fundraiser at the home of fellow Republican David Bercow, in Armonk, an upscale suburb in Westchester County, New York. The cause? The defeat of \u201cradical Jamaal Bowman.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that Republicans would oppose Bowman, a black democratic socialist. But these Republicans aren\u2019t organizing behind a Republican general election candidate. They\u2019re supporting Bowman\u2019s Democratic <\/em>opponent, George Latimer.<\/p>\n

That means that Democrats in Westchester, including centrists who don\u2019t always agree with Bowman\u2019s progressive politics \u2014 which have included public funding for renewable energy and a cease-fire in Gaza \u2014 who vote for Latimer would be allying themselves with MAGA backers.<\/p>\n

Latimer\u2019s willingness to accept money from such actors reflects the grim reality that some in the centrist Democratic establishment would often rather ally with Trumpists than allow the Left to gain power. Local Democratic committees and even some unions have, in this spirit, endorsed Latimer. (That support has been far from uniform, however: national figures like House Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Pete Aguilar, and Kathleen Clarke came out strongly for Bowman last month.)<\/p>\n

This election year, Bowman is one of the main targets of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which essentially serves as an arm of the Israeli state and its far-right government. Latimer\u2019s fundraising edge is huge, but according to recent internal polling<\/a>, the race could be much closer than previously reported. Bowman could win.<\/p>\n

Part of what\u2019s animated both MAGA and AIPAC is Bowman\u2019s call for a cease-fire in Gaza. However, his position is a popular one: a Working Families Party poll in the district last month found that 69 percent of Democratic voters in the district would be more likely to support a candidate backing a cease-fire.<\/p>\n

Louro, an insurance mogul who has already given $5,000 to Latimer, is a top Donald Trump fundraiser. He hosted a $5,000-a-plate event for Trump in 2016. In the last election, he hosted a party for New York governor Kathy Hochul\u2019s far-right opponent, Lee Zeldin. Donald Trump Jr. was a featured speaker. Louro, who lives on Long Island, has also served as regional finance chairman for New York state\u2019s Republican Party. (As for Bercow, the host of the Latimer shindig, he\u2019s been less partisan in the past, supporting both Democrats and Republicans as many rich people do. But his biggest cause has been genocide apologetics, giving thousands over the years to AIPAC and similar groups.)<\/p>\n

Louro isn\u2019t the only MAGA Republican backing Latimer. Alex Dubitsky, CEO of a \u201cbespoke insurance\u201d firm based in Connecticut, who gave $15,000 to Trump in 2020, held a brunch in January at his home in Larchmont, inviting his friends to pay up to $6,600 to meet and greet Latimer.<\/p>\n

Over the last few years, as the New York <\/em>Daily News<\/em> reported<\/a>, he\u2019s given nearly $20,000 to the Republican National Committee, as well as supporting right wingers like Lindsey Graham, Elise Stefanik, Rob Astorino, and Zeldin. Hedge funder Daniel Loeb has also donated to Latimer. Loeb is a charter school zealot who has given $1.5 million to Mitch McConnell, $200,000 to a PAC supporting Dr Oz, along with millions to the Republican Party.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not even counting the indirect far-right money: MAGA Republicans are also some of the biggest donors to AIPAC, which plans to spend millions on Latimer this cycle.<\/p>\n

While Latimer\u2019s support from AIPAC has been widely reported, and some local papers have uncovered the MAGA connections, the latter have been surprisingly downplayed in major media. Bowman supporters even point to a pattern of reporters deleting tweets that portray Latimer in a negative light.<\/p>\n

Politico<\/em> reporter David Freedlander took down a tweet about the Louro-organized fundraiser; he told Jacobin <\/em>he did this because Bercow, the event\u2019s host, said that he was getting violent threats. A News 12 reporter also took down a tweet in which Latimer unconvincingly answered accusations that, in taking money from MAGA Republicans, he is working with groups and people who have a history of targeting people of color. (That clip, which was reposted by Daniel Marans<\/a> of the Huffington Post<\/em>,<\/a> is a familiar genre: a white person\u2019s awkward testimony that, having grown up with black friends and neighbors, he could not possibly be implicated in anything racist.)<\/p>\n

Perhaps it shouldn\u2019t be so surprising that a Democrat willing to ally himself with AIPAC \u2014 whose mission is to enable an eliminationist policy against Palestinians \u2014 would be willing to accept money from domestic white supremacists and extremists. But for many liberal suburbanites, even those accustomed to tuning out Middle East politics, MAGA cash might be too egregious to stomach.<\/p>\n

These unsavory bedfellows are helping to give the unremarkable Latimer \u2014 who was never gifted at fundraising before he was adopted as a pet cause by the far right \u2014 a big fundraising edge over Bowman. Bowman did a video on the matter: \u201cThis is what we\u2019ve been telling y\u2019all,\u201d he says, with the Louro invitation appearing in the background, \u201cRepublicans are bankrolling my opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Louro\u2019s support for Trump and Zeldin, Bowman noted in the video that these are \u201ctwo people who want to end Roe v. Wade<\/em> and have said it out loud, two people who are racist MAGA Republicans who supported the insurrection and the attack on the US Capitol.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are clearly some voters in Bowman\u2019s district who don\u2019t like him \u2013 hardcore Israel apologists who don\u2019t like his support for Palestinian lives, and some rich people who don\u2019t like social democracy and high taxes. But it seems unlikely that most residents of Westchester and the Bronx want to tolerate racist, anti-choice MAGA influence in their district.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHelp me defeat the Squad,\u201d Republican Steve Louro wrote, announcing a May 16 fundraiser at the home of fellow Republican David Bercow, in Armonk, an upscale suburb in Westchester County, New York. The cause? The defeat of \u201cradical Jamaal Bowman.\u201d It\u2019s not surprising that Republicans would oppose Bowman, a black democratic socialist. But these Republicans [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1646,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1646"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1625578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1625579,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625578\/revisions\/1625579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1625578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1625578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1625578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}