Well third strongest in Ukraine, but yes.
–
Jamaal Bowman has lost his reelection bid to George Latimer, making him the first member of “The Squad” to lose their seat since each member’s first election between 2018-2020. A big loss, but one that does betray a weakness in lobbying power.
After the Squad had denounced Israel’s genocide of Gaza, AIPAC has promised to spend an unprecedented over $100 million to unseat any members of Congress who doesn’t speak well of Israel’s actions, focusing specifically on said group of 9 Congresspeople. Over the months they had to cancel many of those ad buys as several members were simply too well liked and too well guarded in their districts: AOC for example won her reelection with 80% of the vote. A couple others also won their reelection despite their denouncement.
Bowman was perhaps the easiest target. Reich-wing media had a field day with his fire alarm stunt, and redistricting caused him to lose many of his most reliable voterbase, leaving him vulnerable. AIPAC then pushed Latimer to be his challenger then poured a record $15 million behind him, making this race be the most expensive primary in history.
And yet despite a massive money disparity, loss of voter base, pre-existing “controversy” etc Bowman lost by “only” 16 points. Latimer won with 45,000 votes, but Bowman was first elected with 49,000. All that, and Latimer still walked away with a smaller victory than Bowman’s original win.
Basically, news outlets are of course running victory laps and trying to portray Bowman’s loss as yet another example of “moving too far to the Left”. Yet once you look into the details, this loss actually shows a sizable chink in the establishment armor.
Or to put it another way:
If lobbying groups need to spend this much and work this hard to unseat one of the few good Congresspeople, then make them bleed every last penny and willpower they got.
