Uncategorized
These Jews backed Brad Lander in the primary. Are they taking his advice and voting Mamdani?
For progressive Jews in New York City, the presence on the ballot of one of their own in June’s mayoral primary offered a moment of great excitement.
Brad Lander galvanized many progressive Jewish leaders, and polls found that he outperformed among Jewish voters, drawing about 20% of their first-choice votes on the ranked ballots, compared to 11% of voters citywide.
Lander cross-endorsed Zohran Mamdani, the primary winner, before that vote, and he has since campaigned heavily for the democratic socialist who is leading in all polls. So it might seem self-evident that his Jewish voters would all be backing Mamdani without hesitation. But some of them say they are doing so with misgivings or not doing so at all, in a sign of how fraught the election has been for Jewish voters who are turned off by Mamdani’s strong opposition to Israel.
Jonathan Marcus, a 25-year-old Jewish voter in Manhattan, ranked Lander first in the primary but is casting his vote in the general election for Andrew Cuomo, the former governor who is polling second.
“Someone like Mamdani becoming mayor is, while he won’t explicitly outright say ‘from the river to the sea’ or anything like that, to me, it just enables these protesters,” said Marcus. “For someone who’s going to take their side, being the leader of New York, and it looks like it’s going to happen, I can’t get behind that.”
Richard Goldstein, on the other hand, said he’ll be casting his ballot for Mamdani after ranking Lander first in the primary and leaving Mamdani off. The Jewish former executive editor of the Village Voice, who lives in Greenwich Village, said he had been turned off by Mamdani’s stances on Israel, which he said would be “a recipe for a bloodbath” in the Middle East if fully acted upon.
Because of ranked-choice voting in the primary, “I thought if I put him on the ballot at all, I may end up voting for him, so I left him off,” Goldstein said.
But in the general election, he has decided to give Mamdani his support, after ruling out Cuomo as “truly sleazy” and Republican Curtis Sliwa as “completely inappropriate.” He said he supported most of what Mamdani stands for and believed that Mamdani would not sanction a flourishing of antisemitism, though he said he expected him potentially not to intervene in “radical protests” against Israel.
“This is one of the hardest choices I’ve had to make,” Goldstein said. “I like his program very much. I admire his character. He’s incredibly intelligent and energetic, almost frenetically energetic, which is great in a politician. On the other hand, I really don’t agree with him on Israel. I’m not a Zionist either, I just want Israel to survive.”
Rabbi Jill Jacobs also openly backed Lander in the primary without offering similar support for Mamdani. While she declined to offer more details about her personal vote, last week she urged her followers for the first time to take Mamdani seriously, in the face of a groundswell of opposition from rabbis around the country.
“Was Mamdani my favorite candidate? No (I think everyone knows that was Brad Lander),” wrote Jacobs, the CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, in a Facebook post, adding that she was unconvinced that Mamdani, who is 34 and lacks executive experience, could “run a huge, complicated city.”
But she said she believed there was evidence that Mamdani had learned from engaging with Jewish leaders who spoke with him and that she believed the thrust of Mamdani’s campaign, which has centered on affordability, was resonant with New Yorkers.
“Do I think most New Yorkers voted for Mamdani because they wake up every morning thinking about Israel/Palestine?” wrote Jacobs. “No, most New Yorkers wake up thinking about how to pay their rent and take care of their kids and get to work — which is exactly what he ran on and what people responded.”
Back in June, voters who preferred Lander did not all choose to back Mamdani at the same time, despite the candidates’ cross-endorsement. A New York Times analysis found that, after Lander was eliminated during ranked-choice voting, 56% of his first-choice votes were allocated to Mamdani, meaning that they had ranked Mamdani higher than Cuomo or not at all.
But in a surprise, despite Lander’s cross-endorsement of Mamdani, half of his remaining votes were allocated to Cuomo, while the rest of the ballots had not ranked Cuomo or Mamdani and were discarded.
New York mayoral candidate, State Rep. Zohran Mamdani is joined by fellow mayoral candidate Brad Lander during an election night gathering at The Greats of Craft LIC on June 24, 2025 in the Long Island City neighborhood of the Queens borough in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Since then, Lander himself says he has been working to convince voters who ranked him first in June to come around to Mamdani if they weren’t already there.
“I talked to some people who in the primary ranked me first and Zohran fifth,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during a Met Council food distribution event over the summer. “With them, I’ve been asking, OK, he’s been going around to listen to a lot of people to try to allay people’s concerns and fears, what do you want to hear and see that will help you feel more comfortable?”
Andrea Scheer is one of those voters. When it came time to vote in the Democratic mayoral primary this past June, she didn’t hesitate before ranking Lander first. The 76-year-old psychotherapist had already done some leafleting and tabling for him, and she is on the leadership committee of the Upper West Side Action Group, a progressive political group that endorsed Lander ahead of the primary.
She also recalls ranking City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and State Sen. Zellnor Myrie. Her fourth and last-place ranked-choice vote went to Mamdani, who’d emerged as the likeliest candidate to take on Cuomo — a politician for whom Scheer said she has “no respect.”
“I had to put Mamdani somewhere,” Scheer said in an interview, in order to vote against Cuomo.
But the decision was one Scheer felt uneasy about because of Mamdani’s views on Israel. She cited Mamdani’s past refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” though she acknowledged that he said since that he would discourage its use. She has worries about his support for the movement to boycott Israel and how that could manifest under his leadership. And she also brought up Mamdani’s vow to have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if the Israeli prime minister sets foot in New York City while he is mayor.
“Not that he’s one of my favorite people — he’s not, at all,” Scheer said about Netayahu. “But you’re going to arrest him? Again, different standards for Israel.”
But now, with Mamdani being the only progressive candidate in an election that’s just days away, Scheer said she must face that uneasiness head on. Given the field of candidates, Scheer said she is coming around on voting for Mamdani.
“I’m 90% there to vote for him,” Scheer said. “Because if I don’t vote for him I’m not voting. And it is absolutely against my DNA to not vote.”
Scheer said she is banking on Mamdani’s ability to grow. “I heard that he was going around to synagogues and talking to rabbis and, I’m sort of counting on him being smart enough to learn,” she said.
Arlene Geiger, the founder and coordinator of the UWS Action Group, estimated that upwards of 90% of group members are voting for Mamdani — but with varying levels of enthusiasm. Geiger, who is Jewish and said about 60% of people involved with her group are, too. She said an event in September where Lander addressed group members’ concerns about Mamdani had made a difference.
“I would say people were impressed with — I mean they love Brad — but I think that for those who were apprehensive, it made them feel better about Zohran,” Geiger said.
“Quite a few people came up afterwards and said, ‘I was on the fence but now I’m voting for Zohran,’” Lander said following an unrelated event later that week. “I’ve certainly had people say to me, ‘I’m not persuaded by you, but I appreciate your taking the time to have this conversation.’ And of course I’ve had people who call me a lot of ugly names, and I don’t reciprocate.”
Scheer said she wasn’t totally won over by attending. She left feeling that Lander had answered questions “a little bit generically,” like by repeating that Mamdani wants all New Yorkers to feel safe, and decided that she would not join others in tabling for Mamdani. But she concluded that she would feel comfortable voting for Mamdani again.
“The fact that he has Brad Lander as his buddy, I think would be helpful when it came to certain issues with Jews and Israel,” she said.
For Hillel Hirshbein, a 56-year old Jewish Harlem resident who identifies as a liberal and a Zionist and who ranked Lander first, Mamdani’s statements about Israel had been a deterrent going into the primary.
“I thought Mamdani’s policies, there were quite a few of them that were good. I thought that he was a much stronger presenter of a vision than some other candidates,” said Hirshbein. “But going into the primary, I had sort of a grave concern about things that he had been recorded saying that were somewhat anti-Israel and anti-Zionist.”
Ultimately, Hirshbein’s opposition to Cuomo made him rank Mamdani last in the primary election despite his “reluctance” to vote for a candidate who opposes Israel.
“I did, with reluctance, add him as my last candidate, because I sort of in my head, ended up ranking this decent guy who has integrity, but with whom I have a significant disagreement, above the guy who I don’t trust, and I think is just a corrupt sleazebag,” said Hirshbein.
Four months later, the career social worker said he had come around to Mamdani more enthusiastically because of what he says he will offer to “help folks that are on the margins.”
“I’m voting for him because of what I think he can do for the city, and setting aside the stuff that I think is rather is really anathema to me from his foreign policy perspectives,” said Hirshbein.
For some Jewish New Yorkers, that leap is proving too hard to make. Polls show that Mamdani is poised for victory next week and may command a majority of votes in a three-way race, even as Cuomo surges near the finish line. But the most recent poll of Jewish voters, from Quinnipiac University, found that 60% backed Cuomo, while just 16% said they favored Mamdani and 12% supported Sliwa.
Ultimately, while Lander said he recognized lingering concerns about Mamdani among New York’s progressive Jews, he still believed the frontrunner would do well among his voters in the general election.
“Obviously, there are some people in the community, in the Jewish community, who aren’t yet comfortable with him,” he said at the Met Council event. “But I believe he’s going to do very well in general, with people who voted for me first, and also with Jewish New Yorkers.”
For at least some of them, their ballots will come with a hefty dose of hope — that their best-case scenario will unfold and their biggest fears will not materialize.
“You can’t cross your fingers in the Star of David, but you know, I’ll hope for the best, I’ll wish him the best,” said Goldstein. Using the Yiddish or Hebrew term for common sense, he continued, “I hope he has the sechel to keep the city intact and growing and to promote his program without sparking ethnic strife.”
—
The post These Jews backed Brad Lander in the primary. Are they taking his advice and voting Mamdani? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
I helped sell Obama’s Iran deal. Its critics owe us all an explanation.
(JTA) — Neoconservatives have some ‘splainin’ to do, as Lucy’s television husband, Ricky Ricardo used to say.
The war on Iran has turned out to be a debacle of historic proportions.
After months of military escalation, tens of billions of dollars expended, critical weapons stockpiles depleted, and a region once again thrown into crisis, the United States now finds itself humiliated. The memorandum of understanding reportedly concluded last week does not represent the culmination of victory. It represents the codification of failure.
Many understood that nuclear disarmament and regime change in Iran could not be achieved through force. As I wrote in these pages a few months ago, more than a decade ago, we reached a solution designed to avert precisely the calamity that has unfolded. It was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or, in layman’s parlance, the Iran nuclear deal.
As a certified denizen of the Swamp — I served in the Clinton White House’s communications shop and later founded a Washington, DC strategic communications firm — I was at the forefront of selling the Obama administration’s agreement to the American public.
I remember those days well — and I do not miss them.
JCPOA defenders, particularly those of us in the Jewish community, were attacked in the ugliest terms imaginable. We were called appeasers, sellouts, self-hating Jews and worse. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington and outrageously warned Congress that the deal might pave the way to a second Holocaust.
JCPOA advocates never argued that the agreement signed in Vienna was perfect.
Its critics pointed to the sunset provisions. They objected that the deal did not address every malign activity undertaken by the Islamic Republic throughout the Middle East. These were legitimate concerns. Politics, however, is the art of the possible; geopolitics doubly so.
That agreement nevertheless achieved something extraordinary. Iran shipped out the overwhelming majority of its enriched uranium. International inspectors gained unprecedented access. A mechanism existed to monitor and constrain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The prospect of military confrontation receded.
The regime’s hardliners hated the agreement. The Revolutionary Guard fought it tooth and nail. Integration into the global economy threatened entrenched interests within the Islamic Republic. A growing middle class and increasing international engagement carried risks for those whose power depended on its isolation and perpetual confrontation.
Unfortunately, hardliners were not confined to Tehran.
The maximal-pressure advocates in Washington ultimately prevailed. During the first Trump administration, the United States withdrew from the agreement. Tore it up, as the president bragged. Despite the best efforts of our European partners, who had also signed the accord, the framework collapsed beneath the weight of renewed sanctions and diplomatic abandonment.
What followed, we were promised, was supposed to vindicate the critics.
Instead, it vindicated the critics’ critics.
The maximal-pressure advocates have spent years moving the goalposts. First, we were told, sanctions would bring the regime to its knees. They did not. Then economic isolation would force Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. It did not. Then military pressure would succeed where sanctions had failed. It did not. Then leadership decapitation, covert action, and military escalation would produce regime change. They did not.
Each promised but failed breakthrough gave way to another promised breakthrough.
And now comes the final indignity: the so-called memorandum of understanding.
After years of threats, sanctions, covert action, military escalation and open warfare, the United States has agreed to resume negotiations with the very regime it set out to break. The Islamic Republic remains in power. Its leadership and political system remain intact.
Nor is that all.
The agreement reportedly provides waivers for Iranian oil exports and opens the door to sanctions relief and renewed access to many billions in frozen assets. It establishes yet another negotiating process on the nuclear question rather than resolving it. It leaves unresolved many of the issues that maximal-pressure advocates once described as non-negotiable, including Iran’s missile capabilities, its regional proxy network, or the many canisters of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium — what the president calls nuclear dust.
Even the future status of the Strait of Hormuz, the critical passage for oil open before the war, and now established as a lever for Iran to exert pressure, appears destined for further negotiation rather than decisive resolution.
The advocates of maximal pressure promised a better deal than the JCPOA. They promised that Iran would be forced to make concessions unavailable through diplomacy.
Instead, after years of confrontation, Washington finds itself lifting pressure, restoring economic benefits, negotiating with a surviving regime and postponing the most difficult questions to future talks.
Hell, in Paris last week, Trump actually made the case for Iran to retain, build or buy missiles and maintain at least some nuclear power.
So, what, precisely, was achieved?
The tragedy is not merely that the war failed to accomplish its objectives. It is that we already possessed a framework that constrained Iran’s nuclear program without requiring military confrontation. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was imperfect, to be sure. Its supporters never claimed otherwise. But it reduced risk, established verification mechanisms and avoided precisely the cycle of escalation that has consumed the past decade.
Its opponents insisted there was a better way.
History has now rendered its verdict.
The United States ultimately abandoned a functioning diplomatic framework in pursuit of fantasies that proved unattainable. Having exhausted sanctions, threats and military force, it has arrived back at the negotiating table poorer, weaker and in possession of less leverage than before.
I’m afraid I told you so.
The defenders of the JCPOA were mocked as appeasers. Yet the memorandum of understanding now before us amounts to an admission of the very proposition we advanced all along: However distasteful it may be, the Islamic Republic is not a problem that can be bombed or sanctioned out of existence.
Diplomacy could have spared us the war.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post I helped sell Obama’s Iran deal. Its critics owe us all an explanation. appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Lander unseats Goldman on winning congressional election night for Mamdani
Former City Comptroller Brad Lander handily defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in the New York Democratic primary Tuesday night, while lesser-known Assemblymember Claire Valdez secured the nomination for another House seat — both after campaigning as sharp critics of Israel and with the endorsement of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Preliminary results showed Lander with about 66% of the vote to Goldman’s 34%. Valdez won with 56% of the vote for the open seat being vacated by Rep. Nydia Velazquez. Both are virtually assured of winning the general election in November in their heavily Democratic districts.
A third candidate whom Mamdani had endorsed, former Columbia Gaza war encampment organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, held a slight lead over Rep. Adriano Espaillat on Tuesday night.
Representing a spectrum ranging from liberal Zionist critic (Lander) to longtime activist for the Palestinian cause (Avila Chevalier), the strong results for Mamdani’s chosen candidates is being closely watched nationally in a Democratic Party where many voters say they want the U.S. to distance itself from Israel. All three candidates say they will support cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel, including for the Iron Dome defense system.
At a campaign rally last week, Mamdani compared the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to “monsters” who “move millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal — to preserve their power, so that they can turn us against one another.” The remarks drew widespread condemnation from Jewish leaders, including some Mamdani supporters.
Lander is a high-profile Jewish politician allied with Mamdani, who this election cycle threw his weight behind a slate of progressive candidates who have critiqued hardline pro-Israel money and use the terms “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
Setting out to challenge the incumbent, Lander zeroed in on Goldman’s support for U.S. military aid to Israel and his past ties to the campaign fundraising group AIPAC during the campaign.
Lander told the New York Times that criticizing AIPAC makes him “queasy” given “the antisemitic tropes at play,” but that he feels an obligation to call out its funding nonetheless as he promises to curtail U.S. military aid to Israel.
In NY-7, another candidate backed by Mamdani defeated the incumbent’s handpicked successor. democratic socialist Valdez won against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who had the endorsement of outgoing Rep. Velázquez.
But Mamdani’s brand of Israel politics didn’t succeed everywhere: In the Bronx, Rep. Ritchie Torres — one of the Democratic party’s most staunch supporters of Israel — handily defeated Michael Blake, a former state assemblyman who allied with Mamdani during the mayoral primary last year.
For state comptroller, incumbent Thomas DiNapoli — who made additional purchases of Israel bonds in the aftermath of Oct. 7 — won over Jewish challenger Drew Warshaw, who argued that the state should divest from Israel bonds because they help “finance Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wars.”
State Assemblymember Micah Lasher won the race to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler, who retired after 33 years in the House and served as one of Congress’ leading voices for liberal Jews. In that race, the leading candidates Lasher and Alex Bores had broad agreement in their support of Israel.
The other candidate in the race, Kennedy political scion Jack Schlossberg, had called for conditioning aid to Israel and attempted to draw contrast with Bores and Lasher on the issue. But Schlossberg’s campaign struggled to gain traction amid questions about his lack of political experience.
The post Lander unseats Goldman on winning congressional election night for Mamdani appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Pro-Israel Democrats battle to take on vulnerable Republican Rep. Mike Lawler
(New York Jewish Week) — Voters in New York’s Hudson Valley on Tuesday are choosing a Democrat to challenge the staunchly pro-Israel Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in a heavily Jewish swing district.
Two candidates have emerged as frontrunners in the Democratic primary in New York’s 17th Congressional District, a suburb of New York City that includes about 30,000 Orthodox Jews.
Cait Conley, a military veteran and former national security adviser, leads by double digits in polls this month and prediction markets over Beth Davidson, a member of the Rockland County Legislature who has highlighted her Jewish identity. A poll from Tavern Research last week found that 28% of voters were still undecided as the election approached.
Both are appealing to residents anxious about the cost of living, housing, healthcare and foreign conflicts. The winner will also aim to claw back moderate voters who supported Lawler, one of the most vocally pro-Israel members of Congress and a representative who has forged close ties with Orthodox Jewish voters.
Davidson and Conley have both said they support the United States alliance with Israel while opposing actions by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. During a candidate forum in April, they distanced themselves from Democratic efforts in the Senate to block certain military sales to Israel.
Polling far behind Conley and Davidson is Effie Phillips-Staley, a progressive who says Israel is an apartheid state that has committed genocide in Gaza.
Conley and Davidson say they are marrying pro-Israel views with a liberal agenda, including fighting President Donald Trump. Davidson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she wants to create a political home for “Jews that have felt lost in the Democratic party.” She previously served on the board of her White Plains synagogue, Beth Am Shalom, and has touted Jewish values as driving her public service, including tikkun olam, or repairing the world, and welcoming the stranger.
Conley has presented her military experience as an advantage. A former national security adviser in the Biden administration, she has said that she supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and views Israel as a critical national security ally.
The winner will face off with Lawler, who has become so closely identified with the district’s Jewish community that he was recently attacked in comments by Sen. Rand Paul’s son, William Paul, who accused the lawmaker of being one of “you people,” although Lawler is not Jewish.
Often working with Democrats, Lawler has proposed a spate of legislation aimed at supporting Israel since he entered Congress in 2023. He co-sponsored the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would require the Department of Education to codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, a move championed by major Jewish groups and criticized by progressives for classifying some forms of Israel criticism as antisemitic. The bill passed in the House in 2024 but stalled in the Senate amid free speech concerns and was reintroduced in the House last year.
Lawler also introduced in 2024 the bipartisan Stand with Israel Act, which seeks to halt funding for United Nations agencies that “expel, downgrade, suspend, or otherwise restrict the participation of the State of Israel.” His bipartisan 2025 Bunker Buster Act seeks to equip Israel with massive bombs to target Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
This year, Lawler has partnered with Democrats on two new measures that he says will combat antisemitism. The Jewish American Security Act introduced this month proposes expanding federal security support for Jewish institutions, and a House resolution from April condemns leftist streamer Hasan Piker and far-right podcaster Candace Owens for “antisemitic hate-filled rhetoric and content.”
Phillips-Staley represents the rising progressive wing of the Democratic party that is sharply critical of Israel, differentiating herself from Lawler as well as Conley and Davidson. Phillips-Staley has said that her views solidified after she traveled to Israel and the West Bank in February. She was criticized by some Democratic officials for doing an interview with Piker.
She told JTA in March that many Jewish residents supported her belief that Israel has committed genocide and the United States should sever military aid.
“I get the most encouragement, from lots of people, but a lot of encouragement from Jews who really challenged me, especially in the beginning, to be brave and say it like it is,” said Philips-Staley.
Republicans are suspected of jumping into the late stage of the race by funding a shadowy new group called Progressive Champions PAC, which mirrors GOP efforts to influence other Democratic primaries nationwide. Davidson publicly disavowed the PAC, which has spent $1.5 million on ads attacking Conley for her contract work for an AI company that works with the Department of Homeland Security, according to the Cook Political Report.
The primary winner will quickly rocket to national prominence in the general election, as Lawler’s seat is considered one of the most likely to flip in November. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district, which former presidential candidate Kamala Harris won by less than one percentage point in 2024.
The post Pro-Israel Democrats battle to take on vulnerable Republican Rep. Mike Lawler appeared first on The Forward.
