Edited by: TJVNews.com & Gary Tilzer
Rep. Jerry Nadler, who twice led fights to impeach former President Donald Trump, defeated U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney in a Democratic primary Tuesday after a court forced the two veteran lawmakers into the same New York City congressional district, as was reported by the AP.
Nadler’s victory ends a 30-year run in Congress for Maloney, who battled to get government aid for people sickened by clouds of toxic soot after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In Tuesday’s primary election, redistricting has left two longtime New York House Democratic colleagues competing for the same seat, while the head of the party’s campaign arm in the chamber is running in new territory and faces a challenge from the left.
New York held its second round of primary elections after voting in June for statewide races. Tuesday’s primary covers the state’s 26 U.S. House seats, a delayed date after a judge ordered a redrawing of political maps, according to the AP report.
The unusual fight between incumbents who have spent decades working together was the result of a redistricting process that lumped Nadler’s home base on the west side of Manhattan together with Maloney’s on the east side, with neither willing to run in another part of the city.
The AP reported that in his victory speech, Nadler said he and Maloney “have spent much of our adult lives working together to better both New York and our nation. I speak for everyone in this room tonight when I thank her for her decades of service to our city.”
Nadler also defeated Suraj Patel, a 38-year-old lawyer and lecturer at New York University who has now failed to advance out of a Democratic congressional primary in three straight tries.
Nadler, 75, was first elected to Congress in 1992, as per the AP report. As chair of the House Judiciary Committee, he led both impeachments of Trump. Nadler was buoyed in the last weeks of the campaign by endorsements from The New York Times and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the report indicated.
He pledged he would go back to Congress “with a mandate to fight for the causes so many of us know to be right,” including abortion access and climate change, according to the AP report.
Maloney, 76, also first elected in 1992, is the first woman to chair the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The AP reported that she is known for her longtime advocacy for Sept. 11 first responders seeking compensation for diseases they attribute to contamination from the destruction of the World Trade Center. She wore a firefighter’s jacket on Capitol Hill and at the 2019 Met Gala. She also championed legislation for Holocaust education and has been an outspoken and bold opponent of anti-Semitism.
Few policy differences between Nadler, Maloney and Patel emerged during the primary campaign.
All support abortion rights, the Green New Deal and tighter restrictions on gun ownership, according to the AP report. Patel argued that Nadler’s and Maloney’s generation failed to achieve Democratic goals like codifying Roe v. Wade and should cede to new blood.
Nadler and Maloney countered that their seniority in Congress brings clout that benefits New Yorkers.
The AP reported that as friends for many years, the two Democrats lamented having to run against each other — something that only happened after a court redrew the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts after concluding the legislature botched the process.
“I didn’t want to run against my good friend, Jerry Nadler,” Maloney said at a recent debate. “We have been friends and allies for years. Unfortunately, we were drawn into the same district.”
Still, on the campaign trail Maloney said that as a woman, she would fight harder to protect abortion rights than Nadler, as was reported by the AP.
Asked at a debate how his record differed from that of Maloney, Nadler cited his votes against the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, and in favor of the Iran nuclear deal. Maloney, also elected to Congress in 1992, voted the other way on all three.
Maloney also came under fire from her opponents for her past positions on vaccines, including in 2006 when she introduced legislation directing the federal government to study the debunked theory that vaccines can cause autism. The AP reported that Maloney insisted that she supports vaccines and regretted having ever questioned vaccine safety.
When Nadler picked Schumer’s endorsement, Maloney dismissed Nadler and Schumer as being members of the “old boys’ network,” according to a report on NY1.
“There is an old boys’ network that sticks together and they do not let women in,” Maloney told NY1 in an interview last week on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “I was friends with a lot of males that I worked with on the West Side and now they won’t even talk with me. They’re all with Jerry, just like glue.”
On primary day, Manhattan Councilmember Gale Brewer denied those charges, saying Nadler is “just not one of the boys, which is why I like him.”
“He’s the furthest from the boys’ club of anybody I know,” Brewer told Emily Ngo. “We are very obviously supportive of the issues that Carolyn Maloney, and I have nothing against her. But he carries the same agenda. There’s no difference in terms of agenda.”
Nadler, for his part, focused his campaign on solidifying his left-wing bona fides, contrasting his “principled, progressive” voting record with Maloney’s, as reported by NY1, and holding a post-Roe abortion-related hearing through chairing his committee around the same time Maloney held the same through her committee.
Both Maloney and Nadler struggled during their campaigns with their affiliation with President Joe Biden, who remains deeply unpopular in polls.
The primary winner in the overwhelmingly Democratic district will face Republican Michael Zumbluskas in the November general election.
In yet another controversial and hotly contested race in the 10th congressional district in Brooklyn, Daniel Goldman declared victory with 25.69%, of the vote. Far left wing candidate Yuh-Line Niou has 23.81% of the vote with approximately a 1200 vote difference. With 95% of the vote counted, Niou has not conceded. She has demanded that every vote must be counted.
Daniel Sachs Goldman is an attorney and heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune. He served as lead majority counsel in the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump and lead counsel to House Managers in the subsequent impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The Jewish Voice has written extensively about Yuh-Line Niou’s support for the BDS anti-Israel boycott movement. The Jewish Voice sent the following message to Boro Park: A Message to the Jewish Community: If You Live in the 10th Congressional District – You Must Vote Against Yuh-Line Niou!
With the three top progressives including Mondaire L. Jones, Yuh-Line Niou and Carlina Rivera, candidates in the 10th Congressional District receiving almost 60% of the vote there is progressive pressure to run Niou on the Working Families Party line in November against Goldman. There is no Republic Party in the 10th Congressional District.
The results of the 10th congressional district race are symptomatic of the evolving political landscape throughout the five boroughs of New York City. Becoming a rarity are traditional, middle of the road Democratic candidates as they are being replaced with such far left personalities and those associated with the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamal Bowman and other far left and vehemently anti-Israel candidates.
Other candidates for the seat included Carlina Rivera and former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman.
A top Republican primary race is also unfolding near Buffalo, where Republican Rep. Chris Jacobs opted not to seek reelection after facing backlash for voicing support for gun safety measures following a racist mass shooting in his district last May. New York Republican Party Chair Nick Langworthy and businessman Carl Paladino are running to replace him.
Paladino is a former gubernatorial candidate with a long history of offensive comments, including his suggestion that Adolf Hitler was “the kind of leader we need today” because of his ability to rally crowds. More recently, he said in a radio interview that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “should be executed” for authorizing a search of Trump’s home. He said later in the show that he was being facetious.
As of 11 pm, it appeared that Paladino received 15,934 votes in the 23rd district or 54 percent of the vote and Nick Langworthy, New York GOP chair, got 13,560 votes at 46 percent.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who heads the House Democratic campaign organization, is running in the 17th congressional district, a new suburban district north of New York City. He swapped districts without consulting Jones, who currently represents most of the area. The move rankled the left and led state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi to challenge him for the seat. Maloney h as declared victory over Biaggi on primary night. The new 17th District takes in parts of Westchester County, all of Rockland and Putnam counties and parts of Dutchess County.
In other races, such as the 8th Congressional District, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries easily beat Queen Johnson with 85% of the vote. Congressman Jeffries is also battling Adam Schiff to lead the U.S. House of Representatives next year.
In the 11th congressional district, Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis defeated her Republican Primary opponent John Matland with 80% of the vote. Congresswoman Malliotakis will face Former Rep. Max Rose who won the Democratic primary against his progressive challenger Brittany Ramos Debarros with over 75% in the Staten Island/Brooklyn 11th Congressional District.
Democratic socialists were hoping to get Brittany Ramos DeBarros elected in the most conservative district in New York City, but moderate ex-Rep. Max Rose prevailed in the primary and will engage in a rematch against GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis.
The race took an odd turn earlier Tuesday, when Rose accused DeBarros supporters of sticking pictures of former President Donald Trump on his lawn signs.
“Max Rose’s definition of bipartisan is selling out his party and supporting Donald Trump during the presidential election to help his career,” said DeBarros, who denied her campaign was behind the maneuver. “That’s why he lost [in 2020.]”
In the 25th State Senate district, progressive Democratic Socialists of America candidate Brisport beat back his Mayor Adams back candidate Conrad B. Tillard with 70% of the vote. The Daily News reported Tillard had a past history of anti-Semitic, anti-abortion, and anti-gay rhetoric. Adams said about his endorsement: ‘I believe the Rev. Tillard of today is a lot different than the man who said those things decades ago’
In the 21st State Senate district, State Senator Kevin S. Parker beat back a progressive challenger David Alexis 46% to 38%.
In the 26th State Senate district, progressive State Senator Andrew S. Gounardes beat back a well financed challenge by David Yassky, 65% to 33%.
In other parts of the country, the AP reported that U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist won the Democratic nomination for governor in Florida on Tuesday, setting him up to challenge Gov. Ron DeSantis this fall in a campaign that the Republican incumbent sees as the first step toward a potential White House run.
In selecting Crist, Florida Democrats sided with a candidate backed by many in the party’s establishment who viewed him as the safest choice, even after he lost his previous two statewide elections, according to the AP report. The 66-year-old moderate, who served as Florida’s Republican governor a decade ago, hopes to appeal to voters in Florida’s teeming suburbs as Democrats seek to reverse a losing pattern in a state that was recently seen as a perennial political battleground.
Above all, the Democratic contest centered on DeSantis, who views his November reelection as a potential springboard into the 2024 presidential contest. The AP reported that given the stakes, Democrats across Florida and beyond expressed a real sense of urgency to blunt DeSantis’ momentum.
Crist decried DeSantis as an “abusive” and “dangerous” “bully” in his victory speech.
“Tonight, the people of Florida clearly sent a message: They want a governor who cares about them and solves real problems, preserves our freedom, not a bully who divides us and takes our freedom away,” Crist declared, according to the AP report. “This guy wants to be president of the United States of America and everybody knows it. However, when we defeat them on Nov. 8 that show is over. Enough.”
Crist won the Democratic nomination over Nikki Fried, the state agriculture commissioner. She staked out a more progressive campaign and was particularly vocal in defending abortion and LGBTQ rights. The AP reported that the 44-year-old cast herself as “something new” and hoped to become Florida’s first female governor. In a sign of the party’s meager standing in Florida, she’s currently the only Democrat holding statewide office.
“We are going to make Ronald DeSantis a one-term governor and a zero-term president of the United States,” she said as she conceded Tuesday, calling on her supporters to come together to support Crist, reported the AP.
Not far away in a raucous ballroom in Miami, DeSantis declined to say Crist’s name and instead cast the general election as contest against President Joe Biden and “woke” ideology.
“We will never ever surrender to the woke agenda,” DeSantis charged, as was reported by the AP. “Florida is a state where woke goes to die.”
The Republican governor won his first election by less than half a percentage point, but soon became one of the most prominent figures in GOP politics. His hands-off approach to the pandemic and eagerness to lean into divides over race, gender and LGBTQ rights have resonated with many Republican voters who see DeSantis as a natural heir to former President Donald Trump, according to the AP report.
The Florida contest concludes the busiest stretch of primaries this year, which featured contests in 18 states over just 22 days. In that span, Republicans from Arizona to Alaska have supported contenders who embraced Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen, an assertion roundly rejected by elections officials, the former president’s attorney general and judges he appointed.
(Additional reporting by Fern Sidman)
