Primary results show NY Democrats' strategic rush to center stage
George Latimer in Westchester and John Avlon in Suffolk County. Credit: Newsday / AP/John Roca / Jeenah Moon
Decisive primary wins Tuesday by “moderate” or “mainstream” or “centrist” candidates — your choice — give New York’s Democratic leaders the lineup they bargained for in the November general election.
This is a unique moment in the election cycle when state parties morph fully into regional franchises, or wholly-owned subsidiaries, of national parties. This year, partisan alienation and the competition to win over nonaffiliated voters are at a zenith all over the U.S.
The lopsided primary victories of John Avlon in Suffolk County (70% of the vote) and George Latimer in Westchester (58%) became the top stories of the night but with very different local details.
Avlon, with national recognition as an author and CNN analyst critical of political extremism, beat his party’s unsuccessful 2020 candidate, former chemistry professor Nancy Goroff, with the pitch that he, not she, can win the seat.
Having portrayed herself as the true progressive in the race, Goroff graciously conceded Tuesday, saying Avlon would be a “common sense voice” in Washington and a “vast improvement” over Republican Rep. Nick LaLota.
Any Democrat starts this race as a perceived underdog against LaLota, whose First Congressional District favored ex-Rep. Lee Zeldin for governor with 58% over Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022. Avlon sees CD1 as a “swing district,” which it has been in the past. LaLota is in his first term, which is when any incumbent is thought to be most vulnerable.
Even in the likely event LaLota remains favored to win, Avlon could mount enough of a challenge to force national Republicans to defend their East End turf with time, campaign work, and money that could have gone elsewhere.
Latimer’s scenario is in some ways the opposite of Avlon’s. Latimer is the incumbent Westchester County executive, and the 16th Congressional District is drawn so blue that an underperforming Hochul got 64% there against Zeldin two years ago.
Latimer on Tuesday defeated second-term Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a left-leaning “squad” member targeted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which reportedly spent $15 million on ads that attacked the incumbent’s condemnation of the Jewish state as carrying out “genocide.”
In 2020, with Joe Biden atop the ticket, it was Bowman who unseated a fellow Democrat in a primary — Rep. Eliot Engel, in Congress since 1989.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, the House Democratic leader, reportedly had a favorite primary result on Tuesday: An ally, Assemb. Stefani Zinerman, prevailed against Eon Tyrell Huntley, a first-time candidate backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.
For Jeffries, the wider ambition is to flip enough House seats to win a congressional majority, which would make him speaker. The national races are such a political fixation in New York that some Republicans say ex-President Donald Trump’s denunciation last month of a plan to impose car tolls in Manhattan was what led Hochul to postpone it.
In February, Rep. Tom Suozzi won back his former CD3 seat, vacated with the House’s expulsion of Republican George Santos. Suozzi’s win encouraged state and Nassau County Democratic chairman Jay Jacobs to maneuver for more moderates, at least in the suburbs.
Avlon already has begun calling for six debates with LaLota. The National Republican Congressional Committee signaled in a statement how it will pigeonhole the new challenger — as “an opportunist who only wants to see himself on television.” Avlon will slam LaLota’s role and record. Thus the one-on-one clash begins.
COLUMNIST DAN JANISON’S opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.