A battle of narratives emerges as Mamdani-backed candidates sweep New York primaries
With establishment Democrats in a tailspin after three incumbent congressmen were unseated and five local seats were taken by Zohran Mamdani-backed candidates in New York City, a battle of narratives is unfolding across domestic and national circles in the US.
Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander defeated Congressman Dan Goldman, while Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated veteran Congressman Adriano Espaillat in one of Tuesday's biggest upsets.
Claire Valdez, meanwhile, secured victory in an open congressional race.
Five others running for a seat in the State Senate, including Aber Kawas, a Palestinian-American, also won their primaries against opponents.
If Kawas wins in November's election, she would become the first Palestinian-American to make it to the New York State Senate.
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Sections of the Republican party, along with some Democrats, have raised alarms about the spectre of a socialist takeover of the US's largest city and a mobilisation against the Jewish community in New York.
But others, including some pro-Palestine activists, have pointed to the results as evidence of a Democratic electorate looking for candidates who break with the party establishment on issues like Palestine.
Reacting to the results in New York, Beth Miller, political director at Jewish Voice for Peace - Action, the political and advocacy arm of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), said the "Democratic establishment has been put on notice".
On candidates Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, JVP Action said that both campaigns had been driven by a massive ground game from their movements.
"Tonight there was a pro-Palestine sweep of New York City," Miller said. "Voters want candidates who will put forward clear and bold positions: tax the rich, abolish ICE and free Palestine."
JVP Action said that the race proved the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) was a "toxic brand" in the Democratic party, and that Democratic voters were tired of lawmakers who support or defend genocide.
It wasn't only pro-Palestine advocates who chose to read the result this way.
In the United States, The New York Times described the results as "Victories by Pro-Palestinian Democrats Show the Party’s Shift on Israel", while The Times of Israel wrote: "Mamdani-backed primary sweep further cements anti-Zionist politics in NYC."
"The primary wins cemented the mayor as a kingmaker, furthered the role of anti-Zionist politics in the city that is home to the world's largest Diaspora Jewish population, and sent a message to Democratic leaders as the party turns increasingly against the Jewish state," the Israeli paper said.
Meanwhile, establishment Democrats, like US Senator John Fetterman, told Fox News that the results showed it had "become the dancing days of the dirtbag left”.
But these narratives do not fully explain what happened, or what its limits may ultimately be.
Several pro-Palestine Democratic Socialists did win local seats - in positions that typically deal with day-to-day issues such as rent, healthcare and eviction laws - and three candidates critical of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza defeated opponents backed by Aipac.
However, other pro-Palestine activists and political observers have been quick to caution that framing these results as outright victories for the Palestine movement may be overstating their significance, and that pro-Palestine mobilisation is being funneled into electoral politics with the intent to ultimately rehabilitate the Democratic party.
"We must remember that opposing Aipac alone does not make one a defender of Palestinian liberation. Consider Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her vote to fund the Iron Dome," Nazia Kazi, professor at Stockton University, told Middle East Eye.
Kazi said US empire would know that the tides of public opinion on Israel have changed in the US, and have likely "assembled ways to allow the facade of Palestine solidarity in ways that do little to change the facts on the ground".
Class issues
Activists say the results in New York, while shaped in part by mass mobilisation around ending US complicity in the genocide in Gaza, were more a referendum on the Democratic party's aloofness on a range of issues, with Palestine seen as one element within a broader set of concerns linked to the economy.
Mamdani has repeatedly promised to reshape politics in the city, using his newly minted political capital to back candidates who centre the city's working class.
'There's something surreal in seeing self-identified Zionist Brad Lander's face on schnazzy posters rendering him not the lesser evil, but a legitimate hero for the left'
-Nazia Kazi, Stockton University
In this way, political observers say, voter concern for Palestine risks being reshaped into a broader economic critique, one that speaks to the material grievances facing ordinary New Yorkers, but which can also reduce or dilute the Palestinian struggle to questions of economic policy rather than self-determination.
In an interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Wednesday, Mamdani reiterated that he has been clear that he believed "the only majority in our country is that of the working class... I made a promise to New Yorkers that I would use every tool at my disposal to actually transform this city into one that they could afford".
"And one of those tools is using your political capital to ensure that the people who will fight hardest for that same agenda are going to be there, whether it's in Albany or whether it's in DC," he said.
Mamdani's comments reinforce the findings of a Data for Progress poll from 2025 that showed that voters in the city were primarily driven by domestic economic concerns, with affordable housing and cost of living ranking as the most important issues shaping voter choice.
Around 27 percent of voters said "US foreign policy and relations with Israel" was an issue that played a role in their vote.
The survey said that even if US foreign policy, or more specifically, Washington's relationship with Israel, was seen as important to voters, it still played a secondary role.
The findings pointed to a coalition shaped by both economic justice concerns and support for Palestinian rights, rather than a single-issue electorate.
Kawas, the Palestinian-American who won her primary on Tuesday and who is almost certainly set to win November's election, told MEE earlier in June that expressing support for Palestine was a signal that "you are willing to speak out and speak truth to power, and I think that's what people want out of their local politicians".
"What you are saying is, I'm going to fight for the most marginalised, forgotten communities that so many politicians don't centre," she said.
But the suggestion that pro-Palestine support had moved beyond ending the genocide, or opposing US military support for Israel, or ending the criminalisation of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, is inaccurate, these activists say.
For them, the Palestine movement has been hampered instead by an overly narrow focus on the rejection of Aipac in New York.
In his interview with Hayes, Mamdani acknowledged that Palestine had "a major role" in the support received by the candidates he had endorsed and who had won.
He specifically pointed to Brad Lander, who won the primary for New York's 10th congressional district.
He said Lander made it clear that he "is going to Congress not only to fight against bigotry, whether it be antisemitism or Islamophobia, but also to make clear that he is going to fight against the occupation, against the genocide".
"I think that's what's in line with what so many New Yorkers are desperate to see," he added.
'The lesser evil'
Activists say Mamdani's endorsement of Lander lends a certain legitimacy to keeping the issue within the contours of a liberal critique of Israel that rotates around US "funding" and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government, rather than Zionism itself.
Lander, who ran for Mayor of New York before endorsing Mamdani, has previously declared his opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, and also increased New York City's pension fund investments in Israel's largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, during his time as city comptroller.
In the contest for New York's 10th congressional district, Lander challenged Dan Goldman, a two-term incumbent Democrat from Brooklyn.
Both candidates describe themselves as liberal Zionists. The key distinction in the race was that Goldman was endorsed by Aipac, while Lander was endorsed by Mamdani - a difference that activists argue is relatively minor in the broader context of the Palestine question.
"While Lander 'proudly' defended investing in genocide just last year, he now claims that if elected to Congress he will 'fight to end occupation and apartheid and genocide'. His record says otherwise, " the New York-based pro-Palestine group Within our Lifetime said in a statement on X.
Meanwhile, Aipac, which has poured millions of dollars into primary races across both parties around the country, said in a statement on Wednesday that 180 of the group's endorsees around the country won their primaries and were headed to November's elections.
"There’s something surreal in seeing self-identified Zionist Brad Lander's face on schnazzy posters rendering him not the lesser evil, but a legitimate hero for the left," Kazi told MEE.
"At a time when those in the Palestine solidarity movement who disrupted the operations of Elbit Systems face the harshest of state crackdowns, it's a sucker punch to see elements of the same movement celebrate Lander, given his own involvement with the arms manufacturer Elbit."
Kazi said that the results showed "Zionism can absolutely flourish without Aipac".
The mayor's office did not immediately reply to MEE's request for comment.
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