A Kennedy grandson and Mamdani’s challenge to centrists: New York primaries shed light on Democrats’ future

It couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start. A fierce summer storm pours down on New York just as Jack Schlossberg is about to begin his major campaign event. There are plenty of enthusiastic young people, but it’s impossible to hide the fact that Terminal 5 — a nightlife staple in Hell’s Kitchen — is not full.

On stage, volunteers warm up the crowd. Between somewhat routine speeches, an 80-year-old woman manages to strike an emotional chord. “I’m here because John Fitzgerald Kennedy changed my life. And today, Jack is doing for young people what his grandfather did for me.” Applause and a few tears.

Between that and the charm of showman David Letterman, an old friend of the Kennedy-Schlossberg family, the audience is fully won over. Once on stage, the young candidate lashes out at the influence of money in politics and criticizes the current leadership of the Democratic Party. “Don’t pay attention to the polls. When I’m elected to Congress, I’ll be able to change a lot of things,” he tells the already-convinced crowd.

On Tuesday, June 23, New York Democrats will choose their candidates in primaries for a range of municipal, state, and federal offices. But all eyes will be on two things. The first is who will win in the city’s 12th district, where Jack Schlossberg — the only male grandson of the president assassinated in 1963 — will face Micah Lasher, the party establishment’s preferred candidate, and Alex Bores, a rising star who has built a reputation around efforts to regulate artificial intelligence.

Polls give little chance to Schlossberg, 33, whom The New York Times last month portrayed in a scathing article that highlighted, among other things, his disappearances at key moments in the campaign because he needed a nap.

“He’s a terrible candidate,” says Lincoln Mitchell, a professor of public affairs at Columbia University. “He’s not disciplined, he’s not focused… He is handsome, though. And he’s running at a time when the Kennedy name is less popular among Democrats because of his second cousin Robert [Secretary of Health in Donald Trump’s administration],”

The U.S. political world will be watching closely what happens in this part of Manhattan, not only because of the symbolic weight surrounding the Kennedy family. The importance of the 12th district also stems from the fact that it is one of the wealthiest in the country, overwhelmingly Democratic, and with a high percentage of Jewish residents. A sign of its importance is the millions of dollars being spent on a contest in which only registered Democrats in a district of around 750,000 people can vote.

Although these are technically primaries, in practice they amount to a final election: there is little doubt that whoever wins here will be elected to the House of Representatives in the midterm elections on November 3.

The second most interesting aspect of Tuesday’s vote concerns New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Although his name will not appear on any ballot, it will be a good opportunity to assess whether his surprising victory last year in the largest city in the United States was an isolated event or a sign of something deeper within the rank and file of the Democratic Party.

Anger within the party

Mamdani has angered much of the party establishment by strongly backing three candidates for the House of Representatives (Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Claire Valdez) against figures who either already hold seats in Congress or had been seen as the natural successors.

“Daring to challenge Adriano Espaillat — a progressive running for reelection who was the first Dominican to win a seat in Washington — that’s simply not done!” a visibly irritated Democratic source said a few days ago.

The three candidates backed by Mamdani have something in common. Valdez and Chevalier are socialists, like the mayor himself, while Lander belonged to that movement until 2023. It’s an ideology that until recently was effectively taboo in the United States but is now experiencing something of a resurgence. If several of these candidates end up going to Washington as members of Congress, it will be a strong sign of shifting times within the party. If the opposite happens, it will be a heavy blow for Mamdani, who has invested significant political capital in television ads and joint appearances with all three.

Professor Mitchell insists that the phenomenon of left-wing candidates challenging established centrist politicians goes beyond New York, pointing to the case of Maine, where the little-known Graham Platner unseated the governor and is now seeking a Senate seat, as well as Michigan, where something similar could happen.

“Mamdani and his allies are trying to build a movement,” says Mitchell in a video call. “For a long time, they were told that candidates too far to the left could not be elected because they wouldn’t be able to win. But if they succeed now, that argument will no longer hold. That’s what is really at stake right now.”

The Democratic primaries have been dominated by issues such as the cost of living and the best way to oppose President Trump during his remaining two years in the White House (whether to launch a new impeachment process in Congress or whether that would be counterproductive).

Another of the most contentious issues is the relationship with Israel and how much criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is acceptable (a particularly sensitive topic in a city with the largest Jewish community in the world outside Israel).

Eli Northrup, a candidate for the State Assembly in Albany from the Upper West Side — also backed by Mamdani and himself Jewish — rejects the accusations of antisemitism leveled at the mayor. “This is a neighborhood with a very large Jewish community. And I, as part of that community, feel that criticizing Israel, the Netanyahu government for what it is doing, is also my responsibility,” he says from his campaign office.

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