Tuesday is the culmination of the most expensive primary race in U.S. history in New York’s 16th Congressional District. Democratic Congressmember Jamaal Bowman, a former Bronx middle school principal and one of the first to call for a ceasefire in Gaza in October, is being challenged by a former corporate executive, George Latimer, who was encouraged to run by the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC. Outside spending in the race has topped $23 million, much of it from pro-Israel groups like AIPAC. Bowman, a recent guest on Democracy Now!, is a member of the progressive “Squad” in Congress, a coalition of congressional representatives that includes New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who campaigned for Bowman at a reelection rally in New York City Saturday, and Massachusetts’s Ayanna Pressley. Bowman “needs to be decisively returned” to Congress, says Pressley, who joins Democracy Now! to discuss the final push to get out the vote for Bowman and characterizes him as the “pro-peace, pro-humanity, pro-justice candidate.”
