Rep. Eliot Engel suffered a stunning defeat in New York’s Democratic Primary Tuesday as he was unseated by political newcomer and former middle school principal Jamaal Bowman.
Bowman was born and raised in the Bronx by a single mother in New York City’s housing projects. “That story doesn’t usually end in Congress,” Bowman said in a statement Wednesday morning. “But today, that 11-year old boy who was beaten by police is about to be your next Representative. I cannot wait to get to Washington and cause problems for the people maintaining the status quo.”
Bowman declared victory Wednesday morning in race for New York’s 16th Congressional district, which covers parts of the Bronx and Westchester Counties, but former Rep. Engel has yet to concede defeat. “Any declarative statement on the outcome of this race right now is premature and undermines the democratic process,” Engel’s camp said in statement yesterday.
The Engle campaign says it is waiting for all absentee ballots to be counted to make a definitive statement about the race. But as of the time of this publishing Bowman has a commanding lead in the race with a margin of 61% to 34% with 100% of the ballots counted. Engle trails Bowman by roughly 12,000 votes. It’s unclear whether that deficit is surmountable – most analysts don’t believe there are enough absentee ballots to overcome the margin.
After speaking with election officials in both Westchester and Bronx counties, there are not enough outstanding absentee ballots for Eliot Engel to make up the deficit to Jamaal Bowman.
Decision Desk HQ projects @JamaalBowmanNY the winner of the NY-16 Democratic Primary. pic.twitter.com/C8IQ3onra1
— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) June 24, 2020
In a time when the Black Lives Matter movement has been surging and the political left in the U.S. is forming a new identity, Engel became increasingly seen as out of touch with a leftward shift in Democratic politics in this country.
Engle, the Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, was an vocal proponent of the war in Iraq. He vehemently opposed the nuclear deal with Iran and after President Obama failed to veto a U.N. resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, Engle authored a House resolution condemning the U.N.
Bowman has called for cutting the Pentagon’s budget and holding Israel more to account for its human-rights violations. He has also compared the harsh policing tactics of African-Americans in the United States to the military occupation of Palestinians.
Engel committed what turned out to be unforgivable gaffes during his campaign domestically. He notably remained in Washington D.C. while his New York district was suffering through the Covid19 outbreak.
Then, several weeks ago, at a press conference against police brutality, Engel said on a hot mic, as he was pleading with the event organizer to let him address the crowd, “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.”
The flub proved critical. “Support throughout the district and across the country has grown exponentially since that moment,” Bowman would tell The Washington Post.
In addressing supporters Tuesday night, Bowman said he would be a more powerful opponent of President Donald Trump’s than Engel.
“Eliot Engel, and I’ll say his name once, used to say he was a thorn in the side of Donald Trump. But you know what Donald Trump is more afraid of than anything else? A Black man with power,” he said.
Photo by Thomas Altfather Good via Wikimedia Commons