Where do we go From Here?: A Reflection on the Final Weeks of the Bowman-Soto Campaign
By: Curtis R.
Canvassers for Soto for Assembly Campaign [Credit: Curtis R.]
The prospect of the Soto campaign was exciting. Jonathan Soto is a thrilling speaker, a committed comrade, and a seasoned campaigner. With a DSA endorsement behind him, there was a real chance we could get the first Socialist State elected to represent this part of the Bronx in generations. I was with the campaign from beginning to end because there’s little better than walking and talking to people on cool Spring days to mobilize toward this goal, a vision for one small step for a Socialist future starting in the area where you grew up. By late February, Jamaal Bowman was confirmed to be back in Co-Op City. We had known then that this would be good for both campaigns. Every Soto voter we confirmed would most likely be a Bowman voter as well. By mid-May, as Bowman’s primary heated up, the NYC DSA chapter sent out an email, “NYC-DSA has been approached by Jamaal Bowman for an endorsement.” What would initially seem like a win-win would be marred by bad processes, an approach to organizing that should not be emulated, and an ultimate electoral loss as a result.
NYC DSA had closed off its endorsement process months ago when it finalized the endorsements of three insurgent campaigns, Soto, Valdez, and Huntley. In order to facilitate the Bowman request, it reopened the process for him. Leadership created a much slimmer questionnaire, lighter than what insurgent candidates had to answer and incomparable to the 30-page 2020 questionnaire Bowman filled out before. Leadership also developed a campaign plan and set a 1-week deadline for the Chapter to vote and finalize the endorsement. The plan had a distinct motivation that DSA needs to be seen as a leader for the Left and stand behind Bowman. To that end, the plan noted its pursuance of a “modified strategy” for endorsement, as it had done with “Cynthia Nixon, Jumaane Williams and Keron Alleyne”. All three campaigns were losing campaigns. The plan itself largely consisted of phone banking, with volunteers to be sourced from outside the Chapter. For example, over half of the listed phone bank leads were based outside NYC DSA. Canvassing would also occur, but it would be focused within the Soto campaign and remain within Co-Op City. This would omit any plans for deep canvassing in must-win areas like Yonkers, Mount Vernon, and New Rochelle. It remains unknown why Bowman chose to go with a Chapter that cannot reasonably move the needle on efforts within the whole district or why the campaign waited so long to apply. The plan would also require that the Chapter fundraise to carry out these tasks, and assemble teams of phone bank coordinators, compliance, communications, and campaign coordination. After Bowman’s appearance at the endorsement forum, members knew full well that Bowman was not going to endorse the Soto campaign. We also knew that he wasn’t aware of how his 2021 Iron Dome vote and his visit to Israel via J-Street harmed the entire organization, though he certainly wasn’t apologetic for it. There were no further considerations by leadership to get assurances that Bowman would commit to BDS or even agree to support Not on Our Dime. Still, the Branch, Chapter, and then Citywide Leadership Committee approved the endorsement by wide margins.
Almost immediately, the Soto-Bowman relationship had incredible inequalities.
The relationship was based on what many believe to be true: an association with Bowman is only good news for the campaign. The two candidates’ districts shared an overlap in the must-win, high turnout Co-op City. Soto himself strongly believed the connection would open more voters to him. I also believed this to be true, which is why some members pushed, unsuccessfully, for Bowman’s endorsement of the campaign to be a prerequisite for a DSA endorsement.
All we could work with was the idea that a DSA endorsement of both campaigns would allow us to try and ship them together. There is a heavy emphasis on the word “try” as that was exactly all we could do. From the start, there were no discernible connections between the Soto and Bowman campaigns. On the first day of GOTV shifts, we were stationed side by side, with little conversation between the two tables. We were carrying both Bowman and Soto literature, both brand new. The Bowman tables only carried Bowman literature. Because Bowman declined to endorse Soto, voters getting just Bowman literature from the Bowman team wouldn’t know about Soto. The two campaigns being stationed together was an attempt to address this, as we could hand out Soto literature to those who just spoke to the Bowman team. The idea of shipping two unrelated candidates together puts the onus on the ingenuity of canvassers and on the memory of voters. To the latter, these same voters were already deluged by non-stop advertisements, phone calls, and door knocks.
From an organizational perspective, there were additional challenges. Bowman literature lacked mention of the DSA endorsement. The Bowman campaign website did not feature the NYC DSA logo either. This meant that DSA canvassers for DSA campaigns couldn’t readily point out DSA as a common connection between the Bowman and Soto campaigns. We also lost access to the broader, high-profile visibility that many pushing for the Bowman endorsement thought could draw people into DSA, especially those from Black and Brown communities. I also found it notable that Bowman did not acknowledge the endorsement on his communications or social media until 24 hours before Election Day. As well, any mentions of DSA phone banks and canvasses never appeared on the campaign’s widely-publicized Mobilize.us platform. If the Chapter had set basic standards before endorsement, a lot more could have been achieved.
The Soto campaign wasn’t running from zero. It had aimed to build on the relative success that earned the previous 2022 campaign 36% against a decades-seated incumbent. The 2024 Soto campaign would be running with the DSA endorsement and with it the colloquially termed “DSA Difference”. This is the DSA infrastructure that provides backend campaign support, fundraising efforts, connections to DSA electeds, and dozens of core volunteers. With this, the campaign sought to achieve its goals of expanding the 36% to a winning majority. The lasting challenge of the campaign was that Soto was the challenger against the incumbent. These campaigns are notoriously tough for DSA to crack because of the tendency of voters to pick the incumbent over a tenuously viable challenger. Soto would need legitimacy and connections; if they weren’t coming from the establishment Democrats stuck to Benedetto, it’d have to come from Bowman, the only incumbent around.
The lack of legitimacy seems to have been the main barrier to the Soto campaign. Soto canvassers, trying their best to make implicit verbal connections at the doors, were up against a number of Bowman-Benedetto backers making explicit connections. There were several unions backing Bowman-Benedetto: 1199-SEIU, DC37, and NYSNA. These unions were able to mobilize their members to vote Bowman-Benedetto and send out canvassing shifts urging voters to do the same. The environmental advocacy group, the League of Conservation Voters, also urged Bowman-Benedetto. Bronx-based Democrats State Senator Jamaal Bailey, Chair of the Bronx Democratic Party, and Councilmember Kevin Riley also endorsed Bowman-Benedetto.
In the end, the failure of the Chapter to make basic demands cost us. The Soto campaign lost, attaining just 37.6% of the vote. This hurt, bad. District-wide turnout was only up 3%. Co-Op City experienced a 13% turnout increase from 2022. However, the Soto campaign’s margins in Co-Op did not improve much either. According to data from Atlasizer, the 2022 campaign attained 32% of the vote; the 2024 campaign got 35% of the vote. The ‘DSA Difference’ provided an unmatched field operation, knocking thousands of doors with dozens of volunteers for 5 straight weeks after the Bowman endorsement. The result implies that verbal, implicit connections were invisible to the voters, did not increase turnout for Soto, did not overcome the deluge of Bowman-Benedetto forces, or some terrible mix of all three. Many members felt that the fight against the centrist Latimer and AIPAC was a worthy one and that DSA would be associated with Bowman’s loss anyway. Yet our desire to fight and win shouldn’t come at the cost of standards needed to achieve those goals.
Bowman’s view seemed to be that the association with DSA is a drag, but the labor it brought was a good help. Bowman declined to defend DSA from multiple attacks by AIPAC, DMFI, George Latimer, Mondaire Jones, and the media. In a June 13 interview on CNN with Laura Coates, Coates made a false claim that DSA held an October 8 rally as celebration, where one attendee held a swastika. Bowman failed to correct the record that DSA did not hold this rally and was not involved at all. This is something Bowman should have known. Yet in another interview with Marc Lamont Hill, Bowman said those in DSA angry about his Iron Dome vote and Israel trip were AIPAC and COINTELPRO infiltrators. This reflects not just his disregard for DSA, but a certain ignorance of events. Even the NPC at the time “strongly” condemned his actions and said there was “no excuse” for any of them. There are very few people out there that would willingly slander key allies in the position Bowman was in. Yet this situation occurred because of NYC-DSA’s willingness to acquiesce to Bowman’s requests without regard for itself. We were willing to work without worth, and thus we were viewed as worthless. Throwing allies under the bus isn’t a first for Bowman either. In January, Bowman hosted a panel discussion on Palestine and Israel. Under pressure from right-wing and Zionist critics, Bowman caved and joined the chorus implicating Norman Finkelstein, born of Holocaust survivors, as antisemitic. By association, this also came down on the hosts of the panel and the Muslim center that housed the event. Palestinian organizers were also dismayed when Bowman joined right-wing and Zionist voices in condemning protests outside the NOVA exhibit, which featured visitor-made flyers calling for Gazans to be “wiped off the face of the earth”, as “antisemitism”.
In the end, Bowman lost to Latimer 58.7% to 41.3%. Bowman got 84% of the Bronx; Westchester, much worse, saw his share go down to 36%. Early voting breakdowns depicted much higher turnout in pro-Latimer areas. Scarsdale, a wealthier locale of just 17,000, saw 16% of its registered Democrats vote early. This accounted for 6.1% of the population, 1101 votes. Yonkers, which has a population of over 200,000, saw 4.7% of its registered Democrats vote early. This accounted for just 1% of the population, 2730 votes.
Official election day data confirmed the worst, the Bowman campaign did not do well in turning out the populous, working-class areas of Westchester, the main path to victory for the campaign. NY16 has a population of 774,000 people. 46% of the population actually lives in the lower parts of the district — Yonkers, Mount Vernon, and New Rochelle. The towns of Greenburgh and White Plains, which Bowman carried in 2022, also have notable populations. The Latimer campaign saw record turnout in the more sparsely populated, wealthier towns. The most pro-Latimer towns of Scarsdale, Rye City, and Mamaroneck saw over 40% of registered Democrats vote. The pro-Bowman towns of Yonkers and Mount Vernon only saw up to 23% of registered Democrats vote. All else being equal, if Bowman had maintained his 2022 margins in those five towns, he’d win with 51.7%. Instead, Bowman lost ground in all five towns. Mount Vernon, which went for Bowman by 85% in 2022, went just 65% for Bowman in 2024; this was also the largest margin drop of the five. Bowman’s vote in Yonkers, his hometown, was only 53% — an 8 point drop from 2022.
The NYC DSA Chapter now has six months before Bowman leaves Congress. Ejected and/or retiring public officials can typically say or do whatever they want. They no longer have the excuse of being chained to their constituency or any other factors. While the period of the last several weeks engaging with a Congressperson did not provide anything for other DSA chapters to emulate, the Chapter can make pivotal requests of Bowman for the next six months. There is a lot of work to be done to beat the local Westchester machine that closed ranks behind Latimer. There is work to be done in building ties to working-class areas of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, and the Bronx. There is work to be done in building with Palestinian Liberation movement in both the Bronx and Westchester.
NYC DSA should request that Bowman rescind his endorsement of Biden and echo the Chapter’s call for Biden to step down. We should request that Bowman use his platform to host Palestinian organizers and anti-Zionist Jewish organizers, and insist that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. We should request that Bowman not endorse Latimer by virtue of being the Democratic nominee, and that he should go further by being vocally anti-Latimer all the way through the general election. We should also request that Bowman use his platform to explicitly boost DSA, which could look like: sharing/hosting DSA events, publicly talking about solidarity dues, or facilitating/guest speaking at DSA 101s.
These requests are not meant to just target Bowman, implementing them would represent a great step toward cohering a Socialist Party. We should see Socialists in office as extensions of our will, able to use their platform to explicitly build DSA and the Socialist movement. In January, Claire Valdez will join five other DSA Assembly Members. We should begin the new term with a formalized Democratic Socialist bloc. NYC DSA has expanded its Socialists in office each cycle. Our structures and processes must grow with that. We cannot wait for the perfect conditions to act, but purposefully prepare ourselves for when they arise.