NYC’s Democratic Primary: Socialists vs. Pro-Israel Oligarchs
New York’s Democratic primary elections have involved massive amounts of outside spending from corporate, pro-Israel interests in recent years. As socialists look to significantly expand their presence in Albany and Washington, this year is no different.
This year has seen pro-Israel groups repeat their tactics from previous elections in New York, of having pro-Israel donors give to a slate of candidates who are either soft on Israel or at least trying to keep its left-wing critics out of power. (Michael Nigro / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images)
Next week’s elections in New York have typically been talked about as contests between candidates, often Democratic party centrists and socialist insurgents. But given the large sums of money flooding these races, it’s more accurate to see them as contests of people-powered campaigns versus a collection of corporate interests and pro-Israel oligarchs.
This year has seen pro-Israel groups once more repeat the strategy they have carried out in previous state-level and municipal elections in New York, of having pro-Israel donors give individually to a slate of candidates who are either soft on Israel or at least stand to keep its left-wing critics out of power. Many of the centrist candidates fighting it out against socialist critics of Israel have overlapping donors who also happen to be affiliated with two closely related entities: the New York Solidarity Network (NYSN), which styles itself as a kind of state-level version of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the similarly named Solidarity PAC. The two organizations share a frequently revolving door of personnel.
According to NYSN’s most recent 990 form, filed for 2024, at least three members of its board of directors have donated money to largely the same candidates competing against challengers backed by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA).
For instance, NYSN president Gary Ginsberg has given a total of just over $1,860 to four state assembly incumbents: Erik Dilan, the state assembly member facing a Working Families Party–backed challenger; Jenifer Rajkumar, an ally of former mayor Eric Adams; Jordan Wright, the son of a former Manhattan Democratic Party boss being challenged by a union organizer; and Stefani Zinerman, who is backed by House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and facing a challenger she beat by 6 points in the 2024 primary. All four of their challengers — Christian Celeste Tate, David Orkin, Conrad Blackburn, and Eon Huntley, respectively — have been outspoken critics of Israel and its genocide in Gaza.
Board member Alice Tisch — part of the wealthy Tisch family and wife of retired investor Thomas Tisch, who also sits on NYSN’s board — has given a total of $13,500 to these same four candidates being backed by Ginsberg. Adeena Rosen — who is listed as partly serving as NYSN’s treasurer and who exerted operational control of Solidarity PAC upon its founding — and her husband David have similarly given a total of $9,748 apiece to the same slate, only sans Zinerman. Asset management firm executive David Kroin and his wife Michelle — who were identified by New York Focus as being part of last year’s Solidarity PAC–directed political spending spree — have donated $8,727 each to this same trio.
The largest common donor between the candidates is health care executive Daniel Lowy, who has previously donated to AIPAC and whose grandfather chairs an Israeli national security think tank. Lowy, who pulled his financial support from the University of Pennsylvania over campus protests against the Gaza genocide, has given a total of $25,500 to Rajkumar, Wright, Zinerman, and two other centrist incumbents: Reps. Antonio Reynoso and Adriano Espaillat, who are currently waging primary contests against socialist insurgents Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, respectively.
For a project devoted to intervening in and influencing Democratic primaries, they also all have conservative ties. Ginsberg was a former News Corp executive and an advisor to its CEO Rupert Murdoch. The Rosens were two of the biggest donors to the Republican candidate who ran for the special election in New Jersey’s open 11th congressional district seat earlier this year. Tisch is a Republican donor who backed Nikki Haley in 2024. NYSN’s board has also featured GOP operative Nathan Parsons-Schwarz, whose firm, Allegiance Strategies — which has a history of lobbying for corporate-funded groups devoted to lowering taxes on the wealthy — paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for fundraising and consulting services.
In that sense, they really are analogous to a state-level version of AIPAC, since AIPAC’s Super PAC has often served as a conduit through which Republican megadonors and other right-wing interests have engaged in Democratic primaries.
Not-So-Independent Expenditures
As the background of some of these donors hints at, this spending carries over another familiar pattern: much of it is from corporate and wealthy interests that socialist challengers either oppose or will have to regulate if they win office. In New York in the past few years, this big money influx has often manifested in the form of an influx of advertising and mailers churned out by independent expenditure committees funded by these interests.
Take, for instance, New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, which used to be an instrument for keeping Republicans in power in New York’s state senate, and which got a huge $1.8 million injection earlier this year from former mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg to push forward a pro–charter school agenda. The group dropped over $390,000 at the start of this month on unspecified support for Wright, Rajkumar, and Zinerman, who received nearly half of this total all on her own.
In fact, Wright has been the recipient of an especially generous array of corporate spending. Besides New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, Wright has also been backed by more than $87,000 worth of spending by a group, Local Economies Forward NY, funded entirely by a nearly million-dollar donation from DoorDash, almost all of which has gone to print and digital advertising backing his campaign.
Meanwhile, the group New York Future has dropped just under $18,000 backing Wright’s campaign, more than 80 percent of which has gone to direct mail and digital ads, on top of another nearly $42,000 it has spent on mailers and digital ads attacking his opponent, Conrad Blackburn. New York Future is the super PAC of mobile sports betting companies like DraftKings and FanDuel, who are its two single biggest funders. On top of this, Wright is also getting a boost from Moving Harlem Forward, which has been funded by $25,000 apiece from Lowy, NYSN’s Rosen, and another pro-Israel donor.
Meanwhile, looking beyond the state level, Espaillat, who has been endorsed by AIPAC, is being backed by the Bold America Super PAC, founded by three former members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and officially focused on defeating Republicans. But the organization gets a significant amount of funding from corporate interests, including $50,000 from cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and a $150,000 donation from the Texas-based IBC Bank, whose CEO was an early Trump supporter and an enthusiastic proponent of the North American Free Trade Agreement. This is on top of a massive, last-minute surge of donors to AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups pouring money into Espaillat’s coffers.
This year, opponents of socialist candidates have attempted to flip the script on DSA-backed insurgents, owing to the involvement this year of a Super PAC on the left funded partly by pro-Palestinian Texas millionaire Hussein Mahrouq, which has spent more than $2 million on the campaign of Espaillat’s opponent, Darializa Chevalier, and Claire Valdez, the socialist assemblymember running for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s congressional seat. The pro-Israel press has pointed to the fact that Mahrouq has donated to Texas’s GOP governor and that the group’s other donors include a Bitcoin mining company executive who backs the expansion of AI data centers.
In other words, just as Democrats and progressive activists have complained that pro-Israel groups have served as conduits for Republican donors and corporate interests to sway Democratic primaries, the pro-Israel right is now launching this attack on a group partly funded by a pro-Palestinian donor. It’s a stretch, but may be an effective line of attack in a contest where voters tend to value party loyalty.
It seems that as socialists and pro-Palestinian activists notch victories in New York, the tidal wave of money that attempted to drown the campaign of now-Mayor Zohran Mamdani a year ago has not receded. Next week, we’ll find out what is left standing in its wake.