Roughly four years ago, Mondaire Jones and Jamaal Bowman made history together. Young, left-leaning Democrats, they won hard-fought primaries in neighboring districts to become the first Black men ever to represent New York’s Westchester County in Congress.
Now, they find themselves deeply at odds over the Israel-Hamas war, a break so sharp that Mr. Jones vowed on Monday to help defeat Mr. Bowman in the Democratic primary on June 25 and endorse his opponent, George Latimer.
It was the latest sign of how intensely the conflict in the Middle East has come to divide Democratic politics this election year. Mr. Latimer and Mr. Bowman have already spent months debating the conflict, and the race has been transformed by $10 million in outside spending by pro-Israel interest groups on Mr. Latimer’s behalf.
Mr. Jones said in an interview that he could not sit by while Mr. Bowman positioned himself as a leading critic of Israel, saying that his former ally had sown “pain and anxiety” among Jewish New Yorkers and had torn “at the fabric of our community and our civil rights coalition.”
But Mr. Jones also may be considering his own political self-interest. After losing his House seat in 2022, he is now running to unseat Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican, in a swing district just to the north. Creating some distance from Mr. Bowman may help win over Jewish voters, as well as other moderate voters.
“As someone who is among the most popular Democrats in the Hudson Valley, it is my prerogative to play a dispositive role in ending this long, painful nightmare that we have been experiencing since Oct. 7,” Mr. Jones said. He planned to formally make the endorsement at an event on Tuesday.
For Mr. Latimer, the long-serving Westchester County executive, Mr. Jones’s support could provide an important shield as he attempts to fight off his opponent’s accusations of racism in the final weeks of an increasingly bitter contest in a district with large Black and Jewish populations.
Mr. Jones, who once worked under Mr. Latimer, stated firmly: “George Latimer is not a racist.”
Mr. Jones, 37, and Mr. Bowman, 48, both stepped into the national spotlight in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic and a national protest moment spurred by the death of George Floyd. Though they did not endorse each other at the time, they both ran campaigns against long-serving incumbents and drew support from pillars of the Democratic left like the Working Families Party and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
Mr. Bowman, a former middle-school principal, was always more antagonistic toward his party’s power structure than Mr. Jones, a white-collar lawyer. He accepted support from the Democratic Socialists of America, and, in Washington, he voted against President Biden’s signature infrastructure bill, while Mr. Jones aligned himself with party leadership.
Mr. Jones said he was motivated to insert himself into the Bowman-Latimer race, though, specifically because of Israel.
Since the war broke out last fall, Mr. Bowman has emerged as one of Israel’s most outspoken critics in Congress. He was among the first lawmakers to call for a cease-fire after Hamas’s attack left more than 1,200 Israelis dead. He has accused the nation of committing genocide in Gaza and at one point cast doubt that Hamas committed sexual violence, calling the claim “propaganda.” (He later said he was wrong.)
“There is nothing progressive about rushing to call for a cease-fire in the days following Oct. 7 before Israel could even begin to defend itself,” Mr. Jones said. “There is nothing progressive about getting endorsed by the D.S.A., which in the days following Oct. 7 amplified a pro-Hamas rally in New York City.”
Mr. Jones said he would let others draw their own conclusions about whether Mr. Bowman’s statements amounted to antisemitism. He also indicated he took no issue with spending in the race by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and affiliated pro-Israel groups that are also supporting Mr. Latimer.
“If someone happens to be a Republican and agrees with me on that, then that’s just being a human being in the American political system,” he said. (AIPAC has endorsed Mr. Jones’s opponent.)
Mr. Bowman has firmly rejected accusations of antisemitism, saying he is pro-peace, not anti-Israel or anti-Jewish. He has called Hamas’s attack a war crime, but argues it does not justify an Israel counteroffensive that has killed tens of thousands of Gazans, including many women and children, according to heath authorities there.
Mr. Jones joins a growing list of current and former public officials to back Mr. Latimer, 70. They include Eliot L. Engel, the longtime congressman whom Mr. Bowman defeated in 2020; numerous state lawmakers; and almost every local Democratic Party committee in the district.
Mr. Bowman still has the support of some powerful labor unions, left-leaning lawmakers like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and the top members of House Democratic leadership, who routinely back incumbents.
Mr. Latimer, who is white, said he hoped Mr. Jones’s endorsement would help put to bed charges that he has used racist tropes as he seeks to cast Mr. Bowman as an attention-seeking distraction in Congress.
“The argument about me running a racist campaign falls flat on its face when people who are African American, Latino and Asian are supporting me,” he said in an interview.
A spokesman for Mr. Bowman declined to comment.
But the congressman recently cast the growing list of political figures behind Mr. Latimer as a sign that Westchester’s Democratic establishment was circling the wagons to try to put one of its own back into office.
“I was never their guy,” he said. “To me, what my opponent represents is an acquiescing to the wealthy, elite corporate interests and special interests, especially as it relates to AIPAC and Israel.”
