More than three weeks after the New York congressional primaries, the race was called on Friday for Jamaal Bowman, who ran against longtime incumbent and leading pro-Israel lawmaker Eliot Engel.
In the final count released Friday, Bowman bested Engel by a solid 15 points, 55-40, JTA reported.
Bowman was backed by both Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the report noted.
Israel did not feature prominently in the campaign but helped draw national donors to both campaigns, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. Engel, who chairs the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, earned centrist pro-Israel support.
Bowman, who has said the United States should condition aid to Israel on its behavior, drew support from Israel critics.
Bowman declared victory soon after polls closed on June 23, but the official count took weeks to emerge because of mail-in voting necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic.
Engel raised more than $1.6 million through March for his reelection campaign, which is about three times as much as Bowman.
Bowman may have received a windfall when Engel, while asking to speak at a news conference in the Bronx about the current wave of protests over the killing of George Floyd, said near a hot mic, “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.”
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)