Nicholas Fandos

Israel is not the most important issue in this district.

And he's not completely denounced groups like AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, even if he didn't take their money in this election.

Lander was willing to do those things.

He was willing to be much more vociferous in his criticism of Israel and in separating himself from the kind of pro-Israel political forces in the United States.

And for Mamdani, that was crucial.

That's right.

But the way that he made this a campaign issue and that he figured it would resonate with the voters in a district that he's known for a very long time was to basically say that Dan Goldman is beholden to a special interest.

He is taking money from the pro-Israel lobby.

He is taking money from corporate interests.

And that is affecting the way that he represents you in Washington.

Right.

And that was a pretty powerful critique at a moment, I think, when a lot of Democrats are thinking about the entrenched interests of money and corporate power in the United States.

So it took this rather small distinction and made it a bigger one where he could differentiate himself.

Absolutely.

But his intervention here also started to raise another question, which is basically how involved is Mamdani, this new mayor who's going to be trying to govern an ungovernable city, as people like to call New York, how involved is he going to get in politics?

And we start to get some answers pretty quickly last fall.

In one counterintuitive move, he actually intervened to shut down a primary challenge by an ally of his in the DSA who was looking to challenge Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader.

And after his private warnings to this ally didn't get through, Mamdani actually showed up at a public forum and made a case for why it would hurt his mayoralty and their cause to go after Jeffries in that way, to pick such a big fight.

Exactly.

And so that might have been where this all ended.