Many Jewish Voters in New York Support Zohran Mamdani and his Gaza Policy

Ben Sadoff knocked on roughly 1,000 doors as a canvasser for Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary campaign in New York City, and the voters he met brought up the same issues again and again: the cost of rent, the cost of child care and the sense that things in the city were going in the wrong direction.

Zohran Mamdani won over Jewish voters in New York City who were energized by his economic agenda and unbothered by - or sympathetic to - his views on Israel and Gaza.

One thing they did not frequently mention was Israel, he said. And when voters - including Jewish ones - did bring it up, their comments often focused on their anguish over Israel’s war in Gaza, where starvation is spreading and about 60,000 people have been killed, according to Gazan officials. “I think this campaign has really shown us something we have known for a while,” said Mr. Sadoff, who is Jewish and works as a bike mechanic in Manhattan. “There are a million Jewish New Yorkers who have wide-ranging opinions on all kinds of issues.”

Mr. Mamdani’s commanding victory in the Democratic primary for mayor alarmed many Jews who are concerned by his outspoken criticism of Israel. But he won the votes of many other Jewish New Yorkers, some of whom said in interviews that they were unbothered by that criticism and inspired by his intense focus on affordability. Often these voters said that Mr. Mamdani’s views on Israel, and his vocal opposition to its treatment of Palestinians, echoed their own.

Mr. Mamdani has criticized Israel in ways that were once unthinkable for an elected official in New York, home to America’s largest Jewish population. He has decried Israel as an apartheid state. He has said it should ensure equal rights for followers of all religions instead of favoring Jews in its political and legal system. He has supported the movement that seeks to economically isolate it, known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

And he has endorsed the view of Israel’s leading human rights organizations and of genocide scholars - including some in Israel - that it is committing genocide in Gaza, an allegation that the Israeli government has denied.

Mr. Mamdani’s positions on Israel have alienated him from Zionist Jewish groups, many of which have accused him of being antisemitic, a charge that he denies. His views also became a line of attack for some of his primary rivals, including former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who is running in the general election as an independent.

Steve Israel, a former Democratic member of Congress who represented parts of Long Island and Queens, said that Mr. Mamdani’s primary victory was “‘Twilight Zone’ stuff” for some Jewish New Yorkers. “Mamdani’s positions on Israel up to now are way out of the mainstream of the Jewish community, and the irony here is that his progressive policies on economic issues would have at least a plurality of support by Jewish voters,” he said. “But the toxicity of his positions on Israel have just become impossible for those same voters to forgive.”

Yet none of Mr. Mamdani’s stances kept him from winning a decisive primary victory over Mr. Cuomo, his closest competitor. It is difficult to determine how many Jewish voters supported Mr. Mamdani because even in New York, the Jewish population is too small to be measured with precision by most polls.

Neighborhoods with large numbers of Orthodox Jewish residents voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Cuomo. He also won other heavily Jewish areas like Riverdale in the Bronx, though outside of Orthodox neighborhoods, the Jewish population is generally not concentrated enough to allow analysis using precinct-level vote data.

But Mr. Mamdani enjoyed a broad victory that suggests at least some backing from many different constituencies, and pre-election polls, which generally undercounted support for him, showed him earning double-digit support among Jewish voters.

Data from the ranked-choice voting process also shows that Mr. Mamdani was selected as an alternate choice by two-thirds of voters whose top choice was Brad Lander, the city comptroller and the highest-ranking Jewish official in city government, who made his identity a key part of his campaign and who cross-endorsed Mr. Mamdani during the primary.

Jeffrey Lerner, Mr. Mamdani’s communications director and one of his many Jewish advisers, said in a statement that it was “no surprise that thousands of Jewish New Yorkers proudly cast their ballots for Zohran in the June primary, despite relentless fearmongering from Republicans and the billionaire class.”

Mr. Mamdani’s spotlight on affordability was on display on a recent Saturday, when two dozen Jewish families gathered to learn about mass transit at a “Tot Shabbat” event in Prospect Park. The event was organized by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, an activist group that supports the Mamdani campaign.

“I am proud to vote for him as a Jew,” said Emily Hoffman, 37, as children read books, sang songs and played near a big cardboard bus that evoked Mr. Mamdani’s campaign promise to make city buses fast and free. “It’s unfair that it feels like Zohran is starting with a kind of assumption of antisemitism against him, both because of his racial and ethnic identity and because of his politics on Palestine,” she said. Mr. Mamdani would be the city’s first Muslim mayor.

Ms. Hoffman said she was deeply disturbed by the images she had seen of the humanitarian conditions in Gaza, which reminded her of pictures she saw as a child when she first learned about the Holocaust. And she called Mr. Mamdani’s belief that Israel should provide equal rights to citizens of all religions “the common-sense position,” adding, “if you’re against that, you are not on the side of justice.”

In recent comments at the Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., Mr. Cuomo attributed Mr. Mamdani’s victory to both a surge of support from younger voters and a shift in the way younger people think about Israel and antisemitism. Mr. Cuomo, who has made unflinching support of Israel part of his political brand, joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal team after the International Criminal Court accused him of war crimes and issued an arrest warrant for him last year.

In his remarks, Mr. Cuomo asserted that more than half of Jewish primary voters had cast their ballots for Mr. Mamdani, though he did not back up that claim. He appealed to the synagogue’s well-heeled and mostly older congregants for their help. “With those young people, the under-30 people, they are pro-Palestinian and they don’t consider it being anti-Israel,” Mr. Cuomo said, according to a recording posted online by The Forward, a Jewish news organization.