MSNBC host Chris Hayes appeared to blame the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s embarrassing primary defeat Tuesday, saying the race would have been a “dead heat” without it.
“[H]aving spent a fair amount of time around members of [C]ongress, a $14 million dollar money bomb is totally bananas and there’s just nothing like it and no candidate anywhere with the ability to deal with it,” Hayes wrote on X, referencing AIPAC putting a reported $14.5 million into the race to remove Bowman, a far-left Israel critic, from office in New York’s 16th Congressional District.
The race was quickly called for Democratic challenger George Latimer, with results showing a double-digit lead early Wednesday morning, a rare and lopsided rebuke of an incumbent by his own party voters.
Bowman has been outspoken about his support for Palestinians amid the war in Gaza and has charged that Israel is committing genocide in the region. In his campaign, Latimer argued that Bowman had lost touch with constituents in his district, and Semafor’s Benjy Sarlin noted to Hayes that AIPAC had focused on the race in part because of Bowman’s polling weaknesses going into this year, such as over his embarrassing fire alarm pulling incident.
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“I think w/o AIPAC it’s probably a dead heat of a race and all the motivating factors you note are real and still very much at play,” Hayes wrote to Sarlin.
Hayes’ take came in for swift criticism, as critics noted Bowman’s polling woes were apparent months ago.
“Bowman was down 17 points before AIPAC ever aired an ad in this race,” Tablet’s Noam Blum wrote to Hayes.
“AIPAC could never exist and enough decent human beings still live in Westchester County and the Bronx to be utterly horrified about Jamaal Bowman laughing and mocking off the GoPro’d rapes of women and slaughtering of infants as ‘lies’ and ‘propaganda.’ He did it to himself,” National Review’s Jeff Blehar added.
Bowman’s loss Tuesday night to Latimer made him the first House member of either party to be defeated by a primary challenger so far in the 2024 election cycle. Bowman will also be the first member of the far-left “Squad” to lose his seat after Latimer grabbed the Democratic nomination from him.
Bowman attacked AIPAC multiple times on the campaign trail, saying at a rally on Saturday that he would defeat the organization. AIPAC has become a bogeyman to anti-Israel progressives, who accuse it of holding too much influence over politicians.
“We are going to show f—— AIPAC, the power of the motherf—— South Bronx!” Bowman said at the rally, which was held outside the congressional district’s boundaries. The 16th district does not include the South Bronx.
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On Tuesday night, Bowman apologized for “sometimes using foul language” but said that “we should be outraged when a super PAC of dark money can spend $20 million to brainwash people into believing something that isn’t true. We should be outraged about that.”
Bowman and Latimer’s campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
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