Linda Sadacka
Political movements rarely emerge overnight. Long before they produce headline victories, they recruit volunteers, organize neighborhoods, contest obscure local races, and patiently build influence where few people are paying attention. By the time the broader public notices, much of the work has already been done.
For many New Yorkers, the June 23, 2026 Democratic primaries were one of those moments.
The headlines the following morning focused on the winners and losers. Brad Lander defeated Congressman Dan Goldman. Claire Valdez prevailed in Brooklyn. Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated five-term Congressman Adriano Espaillat. Viewed individually, each race reflected the political character of its district.
Taken together, however, they revealed something far more consequential. Every congressional candidate endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani emerged victorious, signaling that the coalition surrounding him had matured into one of the most disciplined and influential forces within New York Democratic politics.
For some New Yorkers, the results represented the rise of a new progressive coalition. For others, they reflected a profound shift in the direction of the Democratic Party itself.
How Did This Happen?
For New York’s Jewish community, however, the election prompted a different question altogether.
How did this happen?
The answer is not found in one charismatic candidate or one successful campaign. Nor is it the product of a single election cycle. How this happened is the result of years of disciplined organization.
One of the defining characteristics of successful political movements is that they understand something many voters do not: political power is rarely won from the top down. It is built from the ground up.
While many New Yorkers focus on presidential elections or high-profile mayoral races, highly organized activists devote equal attention to the contests most people ignore – local party organizations, judicial races, Democratic clubs, neighborhood campaigns, and the civic institutions where future political leaders are first identified and developed. Those elections rarely generate headlines, yet they determine who builds influence long before the broader public realizes the political landscape has shifted.
Grassroots Strategy
That strategy has been central to the Democratic Socialists of America’s growth over the past decade. Rather than focusing exclusively on national politics, the movement invested heavily in grassroots neighborhood organizing, volunteer recruitment, labor alliances, tenant organizations, and candidate development. Supporters see those efforts as grassroots democracy functioning exactly as intended: citizens organizing around shared priorities and participating consistently in civic life. Critics view them as a long-term effort to reshape the Democratic Party from within, patiently building influence one local victory at a time.
Regardless of one’s political perspective, one conclusion is difficult to dispute. The strategy has produced results. The June primaries did not create this movement. They revealed how much it had already grown.
That reality explains why these elections cannot simply be understood as another chapter in the familiar contest between Republicans and Democrats. Increasingly, some of the strongest warnings about the Democratic Party’s future have come not from Republicans, but from prominent Democrats themselves.
Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville has emerged as one of the party’s sharpest critics of its Democratic Socialist wing. He is a veteran political consultant, author, and television pundit who has strategized for numerous Democratic candidates running for public office. Carville has argued that candidates aligned with that movement no longer reflect the Democratic Party he spent decades helping to build, pointing to positions he believes fall well outside its traditional mainstream. As Carville put it, “That’s just not who I think the Democratic Party is.”
His concerns extend beyond domestic policy. Carville, a non-Jew, has repeatedly distinguished between legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy and questioning the legitimacy of the State of Israel itself.
“Attack the government of Israel all you want to,” he said. “I don’t like it. I can’t stand it. But I like the State of Israel. You can’t conflate the regime with the people.”
At the same time, he has been unequivocal in rejecting candidates who deny Israel’s right to exist. “I don’t want to be in a political party that denies the right of the State of Israel to exist.”
An Unfolding Dabate
Those remarks matter not because they come from a conservative commentator, but because they come from one of the Democratic Party’s best-known strategists. They underscore that the debate unfolding in New York is no longer simply between Democrats and Republicans. Increasingly, it is an internal struggle over the Democratic Party’s identity and future direction.
For New York’s Jewish community, however, those political debates intersect with concerns that are far more personal.
Since the October 7 Hamas massacre, anti-Semitism has risen dramatically across the United States. New York has witnessed anti-Israel demonstrations, harassment on college campuses, and increasingly heated rhetoric surrounding Zionism.
Many Jewish organizations have expressed concern that language once directed primarily at Israeli government policy has expanded to encompass Zionists more broadly, creating an environment in which many Jews feel that support for Israel has itself become grounds for public hostility.
Public Safety and Political Apathy
At the same time, many New Yorkers have grown increasingly concerned about public safety, criminal justice, policing, and quality of life. Several candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America have advocated significant changes to policing and criminal justice. Supporters argue those reforms seek to create a fairer and more equitable system. Critics fear they could weaken deterrence and reduce accountability at a moment when many residents already feel less secure.
Whether one agrees with either perspective is almost secondary. The larger reality is that a political movement with a distinct vision for New York has demonstrated an impressive ability to translate disciplined organization into electoral success.
Perhaps nowhere was that lesson clearer than in the numbers themselves. In New York’s Tenth Congressional District, fewer than 50,000 Democrats cast ballots in the primary. Brad Lander received just over 30,900 votes, while Congressman Dan Goldman received approximately 17,300. In a district representing hundreds of thousands of residents, the political direction of the community was effectively determined by a relatively small electorate.
Summertime and Political Reality
Those figures illustrate an important political reality. Elections are not always won by persuading the greatest number of people. More often, they are won by identifying supporters, organizing them, and ensuring they actually vote. The June primaries demonstrated that disciplined organization can outweigh complacency, even in one of the nation’s largest cities.
For New York’s Jewish community, that lesson carries particular significance. New York’s election reforms moved the primary calendar to June, a change supporters argued would modernize elections, improve administration, and expand participation through measures such as early voting. Whatever the intent behind those reforms, the practical effect has been that many primaries now take place just as much of the Orthodox community begins leaving the city for the summer.
By late June, families have already departed for Deal, the Catskills, the Hamptons, or elsewhere. Summer schedules replace political ones. Meanwhile, organized political movements have been preparing for these elections for months, educating their supporters about early voting, absentee ballots, and the importance of primary turnout.
That contrast is difficult to ignore. It is not an excuse. It is a lesson. For generations, many voters treated the Democratic primary as little more than a preliminary contest. The election that mattered, they assumed, would come in November. That assumption no longer reflects political reality in much of New York.
In district after district, Democratic registration so heavily outweighs Republican registration that the primary has effectively become the decisive election. By the time voters return to the polls in November, many of the most consequential races have already been decided. That reality demands a corresponding change in the way our community thinks about civic participation.
Primary Elections Determine Political Direction
Voting in a Democratic primary is no longer simply an exercise reserved for political enthusiasts. In many parts of New York, it has become the moment when the city’s political direction is determined.
The June primaries were not an isolated example. They reflected the same political dynamics that helped propel Mayor Zohran Mamdani to victory. His success did not emerge suddenly. It was built over years of organization, coalition building, and consistent participation in the contests that many occasional voters overlooked.
The lesson is larger than any individual candidate. Communities that understand where political influence is built are far more likely to shape the future than communities that engage only after the most consequential decisions have already been made.
For New York’s Jewish community, that may be the single most important political lesson to emerge from the June 2026 primaries. Understanding how this happened, however, is only the first step.
The more difficult question is what these political changes may mean for the future of New York and for the Jewish community that has long called it home.
Where Do We Go From Here?
If the June primaries revealed anything, it is that political landscapes can change long before most people recognize that they have changed at all.
Understanding how we arrived at this moment is important. Understanding where we go from here is even more so. For many in New York’s Jewish community, that conversation has already begun.
It is taking place around Shabbat tables, after minyan, at weddings, in school parking lots, and over family dinners. Questions that would have seemed almost unimaginable only a few years ago are now being asked with increasing frequency.
Do We Still Have a Future in New York?
Some families have already left for Florida. Others are exploring New Jersey. Some are taking steps to make Aliyah. Many have chosen to remain, while quietly wondering whether the city they love is changing into something fundamentally different.
No one can answer that question with certainty. What can be said with confidence is that New York is changing. Perhaps the greatest danger, however, is not the change itself. It is our remarkable ability to become accustomed to it.
There is an old metaphor about a frog placed in gradually warming water. Whether or not the story is scientifically accurate is beside the point. Its lesson has endured because it reflects something profoundly human. When change occurs gradually, each individual step appears manageable. Only when we look back do we realize how dramatically the landscape has shifted.
Many New Yorkers would argue that they are already experiencing that phenomenon. Riding the subway has become a source of anxiety for many commuters. Encounters with homelessness and severe mental illness have become increasingly common in neighborhoods where they were once rare. High-profile crimes involving repeat offenders have intensified debates over bail reform, prosecution, and accountability. Security outside synagogues and yeshivot, which was once exceptional, has become routine. On many college campuses, Jewish students now think carefully before expressing support for Israel publicly. None of these developments occurred overnight.
New York Is Not the Same
Nor can they all be attributed to one election, one policy, or one political movement. Taken together, however, they have created the unmistakable sense that the New York many people experience today is not the New York they remember from even a decade ago. The June primaries did not create those concerns. They crystallized them. They forced many New Yorkers to confront a question they had quietly been avoiding.
If this is where New York is headed, what does that mean for our future? It was several years ago, as I watched many of these changes beginning to emerge, that I found myself wrestling with that same question. Should Jewish families consider leaving New York?
One Answer: Strengthen Ourselves
Seeking Torah guidance, I received an answer from my rabbi that has remained with me ever since. The message was simple. The yetzer hara exists everywhere.
A person can move to Miami, New Jersey, Israel, or anywhere else. But if he is not engaged in the lifelong struggle against his own evil inclination, he has not solved the real problem. Conversely, a Jew who strengthens his Torah, his mitzvot, and his relationship with Hashem carries that spiritual protection wherever Hashem places him.
Because, while elections determine who governs a city, they have never determined the destiny of the Jewish people.
Torah Perspective
Ignoring politics is not a Torah response. Neither is becoming consumed by it. That balance was beautifully articulated by Rabbi Joey Haber when I asked him how Torah views elections whose outcomes may visibly affect our lives. He replied:
“The Torah always teaches us two things: 1) We do our best. 2) Hashem is in control. So, when there is an election that visibly can affect our lives, our job is to do step one and leave the rest up to Hashem.
Which means we have a responsibility to vote – not with hysteria, just with the attitude of, ‘I’m doing what I need to do.’”
Perhaps that is the enduring lesson of the June 2026 primaries.
Politics has never been the foundation of Jewish survival. Empires have risen and fallen. Governments have come and gone. Political movements have reshaped nations throughout history. Yet, the Jewish people have endured because our ultimate security has never depended solely on political power. It has depended upon our relationship with Hashem, our commitment to Torah, and our willingness to strengthen ourselves even as the world around us changes.