Two powerful House Democrats from New York are in danger of losing their primaries

After a strong night for New York City-area progressives in the state’s primary election, two powerful House Democrats, Reps. Eliot Engel and Carolyn Maloney, looked in danger of losing their seats.

As mail-in ballot results trickled in, middle school principal Jamaal Bowman led Engel by a staggering margin of more than 25 percentage points Wednesday morning.

Bowman, a Black man, leveraged discontent about the House Foreign Affairs Committee chair’s absence from the district during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as backlash against the congressman saying he “wouldn’t care” about speaking at an event on police brutality if he did not face a primary. Engel represents the 16th District in parts of the Bronx and Westchester County. 

“We celebrate this movement,” Bowman, who ran on a sweeping liberal platform and earned endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said in a de facto victory speech Tuesday night. “A movement designed to push back against a system that’s literally killing us. It’s killing Black and Brown bodies disproportionately, but it’s killing all of us.”

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/new-york-primary-results-eliot-engel-carolyn-maloney-in-danger.html