Why has an election 6000 miles from the Dome of the Rock become about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Foreign policy does not typically determine US elections. It certainly almost never determines local elections. Even so, the Democratic primary for mayor of New York — where 65% of voters are registered Democrats — has become a proxy for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a city 6000 miles from the Dome of the Rock, the choice of the next mayor will be influenced by this conflict.

Since 2022, the mayor has been Eric Adams. He is a centrist, tough-on-crime Democrat and a former police officer. Though he is eligible for re-election in 2025, his tenure has been fraught with controversy. He was charged with bribery and campaign finance offences by Joe Biden’s Department of Justice in September 2024. A day after Trump’s inauguration, right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson released an interview with the mayor, titled “New York Mayor Eric Adams sounds a lot like a Trump voter” in which Adams spoke sympathetically about the president’s immigration policy and claimed the DoJ charges were the result of his failing to be a “good Democrat” on immigration. Three weeks and two Fox News appearances later, Trump’s DoJ dropped the charges against Adams.

On 2 April, a federal judge from the Southern District of New York dismissed the case. Still, the mayor’s Trumpian sympathies and corruption allegations (even if they are dismissed) do not endear him to New York’s overwhelmingly liberal voters. According to a Quinnipiac University poll, Adams’ approval rating is at 20%, and 56% of voters believe he should resign. Though Adams is still running in the general election, now as an independent, this has set the stage for two very different Democrats: former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York State Representative Zohran Mamdani.

Neither candidate is a conventional choice. Cuomo, a centrist who previously served as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and New York State Attorney-General, resigned as governor in August 2021 over sexual assault allegations ( Biden and others called on him to resign). Mamdani, who became a naturalised citizen in 2018, is a socialist — still a dirty word in America — and a rapper. Interestingly, much of the election buzz is not over Cuomo and Mamdani’s differing programs or quirks, but their stance on Israel-Palestine.

Their positions could not be more different. Cuomo is frequently seen wearing a yellow hostages’ ribbon and is on the legal defence team of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against his International Criminal Court war crimes charges. Mamdani, a Muslim who often wears an ethnic garment and represents the People’s Republic of Astoria, has said  he would arrest Netanyahu if he ever set foot in the city, even though the US is not a signatory to the ICC.

Cuomo leads a pro-Israel group called Never Again, NOW! During a speech at a synagogue in the Hamptons in July 2024, he said that as governor, he was “the number one defender of Israel”, and even called himself a “Shabbos goy” — a non-Jew who assists on the day of rest, Shabbat. One of the goals of Never Again, NOW! is to counter “antisemitism” on college campuses and expose “the truth about Hamas”. Mamdani, on the other hand, supports cutting all US aid to Israel. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that calls for ending “Israeli apartheid”, he has also attended rallies of Within Our Lifetime, a controversial organisation that has been denounced by fellow socialist and representative of the Astoria neighbourhood, US House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Back to Cuomo: he has received donations from various Zionist groups and individuals, including the wife of Jerry Seinfeld and US$250,000 from a super PAC headed by Bill Ackman, a pro-Israel Trump supporter. Though Cuomo has never explicitly endorsed President Donald Trump (and almost certainly never will), he has taken a much softer tone on the president and said that “he knows our situation, he knows the situation in New York City”. Mamdani, meanwhile, has vigorously attacked Trump and members of his administration, and has emerged as a vocal supporter of Mahmoud Khalil, a foreign Columbia University student who was the first to be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement over his pro-Palestinian speech. A few days after Khalil was detained in March 2025, Cuomo took the opportunity to tweet, “The antisemitic agitators at Columbia University & on campuses across the country have gone unchecked for too long.” Both candidates frequently attack each other over the broader issue of Israel-Palestine, and have focused on it in their own campaigns.

Typically, a 33-year-old newcomer like Mamdani would never be seen as a serious contender to a well-established and experienced candidate like Cuomo. But Cuomo, despite being backed by influential pro-Israel individuals, is himself somewhat offside with the Democratic establishment due to his sexual assault allegations. There is also anger in the US over the failures of centrist Democrats who are blamed for Trump’s rise to power. And the Democratic electorate is itself deeply divided over Israel-Palestine, especially in the city with both the largest Jewish and the largest Muslim population in America.

For all his flaws, Cuomo leads in the polls, and, as of 20 April 20, the online betting site Kalshi estimates Mamdani’s odds of becoming the Democratic nominee at only 12 percent, compared to Cuomo’s 83.7 percent.

I do not share Cuomo’s views on Israel and deporting students over their speech, as I’ve expressed on these pages. I believe that deporting Khalil and other international students with no criminal record is fundamentally anti-American. But I also believe that Cuomo was a tried and tested governor with a bold and successful vision, so I’m certainly more inclined to support him over Mamdani (this is of no consequence, since I am not a registered voter in New York).

But nobody should have to choose which candidate to support over a foreign conflict. Cuomo and Mamdani are not only talking about Khalil, they are also talking about the whole situation in Israel-Palestine. Shouldn’t the election for mayor be about New York and not Tel Aviv or Ramallah or Gaza? It is absurd. Both candidates’ massive focus on Israel-Palestine serves to energise voters in a divided city, for their own ends. But it does just that – it divides. It is all optics and rhetoric, which distracts from the conversations we need to be having about the future of the city. And that is unfortunate.