Good Tuesday morning. 

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the state of the New York City mayoral race two months before the Democratic primary, and talk to former Obama administration officials about the Trump administration’s pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran. We report on the firing of the Columbia Journalism Review’s executive editor in part over his concerns over the blurring of lines between activism and journalism, and cover the Anti-Defamation League’s new audit of antisemitic incidents. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Haley Stevens, Pierre Poilievre and Eden Golan.

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In two months, New York City Democratic voters will head to the polls to vote for the candidate who will likely be the city’s next mayor. The primary, featuring former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a cast of lesser-known local Democrats, will be one of the first tests for the party over its direction in the new Trump era, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes. 

The race pits a pragmatic, established figure in Cuomo, who has high name recognition but plenty of baggage stemming from allegations of sexual misconduct that led him to resign from the state’s governorship. One of his emerging opponents is a charismatic far-left candidate, state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who, as The Free Press puts it, “wants to turn the Big Apple into a Havana on the Hudson.” Cuomo has been a pro-Israel stalwart, while Mamdani represents the Democratic Socialists of America wing of the party that is virulently anti-Israel.

There are many other candidates in the race, but few who are presenting the ideologically moderate profile that Cuomo brings to the table. Most are trying to capture the activist energy of the AOC wing of the party, even if their specific policy positions on local issues vary. This, despite the fact that the New York City electorate moved decidedly to the right in the 2024 elections, with working-class voters in particular rejecting the leftward drift of the party. 

Polls have shown Cuomo with a significant advantage, but with elevated unfavorable ratings. A recent Siena poll conducted for the AARP found Cuomo leading Mamdani 34-16% on the first ballot, and by a substantial 64-36% margin at the end of the ranked-choice voting process. The poll found him dominating voters over 50 with 42% of the vote (with the next-closest challenger, Scott Stringer, only polling at 9% with older voters), but actually trailing Mamdani with younger voters between the ages of 18-49.

A separate statewide Siena poll, conducted in March, found Cuomo with just a plus-12 favorability (51-39% fav/unfav) among Democratic voters in the Empire State. Like many traditional Democratic figures, even as a front-runner, he’s struggling to win support among the younger voters whose anti-establishment views are disrupting the party.  

The primary election will come as Democrats are trying to figure out the party’s future direction amid a humiliating defeat last November. The results showed that progressivism was a turnoff to swing voters, especially among nonwhite working-class voters that once made up the base of the party in cities like New York. Despite the Trump administration’s disruptiveness in its first months, there hasn’t been the same level of rallying against the White House, compared to the surge of activism after President Donald Trump’s first election.  

Indeed, the moderates have the electoral momentum at their back. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, running on a Bloomberg-style technocratic message of competence over ideology, unseated a progressive incumbent last November. Two pragmatic pro-Israel Democrats ousted two of the most radical members of Congress, former Reps. Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, in primaries. Last week’s mayoral election in Oakland, Calif. — one of the most progressive cities in the country — nearly featured an upset from a moderate insurgent against former Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA).

At the same time, the energy in the party has remained on the left’s side. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have been rallying crowds since the election, in one of the few displays of grassroots enthusiasm since November. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), a political pragmatist at heart, drew the ire of many in his party for not initiating a government shutdown in protest of the president’s policies. Newly elected DNC Vice Chair David Hogg, a 25-year-old left-wing activist, is getting attention for backing primaries to incumbent Democrats in safe seats. 

June’s New York City primary will be the biggest test of whether the loud left-wing activism actually reflects the sentiment of a majority of Democratic voters. It didn’t in the last mayoral race, where Eric Adams ran as the moderate, pro-law-and-order Democrat and prevailed over candidates who were more progressive.  

If the left can’t make it in a Democratic primary in Gotham, it will have trouble making it anywhere else — especially when the biggest battlegrounds for the party will be for general election voters in much redder constituencies.

IRANIAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS/ANADOLU VIA GETTY IMAGES

As nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran continue this week, foreign policy hawks who opposed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action are worried about the prospective nuclear deal, which former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley dubbed “Obama 2.0” on Saturday. They aren’t wrong to spot the similarities between what President Donald Trump’s team is reportedly negotiating now and what former President Barack Obama achieved a decade ago. Several left-leaning national security experts who served in the Obama administration and were staunch advocates for the JCPOA are now cautiously cheering on the emerging potential outline of Trump’s deal as his team shuttles between Rome and Oman for negotiations with the Iranian, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Catching up: “It's hard not to take a jab at Donald Trump for walking away from the nuclear deal in the first place, because I think if we get to a deal it’ll probably be something pretty similar,” said Ilan Goldenberg, who served as an Iran advisor at the Pentagon in Obama’s first term and then worked on Israeli-Palestinian issues under former Secretary of State John Kerry. “I have a lot of other things that I can disagree with him on, but if he wants to do the right thing here, I'll support that.”

Read the full story here.

SARAH RICE/GETTY IMAGES

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) announced Tuesday morning that she’s entering the Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat, setting up an intraparty showdown in one of the most consequential battleground states in the country, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod and Josh Kraushaar report. Stevens is a leading contender for the seat of retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI). She will be facing state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed, who led the Wayne County Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services. Former Michigan House Speaker Joe Tate, a former NFL player, is also seriously considering a run.

Jewish community perspective: Stevens is a favorite within the state’s Jewish community for her outspoken support for Israel and condemnation of high-profile antisemitic incidents at a time when many Michigan Democrats have pandered to anti-Israel activists. She represents a sizable Jewish community in the Detroit suburbs with which she forged a strong relationship in part during her successful primary campaign against then-Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI). But pro-Israel groups also view McMorrow as a reliable ally, and are more concerned with blocking the candidacy of El-Sayed, a Bernie Sanders-endorsed progressive who supports cutting off aid to Israel. 

Read the full story here.

JEMAL COUNTESS/GETTY IMAGES FOR ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE

Jews in America faced more than 25 anti-Jewish incidents per day last year — more than one per hour. All told, as the war in Gaza raged on and campus protests exploded across the country, 2024 saw the largest number of reported antisemitic incidents on record, with over 9,000 incidents of antisemitic assault, harassment and vandalism in the U.S., according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, which was released on Tuesday, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.

Driving force: It is the highest level recorded since the ADL first began collecting data in 1979. 2024 also marked the first year that Israel- and Zionism-related incidents made up a majority of all occurrences (58% of the total). "In 2024, hatred toward Israel was a driving force behind antisemitism across the U.S., with more than half of all antisemitic incidents referencing Israel or Zionism," Oren Segal, the ADL’s vice president of the ADL Center on Extremism, said in a statement. 

Read the full story here.

CRAIG F. WALKER/THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Harvard University filed suit against the Trump administration on Monday in response to its multibillion-dollar cuts to the university — which came in part due to what the White House perceives as a failure to combat the rise of antisemitism that has roiled the Ivy League’s campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. The filing, which argues that the funding freeze violates the First Amendment by “imposing viewpoint-based conditions on Harvard’s funding,” comes one day after the Trump administration reportedly planned to cut another $1 billion in federal grants and contracts from Harvard, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports. The administration had already cut $2.2 billion last week and has put a total of $9 billion of its funding under review. 

What they’re saying: An April 11 letter from the Trump administration called for reforms to Harvard’s governance structure, its hiring of faculty, its admissions policies and its approach to antisemitism, with stringent federal reporting requirements — demands were expected to be implemented by August. In the 51-page complaint filed in federal court in Massachusetts, Harvard’s lawyers wrote that “the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: Allow the Government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.” 

Read the full story here.

MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO/GETTY IMAGES

After being let go from his post as executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review last week, Sewell Chan pinned the firing — which he called “hasty” and “ill-considered” — in part on a recent interaction he had with a staff member “passionately devoted” to activism in support of Gaza on Columbia’s campus, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.

Chan’s statement: Chan wrote that he was informed last Monday of complaints from staff regarding three separate interactions in the past weeks during which he gave what he described as “fair and critical feedback rooted in editorial rigor.” Among those communications, according to Chan, included a talk with a fellow who was “passionately devoted to the cause of the Gaza protests at Columbia.” The student journalist had written an article about the “recent detention of a Palestinian graduate student” for a publication that he had previously covered for CJR. Chan did not disclose the name of the student or the publication. “I told him there was a significant ethical problem with writing for an outlet he had just covered,” Chan wrote, adding that the other two interactions involved letting go a staff member who “declined” to come into the office and write at least one story a week, despite the journalism school’s attendance policy; as well as a second conversation with an editor working on a “sensitive” investigation about sexual harassment.

Read the full story here.

AMOS BEN GERSHOM/GPO

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee conveyed a message to the growing isolationist camp on the American right as he submitted his diplomatic credentials on Monday in Jerusalem: Maintaining close relations with Israel and countering the Iranian nuclear threat are beneficial to Americans. “The Iranian regime and all the hostility it has inflicted on the world for 46 years continues to threaten not only the peace of Israel but the peace of the United States,” Huckabee said in the ceremony at the residence of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports. “Iranians have always said, ‘Death to Israel,’ and chapter two is ‘Death to America’… Israel is the appetizer, and the United States is the entree.” He added, “We care deeply about the threats that face Israel because those are also the threats that face our country.”

Two-way street: “It’s also important for Americans to know that, while we hope to be a good friend of Israel and provide assistance when we can, I never want Americans to think that we Americans are not greatly benefitted by our partnership with our ally Israel,” the ambassador stated. “We benefit dramatically in the sharing of intelligence, in the sharing of technology and in the sharing of agricultural innovation that Israel has led the world in creating.”

Read the full story here.

No Endgame in Sight: The Washington Post’s David Ignatius posits that both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas are refusing to take serious steps to reach the end of the war because such a deal would endanger each of their holds on power. “Wars end when public opinion demands peace. And there are new demands from Palestinians and Israelis alike to break the logjam and move toward a new ceasefire and hostage release. The anti-war protesters aren’t a majority on either side, but they illustrate the bitterness and exhaustion this conflict has produced. Thousands of Palestinians courageously joined anti-war protests in Gaza last month, according to Associated Press reporters there. … The awful truth at the center of this conflict is that Netanyahu has never had a plan for what happens when it’s over. He wants a Gaza that’s not governed by Hamas or reoccupied by Israel, but he refuses to create a pathway for eventual Palestinian governance because this would rupture his right-wing coalition.” [WashPost]

Job Insecurity: The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch looks at the challenges facing Ivy League presidents, following Columbia University’s announcement that it would begin a search for the school’s next leader after the departure of its third president in as many years. “With declining trust in higher education, campuses fractured over the Israel-Hamas conflict, and a White House eager to wage populist war on elites (a White House run, incidentally, by Trump, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, and Yale Law alumnus J. D. Vance), the job of elite college president, formerly considered difficult but prestigious, has become, on many campuses, impossible and thankless. Presidents are charged with leading an inflexible organization made up of autonomous and competing constituencies through a period that requires immediate change. But they can’t do anything without angering either parents, students, professors, donors, administrators, or Trump. Any false step might cost them their position. … Universities searching for new presidents are now prioritizing candidates who can play politics on a national level — candidates with political acumen and crisis-management experience.” [TheAtlantic]

Split Screen: Tablet's Park MacDougald looks at the ideological fights at the Pentagon that have fueled for the recent upheavals within the department. “We are not witnessing an 'internal fight; within MAGA, because there is no MAGA beyond Trump. Instead, [writer Lee] Smith wrote, 'What we’re seeing … is an external faction trying to attach itself to MAGA in order to strangle Trump’s America First foreign policy.' With that faction now openly attacking the administration and making common cause with its enemies to undermine the administration, the only question is how much longer Trump can put up with it.” [Tablet]

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YOUTUBE

Eden Golan released the music video for her new song, “Pieces.”

DAVID BERDING/GETTY IMAGES

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