NYC campaign urges Jews to vote in city elections: ‘Antisemitism is on the ballot’

NEW YORK — The volunteer donned a pair of headphones, made a phone call and read off of a printed script arrayed on a table next to a stack of Post-It notes, cups of coffee and a hat with the slogan, “Don’t kvetch. Vote.”

“It’s crucial that the voice of the Jewish community is heard in our city elections. In order for it to be heard, you need to be registered as a Democrat,” she said in her 20th call that morning. “Can we count on you to register?”

The call was part of a campaign by the Jewish Voters Action Network, a new group that aims to mobilize Jewish turnout for New York City’s municipal elections. The nonprofit group was established in August and opened its office in the Upper West Side earlier this month.

Around 100 volunteers have signed up to date. They make calls from home or from the office to acquaintances, friends and family members, focusing on non-Democrats, to inform them about this year’s municipal elections. The initiative is funded by private donors and grants, said executive director Becca Zebovitz.

Their main message: register as a Democrat for the primaries. The Democratic party dominates New York City, so most city elections are decided in the party primaries. The races for city council and mayor hold their primaries in June ahead of the general election in November.

“Many people are sleeping at the wheel. When you say to them, ‘Hey, you’re registered as a Republican, if you want to have a say in the city, you need to register as a Democrat,’ I think they don’t even realize that,” said Lizzy Brenner, one of the volunteers.

After the February 14 deadline for changing parties, the volunteers will focus on getting New York Jews to the ballot box.

The volunteers reach their targets using an Israeli app called UpVote. The app matches publicly available data on voter registration with the user’s contacts, so volunteers can see who among their contacts is registered as a Republican or Independent, said the campaign’s field director, Avishai Rostamian. The volunteers can call or send a pre-written text.

“When you’re having a conversation that’s more emotional, especially having it with a friend, having it with someone who knows you, who understands where you’re coming from, it can be much more effective,” said Zebovitz, who has a background working in Jewish nonprofits.

The group has focused on the phone campaign, but will expand its activities closer to the election with outreach through door-knocking in Brooklyn and Queens and setting up tables in kosher restaurants and grocery stores.

The initiative was inspired by a Jewish get-out-the-vote campaign for a congressional race in Westchester County, north of New York City, last year. That race pitted George Latimer, a centrist, pro-Israel Democrat, against leftist incumbent Jamaal Bowman, a harsh critic of Israel affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America who angered and unnerved Jewish voters during the campaign.

Latimer won the election, partly because of Jewish voter turnout, said Maury Litwack, the founder of the Jewish Voters Action Network. Around 12,000 votes decided the race, and 14,000 Jews voted, making up 20% of the total, he said, calling the race “our biggest wake-up call for the reality of what we could achieve.”

“All those things combined made us realize, ‘Hey, wait a second, there’s something really here.’ That’s when the seed of building and creating a new organization started,” Litwack said. “The next most obvious place where we could apply these tactics and techniques was in New York City.”

Brenner, a mother of two who lives on the Upper East Side, followed the Westchester campaign, saying, “It was amazing that they got so many people to vote and really be civically engaged.” She heard about the New York City initiative through acquaintances on the team and decided to volunteer despite her busy schedule.

“If I need to carve out 30 minutes here and there to stop by, phone bank, get people involved, get people to get engaged, I’ll do it. This is too important to sleep on,” she said outside the volunteer center sandwiched between a smoke shop and a hair salon on Lexington Ave.

Races for the New York City council are often determined by a few thousand votes, and turnout for mayoral races is usually low, Litwack said, meaning the Jewish community can have a big impact. In the most recent mayoral race, in 2021, turnout was only 21%.

“If you know that there’s low turnout, but we as a Jewish community have close to a million Jewish voters here, then that, to me, really demanded us starting this organization and building it,” he said. Litwack is a former Washington lobbyist and Capitol Hill staffer who founded Teach Coalition, a group affiliated with the Orthodox Union that does advocacy work in education and was part of the Westchester campaign last year.

In both the Westchester primary and the New York City races, many centrist and right-wing Jewish voters are concerned about harsh critics of Israel on the left. In the New York City mayoral race, anti-Israel activist Zohran Mamdani, like Bowman, is backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. Mamdani is a state assembly member who has had a strong showing in early fundraising, but is relatively low in the polls.

The Jewish Voters Action Network cannot make political endorsements due to its nonprofit status, but Litwack said the DSA was a factor for Jewish voters.

“The Jewish community as a whole, when they look at the DSA, they are extremely concerned because the DSA has openly anti-Israel positions, and they have consistently elected politicians who have either terrifying positions on antisemitism or the wrong positions on antisemitism,” he said.

“The DSA is, to me, an example of what happens when members of the Jewish community, and what happens when New Yorkers, and what happens when Americans don’t vote and allow for others to dominate these low-turnout primaries, and then subsequent to that, claim a mandate,” Litwack said.

Sara Forman, the head of the New York Solidarity Network, a pro-Israel political group that is not affiliated with the get-out-the-vote campaign, said the effort was part of a broader movement in the US Jewish community since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel and ensuing fallout in American politics.

“It’s just a hyper-awareness of our surroundings and who represents us and what they’re saying and paying attention to that,” Forman said. “I think it really makes a difference to Jewish voters now. I think we were asleep for a number of years, but I feel like we’re all very much awake right now.”

She applauded the Jewish Voters Action Network and said it was the first such initiative at such a scale in New York City.

Phylisa Wisdom, the head of the liberal New York Jewish Agenda political advocacy group, said it was “certainly important to make sure Jewish voters are engaged and active in elections, especially when so many Jewish issues are on the agenda.”

Wisdom, who is also not affiliated with the voter campaign, said that data indicates Jewish voters tend to be engaged and turn out in local and federal elections, though, and that the Jewish voter population in Westchester is different from in New York City, where there are larger progressive and Hasidic populations.

“I don’t think we’ll see much change in the voting behavior of liberal Jews based on this initiative, but I’m curious to see what impact this has in the city,” she said.

As for voters changing their party affiliation to sway elections, she said, “It’s understandable that people want to be able to weigh in,” but could become an issue, depending on who wins.

“If a bunch of former Republicans end up pushing someone over the line, I think Democratic voters will have a hard time with that, but there are so many scenarios for how this plays out,” she said.

The mayoral race is still up in the air, including for the Jewish vote. Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo is the overall favorite, according to polling, but has not formally entered the race. Cuomo has repeatedly spoken out in favor of Israel and against antisemitism since resigning as governor amid sexual harassment allegations in 2021. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is also strongly supportive of Israel and has close ties to many Jewish communities, but is polling poorly and contending with corruption charges.

The Jewish city comptroller, Brad Lander, a progressive, has focused his campaign on quality of life issues. Former comptroller and Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer, a Jewish centrist, is also in the running. Attorney Jim Walden, a long shot contender, has made combating antisemitism one of his campaign priorities.

In addition to the mayoral race, the Jewish Voters Action Network has identified 12 city council races to focus on that the group has deemed competitive.

Jewish issues will likely play a prominent role in the races, political analysts have said, due to issues stemming from the Middle East conflict such as antisemitism, street protests, masking laws and support for Israel.

The get-out-the-vote campaign hopes that, even if Jewish voters’ preferred candidates lose, those elected will take notice if the community turns out in large numbers. (A separate initiative is taking a similar approach in the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.)

“Even if someone comes into power who’s maybe not as friendly to the community, if they know that we have this group of people who is voting, they care. They are going to pay attention,” Zebovitz said.

Organizers have their eyes set beyond New York City, hoping to expand the initiative and infrastructure nationally.

“We’re building a ground game that each election we can come back to and say, ‘Okay, we got to come back. We got to start again. We got to activate our networks,'” Zebovitz said.

“We need to hold our politicians accountable, and that’s what we’re doing. We are going out and saying to people, ‘Antisemitism is on the ballot here in New York City,” she said.