Rep. Jerry Nadler, the dean of the New York congressional delegation, is getting a primary challenger for next year — and it’s not from the Democratic Socialists of America.
Liam Elkind, a 26-year-old who started an organization during the Covid-19 pandemic that delivered food and medicine, is pitching his run as “respectfully asking” Nadler to retire.
He told CNN that he no longer thinks the 78-year-old Nadler has the energy nor mindset that Democrats need to respond to President Donald Trump and to rebuild their own party.
“There has to be a way of both honoring the 49-year-political career of someone like Jerry Nadler while asking him to build a bridge to the future,” Elkind told CNN.
Elkind is coming into the race with the promise of heavy financial backing, including from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Among the local political figures backing him are Dan Doctoroff, who served as a deputy mayor under Michael Bloomberg, and former City Councilman Rafael Espinal, who told CNN, “This isn’t about removing Nadler, but about who is the best person to carry the baton.”
Nadler began his political career representing the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the State Assembly, and has been in Congress since 1992. He retains deep loyalty with voters and local politicians, and after handily winning a 2022 primary that pitted him against a fellow incumbent in a redrawn district, he represents the Upper West and Upper East sides as well as Midtown.
Elkind grew up in Nadler’s district. While he’s now living outside of the redrawn lines in an apartment in Chelsea, he is preparing to move in with his brother on the Upper West Side for the duration of the campaign. He’ll do that while completing a Ph.D. he began as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, writing a dissertation about the effects of campaign finance reform on elections.
Part of his decision to run, Elkind told CNN, was a conversation he had with Nadler this spring at a local political event. “What’s the plan?” Elkind says he asked about Trump, and says the congressman responded by saying that the president’s tariffs will crash the economy and hand Democrats the midterms.
“For a man I respected, a man I grew up voting for, it felt like such an un-strategic take,” Elkind said.
A Nadler spokesman called this a passing conversation at an event that wasn’t a time to talk strategy. He pointed to the congressman’s questioning of Trump officials at House hearings last week and headlining a rally in New York on Monday to criticize the Israeli government’s conduct of the war in Gaza as just the most recent evidence of his engagement.
“Congressman Nadler will stake his record of accomplishments against anyone,” said Rob Gottheim. “Unfortunately, with this individual, I don’t think there’s any record to speak of.”
Nadler is “going to serve until he doesn’t,” Gottheim added. “He feels he is an effective member of Congress.”
Others in the district have been gearing up for congressional runs when Nadler retires, but not to run against him.
Disagreements with Mamdani
Elkind said he ranked Democratic mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani fifth on his own ballot last month. He disagrees with the democratic socialist on issues including freezing rents and government-owned grocery stores, and for his declining to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.” (Elkind noted that he is Jewish himself.) But Elkind said the focus on affordability and a new approach to politics is much of what’s on his mind too.
Meanwhile, Nadler’s endorsement of Mamdani the day after the primary — done in part, people involved previously told CNN, to quiet primary concerns and connect with the direction Democratic voters chose — has backfired among some of the district’s more moderate and Jewish voters who are upset he gave cover to the 33-year-old assemblyman.
“It’s hard for me to imagine a better remedy for the problems that ail us in this country today than to bring the kind of leadership that Liam will bring into the arena of public issues,” Dan Weiss, the former president and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, told CNN.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
