Black challenger Bowman leads in bid to oust veteran congressman Engel in U.S. primaries

Jamaal Bowman, a liberal Black middle-school principal, was ahead in early Democratic primary election results Tuesday in his bid to oust long-time U.S. Representative Eliot Engel from a congressional seat representing part of New York. The preliminary results also showed progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez far ahead of a challenger elsewhere in the state, in races that tested the strength of the Democratic Party's left-wing after moderate Joe Biden became the presumptive presidential nominee.

Tuesday's nominating contests in New York, Kentucky, and four other states featured progressives challenging older, establishment Democrats at a time of a national reckoning with racial injustice following the May 25 death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, while in Minneapolis police custody. New York officials said results on Tuesday night did not include returns from absentee ballots, which were requested in record numbers during the coronavirus pandemic. Those ballots will not be completely counted until a week after the election. Hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots were also outstanding in Kentucky.

Bowman, 44, was leading Engel, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, by 61.39% to 35.13%, the New York state elections board said, with 213 of 732 election precincts reporting. Whoever wins the Democratic nomination is likely to win the seat in November. "Eliot Engel used to say he was a thorn in the side of (Republican President) Donald Trump," Bowman told supporters. "But you know what Donald Trump is more afraid of than anything else? A Black man with power. That is what Donald Trump is afraid of," Bowman said.

Progressive Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as well as Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Bowman, while Democratic Party stalwarts, such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the party's 2016 presidential nominee, rallied around Engel. Ocasio-Cortez, the 30-year-old progressive firebrand better known as AOC, ran far ahead of former CNBC television anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, 53, who was backed by the conservative-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a New York City district.

While the results were not final, Ocasio-Cortez noted she was leading with nearly 70 percent, which she said would be a "transformative" mandate. Caruso-Cabrera had 18.96% of the vote. The progressive movement suffered setbacks at the national level earlier this year when former Vice President Joe Biden won the party's race to take on Trump in November's election, with dominant wins over Warren and Sanders in the state-by-state nominating contests.

SPIRITED KENTUCKY CONTEST

In Kentucky's primaries, Amy McGrath, an ex-fighter pilot, was leading progressive Charles Booker, an African-American state legislator, in preliminary results from the race to become the Democratic candidate to face Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Nov. 3, the New York Times said.

Like Engel, McGrath was backed by the party establishment. With 53% of precincts reporting, she had 44.6% of the vote, to 36.5% for Booker, the Times said. His candidacy had been elevated by the recent Black Lives Matter protests. Because absentee ballots are still outstanding, final results will not be known until June 30, Kentucky officials said.

A Trump-endorsed candidate lost a Republican primary runoff in a congressional district in North Carolina. Madison Cawthorn beat Lynda Bennett, who was also endorsed by Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows, who formerly held the seat. Cawthorn, 24, will face Democrat Moe Davis in the November election. In New York, the moderate-progressive competition was showcased in yet another primary race, where Representative Carolyn Maloney aimed to beat a challenger from her left. With 40.27% of the vote reported Tuesday, the 74-year-old Maloney was slightly ahead of 36-year-old Suraj Patel, who got 38.46%.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)