There are two big stories this week on my politically-adrift-Jews beat: the likely election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor, and the just-asking-questions meeting-of-minds of Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, with Heritage Foundation approval. The timing of these events is such that anyone pointing to Mamdani as a reason Jews should shift to the right will face one heck of an uphill battle. There is some ideological overlap between Mamdani positioning himself as an anti-establishment breath of fresh air and the anti-Zionists of the right claiming to offer the same. A shared screw-those-powerful-Jews undercurrent. The key difference is that while Mamdani appears to advocate for a multicultural New York in which Jews are very much part of the fabric of life, Fuentes is (confusingly, given that his last name is Fuentes) a white supremacist. They share a distaste for Israel and a flair for influencing, but the parallels end there.

The mainstreaming of right-wing Christian anti-Zionists is, to my mind, the actually concerning development, but in the interest of timeliness, my focus here is on Mamdani. What does it mean that a pro-Palestinian activist politician may be the leader of the biggest Diaspora Jewish city? Depends which Jew you ask!

There are the rabbis with an open letter against Mamdani (discussed on the Not in Heaven podcast), and other rabbis with their own open letter against that one. (Jewish open letters: never in short supply!) Satmars defend Mamdani, as (anecdotally) do the Jews of Bluesky; X, formerly Twitter, is another matter. Some Jewish voters are anti-Zionists themselves and appreciate his views. There are also, as I’d think is obvious but why not spell it out, Jews supporting or rejecting Mamdani based on factors unrelated to his support for Palestine. (Political platform, personality, vibes, strong dislike of main opponent, etc.) But this is a big’un, with Jews from outside New York, outside the United States, weighing in.

As for those who do qualify to vote for New York’s mayor, per a Quinnipiac poll, Jews are the religious group polled with the least support for Mamdani: 60% say........

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