Rep. Dan Goldman didn’t just lose his primary Tuesday. He got trounced. With roughly 90 percent of votes counted, the incumbent New York congressman is trailing former city comptroller Brad Lander by more than 30 points. Goldman lost the Democratic primary despite his campaign spending more than $7 million—$2 million of which came directly from Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.

Lander’s victory is extraordinary. As a general rule, congressional incumbents don’t lose their primaries by dozens of points, absent personal or professional scandals. Goldman, who was first elected in 2022, has none. The exception to that rule is members of Congress who find themselves severely out of step during times of ideological realignment within their party. That is what happened in New York’s 10th Congressional District, which covers lower Manhattan, the wealthy neighborhoods of Brownstone Brooklyn, and sections of south Brooklyn.

A related dynamic played out in New York’s 7th and 13th districts, where Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier—two left-wing candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America—defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat. Valdez leads Reynoso by more than 20 points, while Avila Chevalier—who ran in a less DSA-heavy district and was seen as a weaker candidate than Lander or Valdez—narrowly prevailed over Espaillat.

Israel and Gaza played a major role in the bitter contest between Goldman and Lander. Both men are self-described liberal Zionists who vocally condemned Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack. But beyond that, their approaches to Israel diverge drastically.

In November 2023, Goldman was one of just 22 Democrats who voted to censure his colleague Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) after she shared a........

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