Lev Radin/Sipa USA via AP Images
Westchester County Executive George Latimer speaks in Harrison, New York, August 7, 2023.
Pro-Israel groups have publicly declared war on progressive congressmembers critical of Israeli policy and the war in Gaza, vowing to spend nearly $100 million in the 2024 races to unseat them. Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York’s 16th Congressional District is a top target.
Bowman is facing a well-financed primary challenge from Westchester County Executive George Latimer, hand-picked and recruited by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). But while AIPAC’s $600,000 investment in Latimer makes the organization his largest donor, the candidate is also receiving help in the race from a top Biden polling firm with deep corporate ties and a long anti-union track record.
Federal Election Commission filings show that the Latimer campaign’s top consultant expenses went to polling and public relations shop Global Strategy Group, which received $34,200 for polling work in October of last year. Most famously, GSG’s extensive union-busting work single-handedly almost got a new rule passed by the Democratic Party in 2022 to blacklist consultants with anti-union clients.
“The corporate wing of the party has decided they’re more than comfortable engaging in GOP billionaire-funded primaries of Democratic incumbents and that’s a dangerous thing for our party,” said a senior progressive strategist.
GSG conducted polling for a Biden super PAC during the 2020 race and has a long list of Democratic clients, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and even some progressives such as Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA). GSG’s ties to the top brass of the Democratic Party extend to New York state as well. The firm’s founding partner Jeff Pollock was a longtime ally of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and helped advise him on his response to sexual misconduct allegations before stepping down from office.
The firm’s reputation is what set off the firestorm in 2022, when reports surfaced that GSG was hired by Amazon, explicitly for its union-busting efforts at the Staten Island JFK8 fulfillment center. The reports revealed that GSG put out anti-union flyers and even went as far as to assemble videos for captive-audience meetings to dissuade workers from unionizing, which is against the law. “This is disgusting,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said at the time about GSG’s work for Amazon. Weingarten had reason to publicly lambast GSG, which worked against the AFT on charter school initiatives in a number of states on behalf of groups funded by the Walton and DeVos families.
The backlash over the Amazon story was so severe that it led to an official motion filed within the Democratic National Committee to ban consultants that had worked for anti-union clients, though the rule never got implemented. GSG denied the specific anti-union allegations at the time but ended up terminating its contract with Amazon shortly thereafter.
The Amazon incident wasn’t an outlier for GSG though, which has used its Democratic connections to woo corporate clients, from Big Tech to big banks. Both Uber and Lyft tapped GSG specifically to fight back against legislation and administrative rules that would reclassify drivers from independent contractors to employees.
UPDATE: In a statement given to the Prospect after publication, a Global Strategy Group spokesperson said, “ We are proud of our almost 30-year track record of working on behalf of progressive candidates and causes across this country. We are currently working for many labor unions who fight every day for workers and support the right to organize. We have language in our contracts that makes it clear we will not do any work that opposes efforts to organize, including participating in campaigns that make it harder for workers to organize or qualify for benefits. ”
GSG’s record puts daylight between the two candidates’ stances on workers’ rights if that wasn’t already apparent. But it’s also significant for a few other reasons.
After extensive encouragement, Latimer entered the race in December with a guarantee that his campaign coffers would be bountiful from AIPAC and related pro-Israel PACs. Recent filings confirm this premonition as Latimer’s AIPAC contributions alone account for over 40 percent of his fundraising totals. AIPAC remains a defining player in Democratic primaries despite the fact that it remains aligned with Republicans candidates whom it has funded just as much in past years as Democrats.
GSG taking on Latimer as a client shows that the Democratic Party’s top corporate consultants are willing to help unseat Democratic incumbents—a strategy that progressives were excoriated for just a few years ago by the very same people when the dynamic was reversed.
“It is telling to see that when everyday working-class people were challenging corporate incumbents, the DCCC made an entire blacklist to prevent our party to look more like the people that elect them,” said Usamah Andrabi, communications director with Justice Democrats. “Now, as AIPAC threatens to spend $100 million against progressive Democratic incumbents with Republican megadonor support, the DCCC is silent.”
