NEW YORK — While former President Donald Trump’s influence over Republican primary elections is well-documented, his presence also dominated New York’s Democratic primaries, with anti-Trump sentiment the hallmark of several winning campaigns at the expense of others’ focus on more local issues.
Two of the most high-profile faces of Trump impeachment efforts scored victories in hotly contested New York primary races Tuesday night. Rep. Jerry Nadler, dubbed “general counsel of the Resistance” for his efforts in both impeachment proceedings, sailed to victory over Rep. Carolyn Maloney, and Daniel Goldman, who served as lead attorney for the House’s first attempt to impeach Trump, eked out a win over formidable challenges from Rep. Mondaire Jones and Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou.
“It was validating in many respects, both the result last night but also talking to the voters about the degree to which they are really concerned about the state of our democracy. … The voters who understand that Donald Trump is still around, is still likely to run, I think almost certain to run in 2024. If he is running because it’s his criminal defense strategy, what do you think he’s going to do with the 2024 election, given what he did when he wasn’t running away from DOJ in 2020? So the voters do understand that, and I think there’s a lot of work for those in Congress to be a bulwark against that,” Goldman said Wednesday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
WITH NADLER’S VICTORY, THE END OF AN ERA FOR CAROLYN MALONEY
The former impeachment attorney, who made frequent television appearances in recent months speaking out against Trump, also called on Republicans “to step up and recognize that our democracy is on the line.”
“It is critically important that we address the threats that he poses, and it’s not just Trump. It’s Trumpism. It’s the fact that House Republicans are under his thumb, and they remain under his thumb. What I am as scared about is not just that Donald Trump will do something crazy in ’24. Of course he will; he always does. But the problem is that he has complicit members in the Republican Party in the House. They’re going to have to, at some point, have a reckoning as to what kind of country they want and whether they’re just going to stand up and say, ‘OK, we just can’t tolerate this anymore.’ There have been a dozen instances where we would have expected that to happen, and it hasn’t yet, but it remains to be seen,” he continued.
Nadler also leaned heavily on his anti-Trump credentials, billing himself as a “defiant” voice amid an “insurrectionist” GOP.
“Our democracy is in peril. We have a Republican Party that is openly and proudly insurrectionist. The Supreme Court has been packed by McConnell and Trump and is doing all it can to roll back Americans’ fundamental rights,” he told a crowd of roughly 150 supporters at Manhattan’s Verdi Square on Saturday.
Literature passed out at the event underscored the message that he was “leading the fight,” noting that “as chair of the House Judiciary Committee,” he led the House in “impeaching Donald Trump twice to hold him accountable for his abuse of power.”
“Jerry Nadler doesn’t shy away from the tough fights,” the handout added, applauding the New York Times endorsement of him as a “fearless and principled” leader and noting his tenure “leading both Trump impeachment hearings as Judiciary Chair and holding a corrupt administration accountable.”
Trump offered both candidates tongue-in-cheek endorsements the week before the campaign, calling Goldman “honorable, fair, and highly intelligent.”
“While it was my honor to beat him, and beat him badly, Dan Goldman has a wonderful future ahead,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The former president said Nadler was “likewise a hard driving man of the people, whose energy and attention to detail is unlike anyone else in Congress.”
“He is high energy, sharp, quick-witted, and bright,” he said, noting that while “you can’t go wrong with either,” Maloney was “the better man” for New York’s 12th Congressional District.
Other candidates throughout the state recoiled at insinuations that they were too closely aligned with Trump. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who easily fended off a primary challenge from state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, rebuffed the “bulls*** metric” that he voted with Trump 35% of the time in 2018, more than any other congressional Democrat in the Empire State. Maloney, who benefited from hefty police union funding due to Biaggi’s previous stance in favor of defunding the police, jogged across the finish line in the suburban 17th Congressional District’s primary election.
The 3rd Congressional District’s Robert Zimmerman, a trial lawyer, also successfully fended off charges that he was too cozy with the former president, saying the scrutiny of his donations to the GOP was a distraction tactic and instead accusing opponent Josh Lafazan of cozying up to the Right.
“From helping to fund the anti-abortion Conservative Party, to being widely criticized by the NAACP and LGBTQ groups for backing right-wing priorities, to refusing to come clean about whether he voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — there’s good reason why Democrats don’t trust Josh Lafazan,” the Zimmerman campaign said.
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Trump was first impeached on two Ukraine-related charges in 2019. Nadler served as a House manager and Goldman as a lead attorney. The then-president was acquitted by the Senate. He was impeached a second time on a charge of inciting an insurrection for his words and actions preceding the Jan. 6 riot before again being acquitted by the Senate.
Nadler and Goldman are poised to cruise to victory in November, given the partisan lean of their districts.
