Good morning. It\u2019s Thursday. Today we\u2019ll look at takeaways from the Democratic primary on Tuesday. We\u2019ll also get details on developments in separate corruption investigations involving former officials with ties to Mayor Eric Adams.<\/p>\n
At his inauguration in 1961, President John F. Kennedy famously declared that \u201cthe torch has been passed to a new generation.\u201d He was 43. He succeeded President Dwight Eisenhower, who was 70.<\/p>\n
That kind of generational turnover was one theme in Tuesday\u2019s primary. Representative Adriano Espaillat, a five-term incumbent who is 71, lost to Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old democratic socialist challenger seeking his seat in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. Another progressive, Claire Valdez, who is 36, won the race in Queens and Brooklyn to succeed Representative Nydia Vel\u00e1zquez, who is 73 and is retiring from Congress.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we saw is a generational shift that I think is in many ways a political shift,\u201d said Basil Smikle, 54, a former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party who is now a professor at Columbia University. \u201cMy generation and older viewed the institutions as flawed but fixable if you had the right person in charge.\u201d<\/p>\n
But younger candidates \u2014 and younger voters \u2014 believe that government institutions \u201care inherently flawed and cannot be fixed from within, so we need to find a way to start from scratch,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That was another takeaway from the primary, about insurgents and established politicians. Democrats backed by labor unions and the party\u2019s longstanding Black and Latino contingents \u2014 which have dominated local politics for years \u2014 were pummeled by left-leaning insurgents tied to Mayor Zohran Mamdani (who was less than half former Gov. Andrew Cuomo\u2019s age when he defeated him in last year\u2019s Democratic primary).<\/p>\n
So it wasn\u2019t a good day for candidates like Antonio Reynoso, who lost to Valdez and who has extensive experience in government.<\/p>\n
It also wasn\u2019t a good day for Kennedy\u2019s 33-year-old grandson, Jack Schlossberg. He finished a distant third to Assemblyman Micah Lasher, who at 44 was the designated heir to Representative Jerrold Nadler, 79. With 87 percent of the votes counted, Lasher stood at 39 percent; Alex Bores, a former tech executive who is now a state assemblyman, had 35 percent; and Schlossberg had less than 11 percent.<\/p>\n
Mamdani had not endorsed any candidate in that race. But he described the victories in the other contests as evidence that his progressivism was not an anomaly. He also argued that it offered a way forward in the face of the affordability challenges that he put at the center of his campaign last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe old politics that got us into this crisis is not the politics that\u2019s going to get us out of this crisis,\u201d Mamdani told the crowd at a primary-night party.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the mayor backed relatively untested contenders, and the results pointed to voters\u2019 apparent tolerance for far-left views. Avila Chevalier won despite scrutiny of her past provocative social media posts, in which she criticized Kamala Harris, Joseph Biden Jr., interracial relationships and the American flag.<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s success in picking winners did not go unnoticed. Even President Trump sounded envious of the mayor, though he called the winners \u201cCommunists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump also reveled in the defeat of a longstanding nemesis, Representative Dan Goldman, who was the lead counsel in Trump\u2019s first impeachment case. \u201cThis jerk is finally GONE,\u201d Trump wrote on social media.<\/p>\n
Goldman lost to Brad Lander, the former city comptroller, who had blasted Goldman for accepting support from pro-Israel donors and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC. Goldman supports Israel\u2019s right to exist but has criticized its current leadership and does not refer to the war in Gaza as a genocide, as Lander does.<\/p>\n
Avila Chevalier also called out her opponent for accepting campaign contributions from AIPAC and for not using the term genocide. Like Goldman, Espaillat has criticized Israel while defending its right to exist. Valdez said that Reynoso had taken money from pro-Israel donors, but AIPAC said it had sat out that race. And Reynoso had long criticized Israel.<\/p>\n
Weather<\/p>\n
Today will be sunny with a high around 81. Expect cloudy conditions and a chance of showers and thunderstorms tonight as temperatures drop near 68.<\/p>\n
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING<\/p>\n
In effect until July 3 (Independence Day observed)<\/p>\n
QUOTE OF THE DAY<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not as if Broadway has ever been an easy place to crack, but the usual mismatch between expenses and income has never been greater,\u201d said John Breglio, a longtime entertainment lawyer and sometime-producer, on why new musicals have all but vanished<\/a>.<\/p>\n A former City Hall official is arrested on corruption charges<\/p>\n Wednesday began with developments in unrelated corruption investigations. One was the arrest of a chief of staff to former Mayor Eric Adams<\/a>. The other was a search of police officials\u2019 homes<\/a> by Police Department investigators and F.B.I. agents.<\/p>\n