When Andrew Yang won endorsements from an array of Brooklyn-based Hasidic Jewish sects before the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, his campaign, and multiple political insiders, touted that as a possible game changer that could put him over the top in a tight election. 

It was not enough. 

Yang was trounced in the primary that June by Eric Adams and finished a distant fourth behind Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley. 

Four years later, the nine candidates on the Democratic Primary ballot are once again vying for from the same Hasidic sects and other potential large Jewish voting blocs.

But which groups matter? Which candidates are the current frontrunners for those endorsements? And can a candidate like state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (D-Queens), a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and persona non grata in many Jewish circles, have a chance? 

At stake are the ballot choices of at least 300,000 likely Jewish Democratic primary voters who look to religious community leaders for voting cues, according to Maury Litwack, an expert on the Jewish voting landscape who formerly headed the Teach Coalition, an Orthodox Union group that pushes for added public funds for private yeshivas and Jewish day schools. 

Among the voting blocs at play are of Hasidic sects in Williamsburg, Modern Orthodox on the Upper West Side and Bukharians in Queens. 

“The Jewish community is not a monolith when it comes to elections,” Litwak said,  noting over 100,000 who typically vote as a bloc are not ed with a party and cannot vote in the primary, while approximately 80,000 are ed as Republicans.

With the June 24 Democratic primary less than a month away, nearly all the major endorsements from Orthodox Jewish leaders and groups are still up for grabs. It would be unusual, if not unprecedented, for a candidate to make it to City Hall without at least some of that .  

On Tuesday, a new survey of 412 likely Jewish voters showed Cuomo in the lead with 31% of with Mamdani in second with 20%, and Brad Lander with 18%, according to The Honan Strategy Group. 

The poll also showed that 76% of Jewish respondents said that antisemitic hate crimes are a very serious problem, and that the city must do a better job protecting Jewish residents, the Forward reported.

As for endorsements, the Hasidic groups in Williamsburg and Borough Park in Brooklyn are “the big prizes,” Litwack said. They include the two Satmar Hasidic factions in Williamsburg — which often make opposing choices — as well as two Bobov organizations in Borough Park.

“Satmar would be 1A and Bobov would be 1B,” said Jeff Leb, a political consultant who focuses on the Jewish community. Leb is also the point person for New Yorkers for a Brighter Future independent expenditure. 

By this time last mayoral primary, Yang had already notched from some of the Hasidic groups in Brooklyn. By contrast, those groups, and the much larger sects, have yet to decide this election cycle — with early voting just weeks away, starting June 14. 

“A lot of these people actually liked Eric Adams and were very ive of him, and then he dropped out of the race,” said former Brooklyn City Council member David Greenfield. “That was a big change. That sort of shifted things.” (Scandal-scarred Adams is not running in the primary but is looking to appear on the November general election ballot — including on a ballot line called “EndAntiSemitism.”) 

Endorsements from Jewish communities work much like those doled out by the city’s unions: Candidates meet with leaders of the groups and make their cases and in some cases promise to deliver specific policy changes or favorable legislation.

In 2021, Yang repeatedly said he did not understand why multiple yeshivas were being investigated for failing to provide legally mandated basic secular education. Candidates have also promised to ease any restrictions or reporting on dangerous health outcomes tied to metzitzah b’peh, a ritual during circumcision where the mohel, the circumciser, uses their mouth to suck blood from the wound. 

But unlike unions, which stand steadfastly behind their candidates once chosen, Hasidic sects will sometimes endorse one candidate only to change that pick as polls change when the election nears. 

It is unclear if some of the larger Hasidic sects will forces to back one candidate or slate of candidates for the ranked-choice primary election. 

“This will be a less straightforward race in of endorsements,” said Nathaniel Deutsch, a professor at University of California, Santa Cruz, who specializes in Jewish Studies and the history of Hasidism. 

“This time around, I could see some going to Cuomo, [Eric] Adams, and even Brad Lander, if he can break out, which seems less and less likely now,” said Deutsch. 

Lander, the city comptroller, is Jewish, as is another candidate, former comptroller Scott Stringer. 

Anyone But Zohran?

The Jewish vote may play an even larger role in the outcome of the election this year if Mamdani remains a top candidate, several political insiders told THE CITY. 

Mamdani, a  er of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, is a staunch backer of the Palestinian cause and critic of the Israeli government. 

While that doesn’t necessarily matter to all Jewish groups — some, such as the Satmar community, are anti-Zionist — many Jewish voters will be motivated to ensure Mamdani does not get elected, say some observers.

“It’s very hard to say what turnout is going to be,” said Yaacov Behrman of the Jewish Future Alliance, a Crown Heights based organization. He described Mamdani’s candidacy as a “frightening and scary” factor that may drive more Orthodox Jews to vote. 

Mamdani has defended his position on principle. 

“My for BDS is consistent with my core of my politics, which is non-violence,” the Queens Assembly member said during a candidate forum hosted by the large Jewish nonprofit UJA-Federation of New York on Thursday evening.

At the same gathering, he said, “I believe Israel has a right to exist, and it has a right to exist also with equal rights for all.”

Running for mayor in 2021 as Brooklyn borough president, Adams was well-positioned to get from the large local Jewish population — scoring from thousands of of the Lubavitch Hasidic community based in Crown Heights.

“We were the first large Hasidic community to publicly endorse Eric Adams,” Behrman recalled. “I like to say that we broke the ice.”

He added: “Our community’s voter turnout alone came close to deciding the mayoral election — or may have swung it.”

In total, 7,161 Hasidic voters in Crown Heights have cast ballots at least once in the past five years, and of those, 4,420 are ed Democrats, according to Behrman.

Cuomo’s COVID Curse

Endorsements from small Jewish groups matter too, not just large ones, according to Greenfield, who now heads the nonprofit Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.  

“It’s an early reading of the community,” he said. “It’s very rare for an elected official to have no and then suddenly get a major group.”  

In Williamsburg, the race for the Satmar vote — which is really two blocs of votes, one from the Aronim faction and the other from the Zalman group — has heated up with an announcement expected soon, according to political insiders. 

Before the last mayoral primary, the Aronim faction changed its from Yang to Adams. He was also backed by other major groups, including: the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition (FJCC), the Far Rockaway Jewish Alliance, and umbrella groups in Queens and Staten Island. 

None have publicly made any endorsements yet. 

Cuomo, who is ahead in the polls, is using Chris Coffey, who formerly handled the Yang campaign, to handle his Jewish outreach, according to multiple sources.

(Coffey is CEO and partner of heavyweight political consulting firm Tusk Strategies, which is linked to a dark money 501(c)4 nonprofit group called Restore Sanity NYC that has sent out a blitz of ostensibly nonpartisan, “issues based” election fliers, THE CITY reported earlier this month.) 

As governor, however, Cuomo enraged leaders of some major Jewish groups by keeping their areas in lockdown in an attempt to stem the spread of COVID during the pandemic. 

On the campaign trail, Cuomo has privately apologized to Orthodox Jewish power brokers for how he handled the shutdowns, according to sources from those communities who asked to remain anonymous. 

He has told them he could have done a better job communicating why Williamsburg, Midwood and some other heavily Jewish areas were quarantined as “red zones” labeled as at the greatest risk of COVID spread, where Cuomo’s restrictions on public gatherings were tougher than elsewhere, the sources said. 

But he has specifically not apologized for red-zoning those neighborhoods and indicated he was following data provided to him by health experts in his istration, according to the community insiders. 

Cuomo is holding out for forgiveness. 

He has a “solid chance” to “run the table” on all the major outstanding endorsements, said a top Cuomo campaign official, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to talk to the press. 

Some community insiders believe the lack of endorsements from large Jewish voting blocks so far is because they are waiting to see if another candidate, or group of candidates, begins to pick up steam. 

“The reason he hasn’t rolled out a single significant endorsement is that people in the community are still upset at him and feel like he has not really made amends in a sincere way for his behavior during COVID,” said one political insider.  

“And so they’re wrestling with this really complicated question,” the insider added, “do you someone who you don’t like, but he might be the best person to beat Zohran.”