As Micah Lasher launches bid to succeed mentor Jerry Nadler in Congress, here’s a rundown of the field

The heir apparent to the most senior Jewish member of Congress has officially launched his campaign.

Micah Lasher debuted a video Monday making the pitch for why he should replace his mentor Jerry Nadler in representing New York’s 12th Congressional District in Washington, D.C. The two-minute ad shows him strolling through Manhattan’s Riverside Park and vowing to fight back against Donald Trump.

Nadler, 78, announced earlier this month that he would not seek reelection after 33 years representing a district that is one of the most Jewish in the United States, covering the Upper West and Upper East sides and all of Midtown Manhattan, and is seen as a “crown jewel” of New York politics. He cited the need for a changing of the guard in the Democratic Party.

Lasher, who is Jewish, said in his launch video that the party needs change if it’s going to stand up to Trump — but he also offers a portrait of continuity. The video also showcases him talking with Nadler (outside a deli, not Zabar’s) and strategizing with Mike Bloomberg, the centrist Jewish politician and businessman who was mayor from 2002 to 2013.

He’ll contend against an untold number of other candidates in the Democratic primary next June. Some have already entered the race — including one who jumped in before Nadler got out. The field spans a wide spectrum of viewpoints, including on the city’s mayoral candidates; features a mix of household names and far less familiar faces; and ranges in age from 26 to 79. The potential successors have held elected office anywhere from zero days to three decades. Most of them are Jewish or part of Jewish families, and some have records of pro-Israel advocacy.

Here’s what each of them has said publicly about antisemitism, Israel and Jewish topics.

Alex Bores

Alex Bores, 34, is a second-term assemblymember representing the Upper East Side and the east side of Midtown Manhattan. Bores has passed artificial intelligence protections and written legislation on issues like gun safety and employee intellectual property rights.

Bores is not Jewish but his wife, Darya Moldavskaya, is. “I want to thank Alex for marrying a nice Jewish girl,” Bores’ mother, Lori, said during her toast at her son’s wedding, according to Our Town. “I have always admired the tradition of a relationship between the parents of two people who marry. So now Boris and Nadya [Darya’s parents] are my machatonim.”

Since taking office in 2023, Bores has consistently voiced support for and attended Jewish institutions and events. He attended Temple Emanu-El’s 180th anniversary celebration this past spring. In 2023, he spoke at the “Landing Day” ceremony, which honored the anniversary of the first Jews who arrived in then-New Amsterdam. That same year, he said he was “proud to join” the Jewish Community Relations Council’s annual meeting. In 2024, Bores attended the JCRC’s early celebration of Rosh Hashanah, during which he did tashlich, the symbolic casting off of sins, into the Hudson River. Bores also attended this year’s Israel Day parade on Fifth Avenue, which the JCRC hosts annually.

On the day of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Bores tweeted that he was “horrified,” and that “Israel must and will repel these terrorist attacks.”

In 2023, he introduced a bill that moved back the city’s petition filing deadline from the date of the second Passover seder. “Though not by design,” Bores wrote, “the prior deadline would impede Jewish candidates and staffers observing Passover.”

Bores, who attended the elite Hunter College High School, spoke last year to students from his alma mater during a visit to the Museum of Jewish Heritage; he has made numerous visits to the Lower Manhattan museum, which operates mainly as a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.

Bores told the New York Times he was “humbled” by the support he was receiving following Nadler’s announcement, but had not reached any decision about whether to run.

Erik Bottcher

Erik Bottcher, 46, has served on City Council since 2022, representing a district that covers west side neighborhoods including Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen and the West Village.

He told The New York Times that he was seriously considering running to replace Nadler, whom he praised as “among the most effective progressive leaders of our time,” citing threats posed by Trump. “Stepping forward now would be one of the most meaningful ways to fight back, and I’m giving it serious consideration,” he said.

Bottcher, who is gay, is co-chair of Council’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus and of the Manhattan Delegation. His priorities on the council have included clean neighborhoods, environmental sustainability and affordable housing.

In a year-end 2023 interview with W42St, Bottcher said that the “rise in hate and prejudice we’ve seen toward marginalized groups like Jewish New Yorkers is truly appalling. I’ve never seen antisemitism displayed so brazenly in my lifetime.”

He was asked in that interview to sum up his 2023 in three words. His answer included the word “gratitude.” Bottcher elaborated: “Seeing how bad the situations are in places like Gaza, Israel, and Ukraine puts into perspective how lucky we are to live right here in NYC.”

Bottcher has endorsed mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who supported the pro-Palestinian campus protests of 2024. Bottcher was more critical, tweeting at the time that the “rhetoric being expressed by some students and others at Columbia University has crossed the line from legitimate protest speech to anti-semitism and calls for violence against Israelis and Jews.”

He added, “It’s heartbreaking to hear from Jewish friends how targeted and unsafe they feel. It’s just not acceptable. Protesting civilian deaths and a humanitarian crisis is one thing; hate speech is quite another and has no place whatsoever in our city.”

In November, Bottcher, who serves on City Council’s Higher Education committee, questioned City University of New York Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez on the chancellor’s commitment to combatting antisemitism, asking whether combating antisemitism is “one of [his] top priorities as chancellor,” and if Rodriguez would “commit to doing more as chancellor.”

Earlier in 2024, Bottcher attended an event, co-sponsored by the Israeli Consulate to New York, where families of Israeli hostages told stories and shared videos of their family members, calling for the release of all hostages.

Liam Elkind

Liam Elkind, 26, was the first to throw his hat in the ring, officially launching his campaign at the end of July, more than a month before Nadler announced his plan to retire. Elkind, who is Jewish, posted a video that drew comparisons to the Mamdani campaign’s fast-paced, direct-to-camera social media clips and emphasized the need for generational change in the Democratic Party.

“Today, I’m respectfully asking my Congressman, Jerry Nadler, to consider retiring,” Elkind said in the video.

But Elkind differs in many respects from Mamdani, whom he ranked fifth on his ranked-choice ballot in the Democratic primary. (Comptroller Brad Lander, the progressive Jewish politician who cross-endorsed Mamdani, was Elkind’s top choice.) A self-described “strong progressive,” Elkind embraces liberal Zionist views like “supporting Israel’s security, expressing concern for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and advocating a two-state solution to bring peace to the region,” according to the Forward.

A Rhodes scholar and Yale alum, Elkind has never run for public office. He is the CEO of Invisible Hands, a nonprofit that he co-founded in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, through which volunteers delivered food and medicine to those who were most “at-risk and in-need” during the pandemic. Elkind received national media attention for his work with Invisible Hands, and was named to the New York Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” list.

Elkind went to Hebrew school and celebrated his bar mitzvah at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, the Reform congregation on the Upper West Side.

Following the news of Nadler’s expected retirement, Elkind thanked Nadler for his decades of service and “extraordinary commitment to New York City,” adding that the first vote he’d ever cast was for Nadler.

Two days after Nadler’s announcement, Elkind was endorsed by Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who ran for president and lost to George Bush in 2004.

Shabbos Kestenbaum

Shabbos Kestenbaum, 26, is a Jewish activist known for his criticism of campus antisemitism. Kestenbaum, who grew up in New Jersey and later the Bronx, led a lawsuit against Harvard University, his alma mater, alleging that the university did not do enough to combat antisemitism. (Kestenbaum agreed to a confidential settlement with Harvard in May.)

Kestenbaum told Jewish Insider that he was being “encouraged to run by a group of New Yorkers from a broad ideological spectrum.”

“I am actively considering it,” he said. “If I can make a positive difference to my city and community, I would be foolish not to. There is a strong desire amongst New York Democrats for a return to normalcy.”

Initially a registered Democrat, Kestenbaum spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024 and endorsed Donald Trump ahead of the election, citing the Democratic Party’s poor handling of antisemitism. Following Trump’s victory, he spoke at the Zionist Organization of America’s annual gala. “I very much hope to please God have a position in the Trump White House,” said Kestenbaum, who’s been a vocal supporter of the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus antisemitism. He added that he helped accompany Trump to the grave of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

Kestenbaum has taken a hard stance against Mamdani. Despite voicing his displeasure with Andrew Cuomo, who Kestenbaum said was “disinterested” in the “concerns” voiced during a meeting with Jewish activists in the city, Kestenbaum echoed billionaire Bill Ackman in calling for voters to rally around Cuomo as Mayor Eric Adams’ reelection campaign struggles.

“I do not like Andrew Cuomo, but even I can see the writing on the wall,” Kestenbaum wrote on X. “We must put political differences aside to stop socialism and save our city this November.”

Kestenbaum attended SAR Academy, a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in the Bronx. He was president of Hillel as an undergraduate student at Queens College. He moved to Los Angeles this past summer after taking a job with conservative media company PragerU.

Micah Lasher

State Assemblymember Micah Lasher, 43, has now filed to run for Congress, making him one of two candidates to have formally entered the race. Lasher is a former congressional aide to Nadler and, though Nadler has said that any decision about endorsing a successor is “way down the road,” he is expected to be Nadler’s chosen candidate.

“I’m very fond of Micah and I think highly of him,” Nadler said in a statement.

Lasher drew the ire of a handful of local rabbis in June when, days after meeting with them and discussing their concerns about Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the pro-Palestinian slogan “globalize the intifada” and about his support for the boycott Israel movement, he endorsed the Democratic mayoral nominee.

“Zohran has the talent to breathe much-needed new life into City government and the personal gifts to bring New Yorkers together around a positive vision for the future,” Lasher wrote in his endorsement.

He also acknowledged the concerns of his Jewish constituents, adding that he would “continue to be among those urging Zohran to speak with clarity when it comes to rhetoric — including the invocation or celebration of intifada — that makes Jewish New Yorkers, or any community in our city, feel threatened.”

He added, “As he moves into a position of citywide leadership, I hope that Zohran can come to better appreciate the deeply personal and historical importance that the survival of Israel as a Jewish state holds for Jewish New Yorkers.”

The night of Oct. 7, 2023, Lasher took to social media to call out what he said were disappointing responses.

“Many of the responses to the attack on Israel — with the absurd expectation that the country should now sue for peace — reveal the extent to which an anti-Semitic double-standard has become de rigueur,” Lasher wrote. “I am grateful in particular to progressive elected officials who reject this.”

After Effy’s Cafe, a kosher staple of the Upper West Side, was hit with anti-Israel graffiti in March 2024, Lasher dined there with Mark Levine, the Jewish borough president of Manhattan (and current Democratic nominee for comptroller).

“We came to show solidarity and support,” Lasher wrote. “To call this incident what it was – anti-Semitic hate. To demand that Albany expand the hate crimes law. And to make clear that New York will never be a place where this is tolerated, condoned, or chalked up to reasonable political discourse.”

Lasher, who began serving in the state Assembly in January, represents Morningside Heights, the neighborhood that’s home to Columbia University, and parts of the Upper West Side and West Harlem. He managed the 2021 mayoral campaign of Scott Stringer, who is also Jewish, as well as Jewish pol Brad Hoylman-Sigal’s campaign for NYC Council. (Hoylman-Sigal is now the Democratic nominee for Manhattan borough president.)

Lasher also worked in the Bloomberg administration, was chief of staff to the New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and was Gov. Kathy Hochul’s director of policy until resigning to pursue his current role in the Assembly. He has written legislation on issues like gun safety, the minimum wage and tackling racist, exclusionary zoning laws.

Carolyn Maloney

Carolyn Maloney, 79, whose career as an elected official stretches back to 1982 when she first joined the NYC Council, spent 30 years as a congresswoman representing the Upper East Side. Her run came to an end in 2023, when a redistricting that folded the Upper East and Upper West sides into one district pitted her against her longtime ally, Nadler.

But with Nadler set to retire, Maloney said she is keeping her “options open” regarding the possibility of a return to Congress, adding, “People have been calling me, from Washington, electeds and constituents, and others, urging me to run.” Maloney is a year older than the retiring congressman but argued that New Yorkers “don’t need someone who needs an intro to Congress 101.”

Maloney has a long record of legislative work on Jewish-related issues, especially on the subject of Holocaust remembrance. She sponsored a federal bill to expand funding for Holocaust education that passed in 2020. In 2014, she introduced a bill that would cut off Nazi war criminals from receiving U.S. benefits. Two decades earlier, Maloney “started a crusade” to declassify U.S. intelligence agency documents on the Holocaust and America’s postwar dealings with former Nazis.

At a 2017 event at the Upper East Side’s Park East Synagogue, which came amid a wave of antisemitic hate crimes following the inauguration of Donald Trump, Maloney called on the U.S. Department of Justice to create an antisemitism task force, and urged Congress to double the funding for the Urban Area Security Initiative Nonprofit Security Grant Program. “Let’s not mince words, let’s call this what it is: domestic terrorism,” Maloney said during the event.

Maloney has regularly attended the JCRC’s annual Celebrate Israel Day parade. The 2021 parade was canceled due to COVID-19, but in a video shared by the JCRC, Maloney said she was joining virtually to “celebrate all Israel has given us: incredible medical and technological advancements, the game Guess Who, delicacies like Bamba and Bissli, and icons like Dr. Ruth.”

In the lead-up to the 2022 race between Maloney and Nadler, Maloney was endorsed by Elisha Wiesel, the only child of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel.

“Carolyn is a close friend to the Jewish community, and her legislative priorities, votes and actions back up her words of support,” Wiesel told Jewish Insider at the time. “She has always been a strong and consistent supporter of Israel, and is a great example to other leaders of how progressive politics and support for Israel can co-exist.”

Maloney’s daughter, Virginia Maloney, is currently running for City Council in a district that covers parts of the Upper East Side and neighborhoods to its south.

Keith Powers

Keith Powers, 41, is a City Council member who’s represented the district covering part of the Upper East Side and extending south into Midtown Manhattan since 2018.

While he hasn’t spoken publicly about the race, Powers has confirmed his interest in running for Nadler’s seat, according to Politico. Powers is nearing the end of his eighth consecutive year on City Council, meaning he is term-limited and cannot run for reelection.

Powers spearheaded the campaign to rename an Upper East Side street corner after Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial. He spoke at the unveiling of Yad Vashem Way in January, saying that even though not everyone who passes the sign will know what Yad Vashem is, simply having the name out there is a good thing.

“They’ll hopefully take their phone out, they’ll Google it and that will get them to get engaged,” Powers said. “And that is one of the reasons for the street renamings.”

In August 2023, Powers was one of a group of officials who called for tweaks to laws which, due to loopholes in the language, made it difficult for some cases to be prosecuted as hate crimes. Powers spoke about it outside Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, a Modern Orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side, explaining how numerous threats had been made against synagogues and that graffiti had been sprayed on the houses of worship.

In November 2023, Powers said he caught wind of a mailer sent by Brian Robinson, his Republican opponent in the 2023 general election, “lying about my steadfast support for the Jewish community & Israel” and “pathetically trying to imply that I support Hamas.”

Powers responded to the flyer — which accused him of “[coddling] Hamas supporters in NYC” — with a letter undersigned by more than 250 East Siders, speaking to Powers’ record as “an ardent supporter of the Jewish community.” The letter mentioned that Powers led a City Council delegation trip to Israel in December 2022, and that he’d organized a forum against antisemitism with Mayor Eric Adams earlier that year.

Powers has publicly denounced acts of antisemitic vandalism on Jewish businesses and in public places like the NYC subway.

He attended the UJA-Federation of New York’s event in Central Park commemorating the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack.

“Joining my community tonight to mark the anniversary of October 7th,” Powers wrote. “So many of my neighbors are aching from the pain and loss of that day.”

In August, Powers endorsed Mamdani ahead of the mayoral election, writing that Mamdani’s emphasis on affordability has also been his own focus “since day one on the City Council.”

“With Donald Trump’s authoritarianism threatening our city on a daily basis, we need a Democratic Party that’s united against his attacks and supporting our Democratic nominee,” Powers wrote.

Jack Schlossberg

Jack Schlossberg, 32, is the grandson of President John F. Kennedy who has risen to prominence recently as a “progressive social media star.”

His mother is author and former U.S. ambassador to Australia, Caroline Kennedy; Schlossberg’s father is Jewish artist Edwin Schlossberg. The younger Schlossberg was raised with some Jewish traditions at home, such as incorporating Hanukkah traditions into their holiday parties, and said he feels “at least 100% half Jewish.”

Schlossberg tweeted that he has “formed an exploratory committee.” A few days earlier he’d posted an Instagram poll asking his 700,000 followers whether he should run for Congress.

Schlossberg has worked as a political correspondent for Vogue and endorsed Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention. Schlossberg has never held public office — a fact that Jerry Nadler himself hammered home in an interview with CNN.

“Well, there’s nothing particularly good or bad about a Kennedy holding my seat. But the Kennedy, unlike Schlossberg, should be somebody with a record of public service, a record of public accomplishment, and he doesn’t have one,” Nadler said. “And so, I don’t think he’s going to be a candidate in the end, and he certainly is not going to be a major candidate. There will be major candidates,” Nadler continued, pointing to Lasher as one example. “I’m sure there’ll be other candidates.”

Schlossberg took Nadler’s criticism in stride, writing on Instagram, “Honestly no offense taken whatsoever ! As a New Yorker, a progressive and an American, I have nothing but thanks and respects to offer Rep Nadler.”

Schlossberg endorsed Zohran Mamdani ahead of the Democratic primary, and said on Instagram that he didn’t “give a f—” that he would “piss off” former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, his cousin by marriage. In an Instagram post responding to people who ask why he supports Mamdani as a Jew, Schlossberg said, “If you think that Zohran doesn’t like Jews, you’re f–ing brainwashed.”

He added, “We cannot have this thing where if you disagree with Israeli policy, you hate Jews. That’s not good and that’s not fighting antisemitism. That’s horsesh– and that’s a cop-out.”

Whitney Tilson

A few months removed from a seventh-place finish in the mayoral Democratic primary, Whitney Tilson, 58, a former hedge fund manager and longtime advocate of charter schools, announced that he is “considering running” for Nadler’s seat.

“This district is fortunate to be among the most educated, wealthy and powerful in the nation,” Tilson wrote, “and so the citizens here have a special responsibility to lead the fight against Trump and Trumpism, to defend the rule of law and a strong social safety net, and to support our allies, especially Israel and Ukraine.”

While Tilson himself isn’t Jewish, his wife and three daughters are; he and his family have been members of Central Synagogue in Manhattan for 25 years. Tilson told amNY that he’d planned to join an anti-Trump rally in Washington Square Park during the president’s inauguration, but that he was taken aback by the speeches and chants that he encountered. “It’s an anti-Israel rally, which is not what I was expecting,” he said.

“It’s very concerning to me that protests which at least initially appeared to be expressing sympathy to the Palestinian civilians who are suffering tremendously, and I’m very sympathetic toward that, have morphed into anti-Israel and antisemitic rallies, which is very troubling to me,” Tilson said. “I’m hearing a lot of chants that are genocidal. I know what ‘From the river to the sea’ means.”

A Harvard University graduate, Tilson voiced his anger toward his alma mater for not standing up to antisemitism in the month following the Oct. 7 attack, and said that he declined an invitation to meet with a fundraising officer.

“The damage that Harvard has done to its brand since Oct. 7 is only rivaled in history by New Coke and what Elon Musk has done to Twitter,” he wrote.

Candidates were asked during a mayoral primary debate in June whether Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil should be released from detention. All candidates onstage said yes except Tilson, who said he couldn’t weigh in without “knowing all the facts.”

“I don’t think the Trump administration will be able to [prove their case that he has ties to terrorism], and therefore he should be set free, but they need to make their case,” he said.