Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) drew on the recent New York Knicks NBA finals win in his opening statement during his second televised debate with former city comptroller Brad Lander, who is running to unseat him in New York’s 10th Congressional District.
“We cannot afford to put a rookie in the game,” he said. “We have to put our best players on the court.”
He referred often to Lander’s lack of federal government experience as his opponent being a “rookie.”
Both men are Jewish. Lander has accused Israel of “genocide.” He is backed by Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, who has said that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in the Big Apple.
Lander said that Goldman is endorsed by AIPAC and is a “corporate Democrat,” who takes donations from Walmart, American Express and others. Goldman has acknowledged that he has a PAC that accepts corporate donations but only to distribute the monies to candidates in other Democratic races, he said.
The two are fighting to win the Democratic primary for a district, which spans from Manhattan below 14th Street to the Brooklyn communities of Red Hook, DUMBO and Sunset Park.
The hotly contested district is between 20% and 30% Jewish, according to the moderator of Monday night’s debate.
Election day is June 23, and early voting has already begun. The winner of the Democratic primary is all but guaranteed to win the general election in staunchly blue New York City.
The two Jewish men identify as progressive Democrats and liberal Zionists, but the differences in their approaches to governing bring the distinctions between them into sharp relief.
Goldman, 50, is a two-term member of Congress. Lander, 56, is a former city comptroller and member of New York City Council, who lost to Mamdani in the 2025 mayoral election.
A mid-May Emerson College poll suggested that Lander would best Goldman by 34 percentage points (57% to 23%), with particularly strong support among likely voters under age 40. It wasn’t clear, with election day a week away, if the month-old polling data, which suggested 20% were undecided, is still reliable.
At a campaign rally held Sunday in a Brooklyn park, Lander stood on stage with Mamdani and Mohsen Madawi, a former Columbia University student who organized the April 2024 Gaza solidarity tent encampment on campus.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Madawi when he went to an immigration appointment in Vermont to apply for citizenship. A federal judge ordered him released after two weeks, but the Trump administration is seeking to deport him. In a legal filing made public on June 10, an immigration judge ordered Madawi deported to Jordan.
He was raised in a refugee camp in Judea and Samaria. With American Civil Liberties Union backing, Madawi is appealing.
With Lander and the mayor by his side, Madawi wore a keffiyeh over his black t-shirt.
Lander’s campaign has touted that rally, and other recent efforts, as examples of Jewish-Muslim cooperation. In the debate Monday night, Lander demanded that Goldman also accuse Israel of “genocide.”
Goldman demurred. “We should focus less on terminology which has very specific legal meanings,” he said.
“Legal terminology is very complicated and somewhat beside the point,” Goldman said, a few minutes later. “We need to surge aid to Palestinians to give them the ability to rebuild.”
“I am focused now on a ceasefire agreement, which would give the Palestinians the state they deserve and self-determination,” he said. “That’s what we should all be focused on.”
“That is pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian, which is what we should all be focused on,” Goldman said.
In a discussion of artificial intelligence, which both men agree must be regulated by the federal government, Goldman criticized Lander for splicing together two unrelated sentences in a video published shortly after their first televised debate on June 2
He said that he was “disappointed” to see Lander do so. “It’s funny that you can add two words from different sentences to make a point,” he said.
Lander did not see anything wrong with that. “You said the words that we put together,” he said.
Goldman stressed the need to take Congress back from the Republican majority.
The way to end partisan gerrymandering and dark money flooding elections “is by winning,” Goldman said.
“If the Democrats do not win, we cannot change any of those things. We need to fight fire with fire, fight them tooth and nail and make sure that it’s a level playing field,” he said. “Donald Trump is taking a hatchet to our democracy and boosting billionaires.”
