Meredith College Political Science Professor David McLennan discusses the New York primary results that have lead to more questions for Democratic party

Certainly was a noteworthy night on Tuesday in primary elections in New York as accelerating the polities debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may have been one of the unintended consequences regarding what happened. A trio candidates packed by New York City, Mayor Zohm, and Doni all won after harshly criticizing Israel. David McClennan is a mayor of college political science professor, and he joins us now to talk about this and some statewide... political matters as well. Donald Trump's been a kingmaker for quite some time, and is Zohran Mamdani a kingmaker, or is this just something limited exclusively to New York City? Well, I think we'll see how that plays out in the next year or so. I mean, right now it's limited. I mean, you know, the Democratic Socialist. you know, may be electable in New York City, but may not be electable in North Carolina. So I think even though it got a lot of play and he defeated two incumbents or his candidates defeated two incumbents, I'm not sure we're going to see necessarily a complete changer over the Democratic Party. How do you think this is going to be greeted by Jewish Democrats? Well, I think both parties are having some real debates about U.S. support for Israel. And, you know, I think this has got to be taken as a kind of...

very negative by some Jewish Democrats in New York City because New York City Democrats have traditionally supported Israel very strongly and have gotten strong Jewish support. And Zohran Mamdani's election, you know, is one sign that the Muslim or Arab community was going to be supported more. And I think this just adds to that. So I think You know, it's a real challenge for the Jewish community in the United States because some Democrats and some Republicans have almost turned on Israel. Yeah. And it's an intriguing thing because I think one thing that kept the Republican Party bound for the years, especially in the 80s, and... Perhaps the early 90s just before Bill Clinton won was they were more unified and organized party. And I thought that perhaps Democrats were moving toward being more unified against Donald Trump. But this may throw it into a little bit more question. Yeah, and I think the real challenge for Democrats, not so much in the election year, I think those cases are pretty isolated, but this changes the balance if Democrats were to take back the House. Hakeem Jeffries would have a much more difficult position keeping the Democratic caucus together because you'd have a strong anti-Israel group in the Democratic caucus. and some pro-Israeli people in the Democratic caucus, and the people that are going to be elected, assuming they're going to win their races, are more liberal than... Maybe Hakeem Jeffries is comfortable with going into the 27-28 congressional session. Yeah, it's fascinating to look at from afar, and some are comfortable with it, some clearly are not. Looking at North Carolina here, the bill to revamp North Carolina's election laws passed a House committee on Wednesday. The Senate could make further alterations to the bill. It seems like that this may make voting on certain college campuses a little bit harder. It's been moving in that direction anyway. The State Board of Elections made some decisions. with Western Carolina and some other campuses a little bit earlier. More recently, they changed the early voting site on the NC State campus from the Talley Center, which is very centrally located, to a building about a mile away.

I think onboarding building. So that, you know, I think we're starting to see that the State Board of Elections is making decisions about polling locations, even without this new bill. This new bill, if it passes and makes it through, I would suspect Governor Stein would veto it if it makes it through the veto override. You know, it is going to impact elections in some ways, but it may have a more long-reaching effect. For example, it gives the state auditor the ability to audit elections. Now, this has been very common at the county level with the county boards of elections and even the state board of elections, but it's going to take it into a more partisan environment. Yeah, and it's also been so rigorously changed. There's been six different versions of this legislation in the past 14 months now. It's originally filed in April of 2025. It almost feels like they're pedophogging the issue. At least the legislators behind this are pedophogging the issue. Yeah, and so that leaves the real question as to what the final version is that will be voted on the House. And then if it goes over the Senate, as you mentioned earlier, you know, the Senate has its opportunity to make some changes. So, you know, right now I'm sort of watching it as a sort of a bill in process. And, you know, when we get to the final version, then I think we can start really analyzing what impact it's going to have. But right now, You know, some of it, you know, for example, you know, not allowing never North Carolanians, people who've never resided in the state to not, you know, they wouldn't be eligible to vote. That seems to be a fairly common sense kind of thing. And it has limited impact. So again, you know. I'm holding my decision on whether this is a good or bad thing for North Carolina democracy until it gets passed. Yeah, and elections in all 100 counties would be audited over a six-year period by the state auditor of the current provision of the bill, a current version of it, would be approved. We'll just have to see. David McClennan from Friedrich Merz of College. David, it's always great talking to you here. Thanks so much for joining us here today. Always good to be with you, Jeff.