Jamaal Bowman

After earning his undergraduate degree, Bowman decided not to pursue a career in sports management. Upon the suggestion of a family friend who worked for the New York City Department of Education, Bowman began working as an educator. Bowman's first job was as a crisis management teacher in a South Bronx elementary school.[5] In 2009, he founded Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a public middle school in the Bronx.[4][5]

Bowman became a leading advocate against standardized testing.[10][11] His blog on the role of standardized testing has received national attention.[10] He has written about high-stakes testing's role in perpetuating inequalities,[12] including the turnover, tumult, and vicious cycle it creates in the lives of students and educators, as assessment performance damages a school's ability to teach and, subsequently, the quality of the education upon which the student is assessed. By the mid-2010s, a quarter of Bowman's students had opted out of standardized testing. He also advocated for children to receive arts, history, and science education in addition to the basics of literacy and numeracy.[10] Bowman's school policy used a restorative justice model to address the school-to-prison pipeline. After ten years as principal, he left the job to focus on his congressional campaign.

The Justice Democrats recruited Bowman to run for the United States House of Representatives in heavily Democratic New York's 16th congressional district, represented by Eliot Engel, in the 2020 elections.[13] Engel was a thirty-year incumbent who served as the Chair of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Bowman was inspired to run by the insurgent 2018 campaign of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and described his platform as "anti-poverty and anti-racist" with support for housing, criminal justice reform, education, Medicare for All, and a Green New Deal.[14] His grassroots campaign attacked Engel's record on foreign policy and response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bowman's endorsements from the Sunrise Movement, and New York Working Families Party assisted with fundraising despite him being well behind Engel.[15] Bowman was additionally endorsed by Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the editorial board of The New York Times.[13][16] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a large portion of ballots were cast by mail, but the results of in-person ballots put Bowman ahead of incumbent Engel by 27 points, making Bowman the presumptive Democratic nominee for the district.[2]