NYC kickoff rally for Harris confronts pro-Palestinian demonstration

NEW YORK — The energy and size of an ebullient rally of elected New York Democrats hyped for Kamala Harris’ candidacy met a massive crowd of pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanting, banging drums and waving banners Wednesday night.

The Democrats’ rally was interrupted repeatedly by the protesters — a reminder of one of the party’s biggest internal divisions.

But like the vice president has on the campaign trail, the speakers took the brief disruptions in stride.

“Make sure you vote! Make sure you vote!” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said as one person was led out by security, leading a chant that urged the demonstrators to remember what he and others on stage see as a binary choice between Harris and former President Donald Trump.

“I don’t mind you being across the street. I don’t mind that you want to raise your voice,” he said, referring to the protesters. But the election is “the real fight,” Adams said. “Hold onto all of that anger until after November. November you need to be laser-focused on one thing.”

The gathering, dubbed the “New York City Kickoff” and attended by federal, state and municipal leaders as well as labor union members, delivered Democratic unity at an event space in Harlem. Both Gov. Kathy Hochul and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) urged the Democrats in solidly blue New York City to canvass in swing states like Pennsylvania for the Harris-Walz ticket and in swing districts around the state for House Democratic candidates.

The event wasn’t officially sanctioned by the Harris campaign, but it gave the feel of a pep rally or sendoff to the Democratic National Convention next week in Chicago.

Attendees cheered having another chance to get a woman elected president and jeered efforts to bring Harris down by mispronouncing her name or criticizing her for laughing too much.

“I hear some people say ‘Oh I don’t like the way you laugh,’” Adams said, referring to Harris. “Well I don’t like the way YOU laugh. Stop it!”

The group was high on energy, even as some warned the party has a lot of work ahead to defeat Trump.

“You do not want to have your kids say to you someday, or your grandkids say, ‘Grandma, what happened? How did you let that happen to our country, Grandma and Grandpa?’” Hochul said. “So we’re going to fix it right now.”

The drumbeat of optimism inside was matched by the beating of drums outside the venue, where the number of protesters chanting and bearing banners and signs drawing attention to Israel’s military offensive on Gaza outnumbered the party loyalists at the Harris-Walz rally.

“She’s going to have to do something about that,” New York City Council Member Gale Brewer said in an interview, referencing Harris and a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and gesturing to the demonstration carefully watched by the NYPD.

One organizer told POLITICO that protesters handed out flyers to people heading to the rally, encouraging DNC delegates to join the “ceasefire delegation” calling for an arms embargo.

The gathering outlasted the rally, and some demonstrators moved on to protest an afterparty nearby. That reportedly resulted in a chaotic scene and some arrests by the NYPD.

Though Harris has yet to detail her platform and where she stands on key issues, she has signaled a change in tone and style when it comes to how she addresses members of her party and others protesting Palestinian casualties and devastation.

And in New York on Wednesday, the delegates who plan to show their support for her at next week’s nominating convention in Chicago appeared to have picked up on her cues.

“We’ve got to come together,” Espaillat was saying, as a protester shouted out from the crowd. “She’s got to come with us too. She will be with us. We’ll come together.”