Liam Elkind, a Jewish nonprofit leader in New York City, announced a primary challenge on Wednesday to Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), calling on the veteran lawmaker to step aside to make room for a younger generation of Democratic activists who have grown impatient with the party’s largely aging leadership.

“Today, I’m respectfully asking my congressman, Jerry Nadler, to consider retiring,” Elkind, 26, said of the 78-year-old incumbent in a campaign launch video. “I appreciate his 50 years in office. I grew up voting for him. But we need new leaders to meet this moment.”

Elkind, a Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar who leads a nonprofit organization he launched during the COVID pandemic to deliver food and medicine to vulnerable New Yorkers, is part of a new wave of Democratic primary challengers raising frustrations with the party’s elderly membership in Washington and its efforts to oppose President Donald Trump as he enacts his sweeping agenda.

Rather than positioning himself to Nadler’s left, as some political observers had expected of a primary challenger, Elkind is instead framing his campaign as a referendum on what he criticized as the party’s strategic miscalculations in confronting Trump and the congressman’s enabling of a status quo sorely in need of a fresh generational shake-up.

“The same people are using the same old tactics, but they’re losing,” Elkind argues in his campaign video. “Our leaders need to answer the call now, and they aren’t.”

Nadler, who filed a statement of candidacy just this month to run for reelection next year, has confirmed he plans to seek another term — even as some strategists speculate he could still choose to retire.

The congressman’s decision to endorse Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, a day after the primary last month, was seen by some political observers as a sign that Nadler was seeking to forestall a primary challenge from the left — though his team has rejected such claims.

Rob Gottheim, a spokesperson for Nadler, refused to comment on the new challenge, accusing Jewish Insider of having published what he dismissed as a “slanted” article this month that cited backlash from Jewish community leaders over the congressman’s support for Mamdani — whose hostile positions on Israel have continued to raise alarms among Jewish New Yorkers.

Nadler, a co-chair of the Congressional Jewish Caucus who identifies as a Zionist and has vocally criticized the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, has said he does not agree with Mamdani’s more antagonistic views on Israel and antisemitism, including his refusal to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada” and support for boycotting the Jewish state, among other points of division. Earlier in the month, Nadler organized a meeting with Mamdani and local Jewish officials to address their concerns.

A majority of voters in Nadler’s heavily Jewish district, which includes Manhattan’s Upper West and East Sides, voted in the primary for Mamdani and Brad Lander, the progressive city comptroller.

For his part, Elkind, who was unavailable for an interview with JI on Wednesday, has no apparent record of commentary on Israel or the Middle East. He plans to emphasize a message of affordability and generational change, issues that helped propel Mamdani to a come-from-behind victory last month.

In an interview with CNN published on Wednesday, Elkind said he ranked Mamdani fifth on his ballot in the June primary, noting he did not agree with the nominee on some issues, including his position on the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which critics regard as a call to antisemitic violence.

Elkind, now completing a doctoral dissertation on campaign finance reform, was a summer intern for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2018, according to his LinkedIn page. The nonprofit he co-founded, called Invisible Hands, was acquired by Commonpoint Queens, a human services group, where he now serves on the board.

Elkind’s newly launched campaign is reportedly expected to draw significant financial backing from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire LinkedIn co-founder and a major Democratic donor who has previously supported moderate, pro-Israel candidates, fueling online criticism from the activist left.

Some Jewish residents of the district said that they were unfamiliar with Elkind but expressed interest in learning more about his approach to key issues of concern to the community.

“It’s not hard to honor Rep. Nadler’s decades of service while also recognizing that there is a new generation of existing and potential Democratic Party voters looking for more contemporary and relatable leaders,” Amanda Berman, CEO of the Zioness Action Fund, a progressive pro-Israel advocacy group, told JI. “Democrats have been struggling to connect with voters, and it’s healthy and exciting to see young, dynamic, pragmatic progressives stepping up to reclaim our politics from both MAGA extremism and dangerous leftist populism.”

Berman said she “looks forward to hearing more about Liam Elkind and his commitment to our twin values: unabashed progressivism and unapologetic Zionism.”

Avi Lichtschein, a Jewish resident of the Upper West Side, accused Nadler of “hypocrisy” for staunchly opposing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel — which he has described as a form of “pernicious antisemitism” — while backing Mamdani, “a vocal BDS supporter.”

“So while I may not know much about Liam Elkind, I’m certain he’ll be better than Nadler,” Lichtschein told JI.

Despite a desire for new representation among some constituents, strategists say that Elkind, a first-time candidate largely unknown to voters in the district, is facing an uphill battle as he seeks to go up against Nadler, the widely respected dean of New York City’s congressional delegation.

The congressman, who has served in the House since 1992, easily fended off a handful of younger challengers in 2020, claiming nearly 70% of the vote. In 2022, he defeated former Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) in a bitterly contested intraparty fight in which the two Democratic colleagues chose to compete for a redrawn district that merged their seats.

While Elkind is the first challenger of the cycle to take on Nadler, he may not have the opposing field entirely to himself as others weigh bids of their own. Whitney Tilson, a former hedge fund executive who ran a failed campaign for New York City mayor as a moderate Democrat, has been mulling a challenge to Nadler, according to one person familiar with his thinking.

Natalie Barth, a philanthropist and pro-Israel activist who previously served as the president of Park Avenue Synagogue, has also been rumored to be considering a bid, said another person familiar with the matter, though it was unclear if she would mount a challenge or wait until Nadler steps down, as some have suggested he could do at the end of his term.

In an open-seat primary, the field could also widen considerably to include such potential candidates as Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller and Nadler protégé; Micah Lasher, an assemblyman close to the congressman; Keith Powers, a city councilman; and Liz Krueger, a state senator.