An excerpt from Leonard Kohen’s resignation letter to the New York Democratic Lawyers Council. Read the full letter at the bottom of this post.
For most of his life, Leonard Kohen believed the Democratic Party was where people like him belonged.
He grew up in Queens at a time when politics felt less like tribal warfare and more like civic participation. “Everyone I know, including me, were firmly on the blue side,” he says. “And I knew some people who were on the red side, okay, you know, that’s like, who cares?”
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Kohen helped co-found the New York Democratic Lawyers Council (NYDLC), a coalition of attorneys devoted (pro-bono) to election protection and voting integrity.
Back then, disagreements didn’t define a person’s humanity. “Nobody cared what your politics were,” he recalls. “It wasn’t like, if he supports so-and-so, then he’s a whole other kind of person.”
Even so, Kohen didn’t just vote Democrat — he built a large part of his adult life around the party. After the 2000 election, disturbed by what he viewed as a breakdown in trust around the vote count, he volunteered as a poll watcher in Pennsylvania during the 2004 election. That experience led him to help co-found the New York Democratic Lawyers Council, a coalition of attorneys devoted (pro-bono) to election protection and voting integrity.
“We were like a group of mostly in our late 20s,” Kohen says. “There needed to be an organization that protected the vote year-round.”
The organization became a major part of his life. He served as secretary, chaired legislative efforts, fundraised for Democratic candidates, worked on redistricting litigation, and spent years building relationships inside New York’s political world. “It was very social and personal relationship driven,” he says. “I went to weddings. I went to shiva calls. I went to Shabbat dinners.”
For years, he felt pride in that work. He fundraised for Barack Obama and even met him during his reelection campaign — an experience he still describes with awe. “He was really transcendent, larger than life,” Kohen says. “I felt starstruck. And I don’t get starstruck, like, ever.”
At one point, Kohen kept a framed photo of their meeting displayed prominently on his wall. But over the last year, as his political disillusionment deepened, he moved the photo into a drawer. In its place now hangs a piece of Jewish art painted by his sister: the Hebrew word “Chai” — meaning “life” — rendered in the colors of the Israeli flag.
Leonard Kohen’s framed portrait with President Obama (left) has been replaced by a “values-inspired canvas art” (right).
But the rupture didn’t happen all at once. It came in stages: watching what he viewed as hypocrisy around redistricting, seeing Democratic leaders abandon principles they once championed, and eventually, after October 7, feeling increasingly alienated from the people and institutions he once trusted most.
“I thought Democrats [embodied] mostly my values,” he says quietly. “Now, in many ways, I don’t think as much.”
What disturbed him most was not simply policy disagreements, but what he saw as a broader collapse of standards — moral, political, and institutional. The rise of Zohran Mamdani crystallized that feeling.
“The Jewish part bothers me,” Kohen says, “but I feel just such bewilderment over his lack of qualifications. Like, that’s bewildering.”
For someone who had spent decades inside Democratic political infrastructure — working alongside lawyers, elected officials, campaign operatives, and policy advocates — Mamdani’s rapid ascent felt incomprehensible. “He just seemed unelectable,” Kohen says. “In our childhoods, if somebody said some of the things he said, he would not be electable.”
What shocked him most was not only Mamdani’s popularity, but the willingness of established Democrats to embrace him anyway.
“How can you say that you’re not cool with Trump and hatred,” he asks, “and then that you are cool with Mamdani?”
As anti-Israel rhetoric intensified after October 7, Kohen found himself growing more outspoken — and more isolated. “When I heard the word genocide, that really infuriated me,” he says. “I feel like we stand up for all the other groups, and where are they?”
After Governor Kathy Hochul endorsed Mamdani, Kohen finally resigned from the organization he had spent two decades helping build. “I finally totally cut the cord,” he says.
The decision wasn’t easy. “Twenty years is a lot,” he reflects. But for Kohen, staying silent had become impossible. “I definitely didn’t want assumptions to be made,” he says. “I didn’t want to be associated [with what the party now represents].”
Today, Kohen describes himself not as a Republican, but as politically homeless despite the fact that he’s still a registered Democrat — someone who still believes in moderation, institutional integrity, and liberal values, but no longer recognizes the party he once served faithfully.
“I’m very centrist,” he says. “I just want to be centrist. I’m not pro-extreme.”
Kohen still speaks about the Democratic Party less with anger than disbelief — as someone watching a home he once helped build drift somewhere unrecognizable. What troubles him most is the feeling that the party no longer rewards seriousness, moderation, or competence, and that too many leaders are unwilling to confront extremism in their own party.
For someone who spent two decades organizing lawyers, protecting elections, fundraising for Democrats, and building institutions he believed would strengthen democracy, that realization has been devastating. Increasingly, Kohen says, he struggles to see how the party can have a successful future if it continues down its current path — abandoning the political center while dismissing the concerns of longtime supporters who once formed its backbone.
