Bowman, in Fight for His Political Life, Embraces the Left’s Star Power

He cracked jokes on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” spit verses the next day with the rapper Cash Cobain and spent Friday on friendly territory with a well-known ally, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The capper was set for Saturday, when Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York was scheduled to rally in the Bronx with two of the left’s biggest names: Mr. Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Overpowered on the airwaves and behind in the polls, Mr. Bowman is leaning heavily on national star power in a last-minute bid to alter the trajectory of one of the nation’s most hotly contested Democratic primaries.

“They have the money,” Mr. Bowman, 48, boomed at the event with Mr. Sanders on Friday in Hastings-on-Hudson, just north of his hometown, Yonkers. “We have the many.”

The megawatt events drove home the sharp contrasts between the congressman and his opponent, George Latimer, but they also demonstrated how the candidates are betting on two very different paths to victory, in a district split between wealthy suburbs and working-class neighborhoods, and among white, Black and Latino voters.

Rather than reach toward the party’s center, Mr. Bowman has reiterated the left-leaning positions that helped make him a national figure. He has railed against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s record spending blitz against him and an entrenched establishment, all in hopes of increasing turnout among progressives and voters of color.