Justice Democrats are aiming to take out 16-term Democrat Congressman Eliot Engel, and they’re backing a Bronx middle school principal as a champion of the people, despite his less than stellar track record.

Jamaal Bowman laid out his “new vision for America” in a video for Now This that paints Engel as a Washington, D.C. insider who protects corporate interests and top earners at the expense of minority constituents, while offering Bowman as the socialist savior poised to empower the little people.

“We need to nurture the future of America by investing in our schools. We need to put public schools back in the hands of our teachers and parents,” Bowman said in the video. “Make public college free; Medicare for all people; universal childcare, criminal justice reform; and the Green New Deal.

“My opponent has been in office for over 30 years. Over those 30 years, my opponent voted for an unjust war in Iraq … deregulating Wall Street, school privatization, and building more prisons,” he said.

Engel has also been a supporter of Israel, a position out of step with other Justice Democrats candidates, such as Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. All three freshmen congresswomen have repeatedly faced accusations of anti-Semitic rhetoric, mostly centered on comments about the influence of Jewish Americans in politics.

While Engel serves on the Israel Allies Caucus as an old-school Democrat who supports the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, Justice Democrats have denounced AIPAC and supported the BDS movement, which aims to force companies and governments to boycott, sanction and divest from Israeli investments.

And while the video highlights Bowman challenging the nation to the “Nae Nae Challenge” during his time as a middle school principal at Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, it doesn’t delve into student performance the school.

That could be because students there fare far worse than most others in the city. While the citywide average for students who scored 3-4 on the state math exam stood at 34 percent in 2018, only 14 percent at Cornerstone Academy met that threshold.

It was a similar situation for reading, with 33 percent scoring 3-4 on the state test in 2018, compared to a citywide average of 44 percent.

Regardless, it’s clear Bowman isn’t concerned with accountability, which makes him popular with teachers and others at his school, according to InsideSchools.

“Bowman is highly regarded by teachers and parents, based on their responses to the NYC School Survey. A former guidance counselor, teacher, and dean of students at The High School of Art and Technology in Manhattan, Bowman is a critic of high-stakes tests and their impact on students of color,” according to the site.

“He advises parents on their rights to opt their children out of the exams and is a proponent of using other forms of assessments such as student presentations, research papers and in-depth projects, which we saw in abundance during our visit.”

Instead of intense study prep, students at Bowman’s school recite rap lyrics, dance and sing, typically with themes centered on perceived injustices or race issues.

Not surprisingly, those are the same issues the principal’s campaign is built on.

A crime bill pushed by Democrats including Engel in the 1990s “decimated black families and decimated black and brown communities,” Bowman said.

“My opponent signed a public education bill called No Child Left Behind that led to the privatization and charter-ization of public schools and destroyed teachers’ unions,” he said.

“Children in the North Bronx and children throughout the country continue to suffer from asthma from pollution, obesity, poverty, rent burden, they don’t have places to play,” Bowman said.

Bowman’s message is the same socialist platform that propelled Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to victory in 2018, when the 29-year-old officially unseated 10 term Democrat Joseph Crowley.

Like Ocasio-Cortez, Bowman pledged not to accept any political donations from corporate political action committees, a distinction that allows him to attack Engel as a shill for the wealthy and well-connected.

“Engel accepted thousands of dollars from corporate PACs in 2017-18 like $27K from defense industry PACs & $21K from telecom PACs,” according to Now This. “Less than half of 1% of his total donations came from small donors.”

The news video site questioned Bowman over whether he believes it’s divisive for a Democrat to challenge a fellow Democrat, but the principal waved off the inter party fighting, alleging Engel and other “corporate” Democrats have turned their backs on constituents.

“I think unfortunately many Democrats have sided with corporate actors and the wealthy, and because they’ve done that, they’ve ignored the masses of people,” he said, alleging “most Americans believe in what’s on our platform.”

“So it’s not even a Democrat-Democrat thing, it’s about who’s there for the people, versus who is there for the wealthy,” he said. “And we think we’re there for the people.”