Save this story Save Story Save this story A half-dozen of us are squeezed into a small service elevator, our various colognes clashing with the signature fish-and-rubber scent of Lower Manhattan. The elevator operator blares Chinese ballads, and the young man next to me bobs his head in appreciation. An older man shifts uncomfortably. “Could you actually make it louder?” he snarks. Over the course of one excruciatingly slow ride to the sixth floor, we’re trapped in our private discomfort or pleasure. But we’re all headed to the same place: a midterms watch party at The Bench, a members’ club for people who are into politics but feel like political outsiders. It’s a place, according to its website, where “restless organizers, creatives, misfits, sneakerheads, and policy nerds collide.”
Since its founding two years ago, The Bench has hosted insiders ranging from CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani . Monthly dues, “just to keep the lights on,” run as little as $50. The space is regularly used for events unaffiliated with The Bench: readings by literary magazines, climate week pop-ups, splashy debates. Michka Bengio, the social club’s owner and co-founder, is an earnest believer in dialogue and, if his programming is any indication, a little bit of a chaos agent. He likes to produce scenarios that underscore political tensions, like when he had Weiss’s The Free Press , co-host a watch party for Mamdani’s 2025 election. According to those who attended, it was a somber evening for the pro-Cuomo crowd, though some of them nevertheless returned to The Bench for this week’s midterms viewing.
On the night of the midterm elections, partygoers had the option of viewing the election results in a spacious, orderly room displaying CNN’s broadcast or in a lounge-y, narrower space screening Fox News’s coverage. In a cozy hallway between the two screens, guests could buy cocktails and popcorn or engage with people whose political views differ from their own—arguably The Bench’s most exclusive offering.
“There’s just a whole splatter of different opinions that come in here,” says David Azoulay, who works with the content agency Fixer Media. “ The Free Press , the Manhattan Institute, and then I also get to meet a lot of people who are working in the Democratic space, on the Biden or Kamala Harris campaigns.” Azoulay helped produce events for an “America 250” tour in collaboration with Young America’s Foundation, a conservative youth organization, and has worked with provocateur Ben Shapiro and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson . Though he used to be a registered Democrat, he “grew up” and now identifies as a proud Republican. While Azoulay engaged in a playful back-and-forth with a progressive 21-year-old over what he considers to be the fallacy of socialism, Democratic councilmember Christopher Marte milled about wearing an “I Voted” sticker.
Over the sound of people screaming about the James Talarico-Ken Paxton race, Marte told me he met Bengio 10 years ago through Arena, a New York-based political organization that took off in the wake of the first Trump presidency. “It was all these young people trying to figure out how to get involved in politics. A.O.C. was on the couch, Alessandra Biaggi, all these people who were just curious, post-Trump election,” he says. At the time, Bengio was working as a campaign manager for Michael Basch, a techno-optimistic Democratic NYC mayoral candidate, a gig he secured by asking the only person he knew in politics to introduce them. He’s also worked as a consultant for NBA Africa and managed downtown restaurants like Regina’s Grocery and Miss Lily’s. The Bench is one of four Bengio ventures; he also co-founded the supper club Shtick with his wife, Jacqueline Lobel, and partners with the Hancock Foundation and the Hancock Cafe. On any given event night, he can be found buzzing around the room, excitedly facilitating introductions for his guests.
The son of a Moroccan father and Algerian mother, Bengio grew up in Strasbourg, France. When I ask what motivated him to move to New York in 2001, he deadpans: “Ever heard of the American dream?” More specifically, though, he was jealous of a friend who moved to the States for six months and returned speaking fluent English. “He was the coolest kid,” Bengio says. “And I was like, ‘I want to go to America, too.’ I love basketball,” he says, reorganizing a pile of books so that the edges aligned just so.
Bengio, a first-time voter, is coy about his own politics. Instead, he’s driven by the promise of America “that you can coexist,” he says, and a desire to nurture civil, democratic debate. “I want to be part of the project.”
“We need to really recommit and reaffirm what we mean when we talk about free speech—expression that is unencumbered by political interference in any way, shape, or form,” says Josef Palermo, a former curator at the Kennedy Center who drove up from the nation’s capital to attend this party. Earlier this year, Palermo wrote about the politicization of the Kennedy Center by both the Biden and Trump administrations in an article for The Atlantic . “We need spaces like this in D.C. Everybody’s in their own camps and certain venues are definitely coded one way or the other. I think having something like this would be huge in our nation’s capital.”
Then again, it’s partly New York’s distance from the D.C. swamp that makes talking about politics at The Bench feel cool. The space is decorated with Bengio’s enviable collection of NBA and political memorabilia. (He jokes that he stays up late scrolling vintage sites and bidding on Americana rarities.) Alongside Michael Jordan Wheaties boxes and a slew of rare basketball sneakers, there’s a framed copy of Emile Zola’s 1897 letter to the French youth during the Dreyfus affair, a portable Florida voting booth from the Bush vs. Gore election, a framed paper shift dress from Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, and nearly every issue of John F. Kennedy Jr’s George magazine. The one with a Donald Trump cover gets taken down from the wall often, Bengio says, but he always puts it back up.
On Tuesday night, there appeared to be other collectors of rare political merch. Vintage Obama-era crop tops caught my eye, and a speechwriter for a New York City council member waxed poetic about his favorite vinyl record: a collection of John F. Kennedy speeches. Two guys wore t-shirts they designed themselves that cheekily quoted Michigan turncoat Haley Stevens: “Israel cums to me in my dreams.” (One of them requested anonymity, fearful of being cancelled by the Canary Mission, an anonymous organization that tracks critics of Israel.)
A good number of attendees who were professionally invested in the election outcomes couldn’t stop checking their phones. Anthony DiMieri, the man behind Mamdani’s winning social media strategy, told me he’d just come from Brad Lander’s party. Max Altman, the brother of the OpenAI founder Sam , also stopped by. He’s excited about a recent move to New York from Austin, Texas, and if he hadn’t forgotten to request an absentee ballot, he says, he would’ve voted for James Talarico.
As the results turned progressively blue, the room began to clear out. Before leaving, I chatted with Azoulay’s “libertarian friend” Hunt Beaty. In the hallway between broadcasts, Beaty tells me he’s not terribly moved by the midterms. “Everything interesting that is happening in the world right now, to me, is happening outside of politics,” he says. He rejects the libertarian designation and lives by the credo “free minds and free markets,” citing Reason magazine. And yet, Beaty finds that The Bench still has something to offer him.
“It’s fun to be in a room filled with buzzy, interesting people who at least are able to try and talk about ideas, while also being like, ‘Maybe we’re doing coke in the bathroom, too.’ I want there to be a New York City where those things could coexist.”
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