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WASHINGTON (JTA) — Consider two careers in Pennsylvania.
For the governor, a Jewish Democrat whose classified ads show his observance of Shabbat faces a far-right Republican who promotes Christian nationalists and has ties to an outspoken anti-Semite.
For Congress in District 7, which has a low proportion of Jewish citizens, two Jewish candidates are pitted against each other: One is a Democrat who had his bat mitzvah in Israel as an adult, the other is a Hebrew Republican professor who donated at least $1 million to a university there.
The Pennsylvania stories constitute the two streams of Jewish importance related to this election cycle leading up to Tuesday’s national vote. On the one hand, a diversity of applicants have courted anti-Semitic supporters in tactics for decades, such as a series of high-profile controversies. On anti-Semitism they threaten to become a time of renewed violence against Jews.
On the other hand, the cycle also features several candidates who are proudly Jewish in one that their political predecessors were reluctant to express.
Here’s a closer look at several of the races that will offer insight into Jewish issues in next week’s election.
Governor of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania is described as a united state through two liberal enclaves, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which are interspersed in a conservative rural setting. And that’s what Philadelphia-based Democratic state Attorney General Josh Shapiro did in his first ad: Man, airs the ad, who made sure he was home on Shabbat to spend time with his family.
Shapiro’s announcement stood out because Jewish applicants rarely put their Jewish observance at the forefront of their general crusade (unlike the crusade within the Jewish community, where they will communicate their Jewish involvement). Shapiro bet that Pennsylvanians would perceive the challah on the table as meaningful as a Christmas tree on the corner.
Perhaps it is being executed: Shapiro has a considerable lead over his Republican opponent, Doug Mastriano. But a classic crusade tactic is to arm his opponent’s strength, and Mastriano has presented Shapiro’s children’s attendance at a Jewish school as “elite” and “privileged. “
Mastriano, who was former President Donald Trump’s favorite nominee at number one and was in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, uprising, insists there is no malicious intent: He noted that in his attack on Shapiro, he does not identify the school as Jewish. But Mastriano had already gained a lot of Jewish skepticism by paying Gab, the far-right social networking site owned by famed anti-Semite Andrew Torba, to announce his crusade on the platform. He then accepted a donation to his Torba crusade after ostensibly cutting ties with him and condemning anti-Semitism.
Mastriano has a figurehead of the Democratic push to label Republicans as extremists and, in many cases, anti-Semites. The Republican Jewish Coalition expressed fear over Mastriano’s inability to distance himself from Torba altogether, a rare case of a partisan Jewish organization calling a candidate from his party.
The controversy continued. One of his advisers said last week that Shapiro is not genuinely Jewish. And when an Israeli journalist asked Mastriano about his Jewish controversies, his wife said the circle of relatives enjoyed Israel. Even “more” than Jews love Israel.
Governor of New York
Rep. Lee Zeldin was thought to be a remote possibility when he announced a candidacy for governor of one of the most liberal states on the East Coast. in his home state. Zeldin voted against Biden’s certification as president on Jan. 6 and opposed abortion rights.
But Zeldin, who has Trump’s approval, criticized Gov. Kathy Hochul against emerging crime in New York and is now on track to win according to polls.
As one of only two Jewish Republicans in the U. S. House of Representatives, he is not one of only two Jewish Republicans. In the U. S. , Zeldin has earned a place as one of the most vocal pro-Israel voices in Congress and is a member of Jewish teams in Congress. community, adding millions of dollars from Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and heir to the Estee Lauder fortune.
But his forays into the state’s Haredi Orthodox communities have made headlines in recent weeks. After a New York Times article highlighted the controversy over the secular school practices of haredi yeshivot, Zeldin engaged with them, making the issue a key crusader factor in Brooklyn.
“People feel that Hochul has remained silent on this issue,” an anonymous informant told New York Jewish Week in a report. “They feel that Zeldin has been very eloquent and I hope that when he becomes governor he will continue down this path. “
House seats in Virginia and Michigan
In 2019, five first-year Democrats in shifting districts gained national notoriety when they opposed Trump’s impeachment, and then changed their minds. His decisions gave Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, the green light to release the procedure.
They were called the “tough group,” in part because all five had served in the military or intelligence communities. Two of them are Jewish and unashamed. Elissa Slotkin, a CIA veteran in Michigan’s District 7, has been at the forefront of school Holocaust legislation. Elaine Luria, a former Navy commander in Virginia’s District 2, ran an ad containing a doctored Hebrew Bible while explaining why she supported impeachment.
Both are now in incredibly close races for power.
Slotkin is up against Tom Barrett, a state senator who spread some of Trump’s 2020 election lies. Though he even has that of Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, Slotkin struggles with anti-headline anger opposed to inflation; Most polls give him a slight lead, but some have him behind him.
Luria, who is being criticized for serving on the House committee on Jan. 6 (along with Cheney), which her rival says is a distraction, is caught in an even closer race, what most media outlets call a 50-50 tie.
Headquarters of the house in Pennsylvania
Rep. Susan Wild, like Slotkin and Luria, is another Jewish Democratic woman in a changing community facing a Trump-backed candidate. Other similarities: the 3 districts have been redrawn and are now more Republican-friendly and the 3 races have millions of contributions to either party. Polls also compare this as a tie.
All three women have also risen through the Democratic ranks since their election in 2018: Wild has just been named chair of the House ethics committee, one of the most sensitive leadership roles, a sign that she has Nancy Pelosi’s trust.
However, there is a key Jewish difference in this race: Wild faces a Jewish candidate who has also emphasized her Jewishness in her campaign.
Lisa Scheller, a businesswoman, launched a rematch in 2020 and a rare Jewish war against Jew (there are only two other such races in this cycle, and neither is competitive). What’s even more so is that District 7, which runs along the border with northern New Jersey and includes Allentown, is not known as a specifically Jewish center: there are perhaps 10,000 Jews, out of a total population of more than 700,000.
In 2020, they adapted one of their debates to the Jewish community, addressing issues such as Israel and anti-Semitism. Both emphasized ties to Israel: Scheller, who speaks Hebrew, has a home there and has donated more than a million dollars to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Wild, whose first husband was Jewish, converted when her son sought out a bar mitzvah. He then had his own rite of bat mitzvah with his daughter in Israel.
If elected, Scheller, who has Trump’s approval, would likely increase the GOP’s Jewish representation in the House to 3 for the first time in decades. Tennessee incumbent David Kustoff and Max Miller, who fill a vacant seat in Ohio, are more likely to win.
Governor of Arizona
Arizona has an active and engaged Jewish community, which is developing as more and more Jewish families head to the Sunbelt. A 2019 survey found that the Jewish population in Maricopa County, the state’s largest and home to Phoenix, had grown 19 since 2002.
There are about 115,000 Jews in the state, enough to swing the purple state’s national elections, closely monitored. President Joe Biden turned Arizona’s blue around in 2020, and Republicans need him back. Arizona Jews tend to be more conservative than the country’s Jews, which can be an advantage for the state’s Republicans.
What is not an advantage in the eyes of the network is that the 4 Republicans in the most sensible state races, for governor, U. S. senator and senator. The U. S. attorney-general, and secretary of state, have had associations with anti-Semites and anti-Semitism.
Kari Lake, a former news anchor who was a registered Democrat until Trump’s 2016 election boosted her, opposes Katie Hobbs, the Democrat who is the incumbent secretary of state. Much of the crusade has focused on election integrity, with Lake embracing some of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. But his new friends caused trouble.
Last year he posed for a photo with a Nazi sympathizer and told him on Twitter: “It was also a thrill to meet you!”She approved and then withdrew it for an Oklahoma candidate who called Jews “evil. “
Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem proudly accepted the endorsement of Gab founder Andrew Torba, and the Phoenix Council on Jewish Community Relations criticized him in September for spreading “anti-Semitic tropes” by claiming Democrats are controlled by George Soros and Mike Bloomberg, whether Jewish megadonors. . . Finchem refuted an accusation of anti-Semitism by stating, “I love Jews,” but he also used language calling his warring parties “Marxists,” a rate traditionally led by anti-Semites dating back to the Depression-era Father radio preacher. Coughlin. among liberal or secular Jews.
As a result, Lake, who also mentioned Soros and Bloomberg and denounced Finchem’s tarnished crusade, has struggled to shake off accusations that he is easy with anti-Semites. However, it has a slight advantage as of this week.
However, the Arizona controversy doesn’t end there. Blake Masters is the Trump-backed Senate candidate hoping to oust Democrat Mark Kelly, the former astronaut married to Gabrielle Giffords, the Jewish congresswoman shot dead on one occasion in 2011. Jewish Insider discovered a Masters wrote in 2006 for a post in which he cites a “moving” quote from Nazi officer Hermann Goering. The post is owned by Lew Rockwell, the libertarian who allegedly wrote content for former Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul that included racist and anti-Semitic trope content. Kelly had a big advantage in the past in the race, but that’s no longer the case.
Then there’s Abraham Hamadeh, another Trump backer who ran in the 2020 election and is vying in a tight race for the attorney general’s post. As a teenager, he posted anti-Semitic comments on a forum for supporters of Paul, the same politician Masters admired in his The Crusade of Youth. Hamadeh said the comments were diatribes of a teenager and not being judged through them.
Nevada Senate Headquarters
Nevada’s Jewish population is also developing and may also play the role of decision-maker in Tuesday’s election, as Jewish party teams spend time and money in the state targeting Jewish voters.
The state is home to one of the closest Senate races in the country, between Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican Adam Laxalt, a former attorney general. Once again, anti-Semitism is a central theme in this campaign.
The Anti-Defamation League called Laxalt an extremist because of his ties to the fringe organization of the Association of Peace Officers and Constitutional Marshals. Jews, women and Laxalt LGBTQ. La’s crusade community said the staff member left the crusade in August and condemned the “fanatical views” on his account. The spokesman did not explain why the staff member abandoned the crusade.
Cortez Masto on Monday called for a crusade with Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Jewish Democrat, to call for greater condemnation of anti-Semitism.
Also in the Nevada poll is Sigal Chattah, a Republican who will oust Aaron Ford as attorney general, and in the proceedings becomes the first Israeli American elected to a statewide office in the United States. Chattah has addressed his Israeli identity in his campaign; His other claim to fame is fighting legal battles to remove coronavirus restrictions.
Colorado Senate Headquarters
Michael Bennet, first elected to the Senate in 2008, is a moderate Democrat who has survived other anti-power seasons in his swing state. He also pointed out in his crusade his mother’s prestige as a Holocaust survivor and how that shaped him, though he doesn’t say whether he identifies as Jewish today.
What’s intriguing about this cycle is that the state’s Republicans broke with their party’s national and nominated an anti-Trump moderate Republican, Joe O’Dea, to oust him.
Possibly it wouldn’t work: Bennet takes O’Dea out of the margin of error.
Colorado has two other Jewish Democrats in the United States up for re-election: Jared Polis, the state’s first blatantly gay governor, and Phil Weiser, as Bennet, the son of a Holocaust survivor who made fighting anti-Semitism a key issue of his first term. Both are favorites for re-election.
Space headquarters in Florida
Eric Lynn, who has been a member of the Tampa-area Jewish network since childhood, didn’t have much luck when he introduced a crusade in District 13.
Owned for more than 40 years by Bill Young, a moderate Republican, Charlie Crist won the Democratic District in 2016, in part because he was a former Republican governor who allied with moderate Democrats after switching components.
Then, after Crist announced he was retiring from Congress to take another photo of the governor’s mansion, Florida Republicans redesigned the community to make it more Republican. Cook’s nonpartisan political report assessed him as likely a Republican.
Today, Lynn, a former Pentagon who helped fund Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile program, defies expectations. Recent polls put him at an impasse with rival Anna Paulina Luna.
In an interview, Lynn said one of her benefits is Luna’s excessive stances on abortion and her impassioned embrace of Trump and his lies about the 2020 election, as well as her alignment with a minority of Republicans in Congress who oppose the PACT Act, which expands benefits. for veterans who have been exposed to burners. Opponents say the bill expands government bureaucracy, but that’s not an argument that sits well in a district with a peak density of veterans.
“Even though Ron DeSantis illegally drew this district in a way that favors Republicans by six points, we’re now tied 46-46 because Republicans and independents vote for Eric Lynn, because Anna Luna is too extreme,” Lynn said Wednesday. he noted that he had obtained the approval of Young’s widow, Beverly.
It didn’t hurt that his cousin, Justin Ishbia, the billionaire founder of a Chicago-area personal equity firm, paid $5 million to a political action committee that spent $7 million on the race, adding about $5 million in negative ads. Ishbia is one of the 40 most sensible donors in this cycle.
Luna campaigned on Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who angered Jewish teams with her promiscuous comparison of the Holocaust to policies she doesn’t like and her invocation of anti-Semitic tropes.
Luna was puzzled when Jewish Insider asked if Greene would alienate Jews. “MTG approved of me and I was raised as a Messianic Jew through my father,” she said. , Why am she me?
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