Beyond Trump and Harris: 7 congressional and governor’s races Jews should watch
From Eugene Vindman in Virginia to Elissa Slotkin in Michigan to Josh Stein in North Carolina, Jewish candidates are vying for pivotal roles
From left to right, back row: Josh Stein, Jacky Rosen; front row: Tom Suozzi, Alison Esposito, Mondaire Jones, Mike Lawler, Elissa Slotkin, Adam Schiff. (Collage by Grace Yagel/Getty Images)
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — The presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is close and consequential, with the candidates offering two vastly different ideas of America — and that contest has gotten the lion’s share of Americans’ attention.
Here’s a quick glance at six races where Jewish issues have come into play.
New York 17th Congressional District: Mike Lawler vs. Mondaire Jones
Control of the House may run through several swing districts in New York; Democrats have so far flipped one, the 3rd, where Tom Suozzi regained his old seat after the House expelled fabulist George Santos. Both parties have turned their focus to the 17th, covering an area to the north and west of New York City, where Republican Rep. Mike Lawler beat a Democratic incumbent in 2022. Now, Lawler is facing former Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones.
The district is home to Rockland County, which has a large haredi Orthodox population, many of whose residents vote based on the endorsements of leading rabbis.
Both candidates have vied for those endorsements, visiting local Hasidic leaders alongside senior members of their own parties. Lawler visited the Hasidic village of New Square with House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Jones recently followed suit with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader.
Lawler, according to coverage of the race in The New York Times, has been “ubiquitous” in visiting Hasidic voters. “I’ve seen Lawler more times than I’ve seen my rabbi,” one local public relations executive quipped.
Jewish Insider reported that Lawler is poised to nab the New Square endorsement. (A similar dynamic exists in the neighboring 18th district, where Democrat Pat Ryan appears to be safe in part due to his cultivation of haredi voters.)
Both candidates have also touted their support for Israel — and their opposition to its critics. Lawler has been a leader on pro-Israel issues, often working with pro-Israel Jewish Democrats; he recently introduced legislation that would penalize universities for allowing antisemitism to flourish. Jones, meanwhile, was once floated as a potential member of the Squad, the progressive group of lawmakers who are critical of Israel, but pivoted once the moderate Democrat he hoped to unseat decided not to run again. This year, he denounced Squad member Jamaal Bowman’s criticism of Israel and endorsed Bowman’s successful challenger.
Jones’ pivot didn’t stop Lawler, in a debate last month, from lambasting Jones for supporting a Palestinian state. Jones, in turn, has aired an ad blasting Lawler for defending Trump after Trump said Jewish voters would be to blame if he lost the election.
Virginia’s 7th Congressional District: Eugene Vindman vs. Derrick Anderson
Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, stretching from Washington’s outer suburbs south to Richmond, is a true swing district. Voters there have supported both Republicans and Democrats, including Rep. Abigail Spenberger, a moderate who is running for governor.
Both of the candidates to replace her are military veterans, one Jewish and with a higher profile than the other.
Democrat Eugene Vindman and his brother Alexander were working in the White House in 2019 when they played roles in Donald Trump’s first impeachment. Alexander, a Ukraine specialist, flagged a call to officials in which Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Biden. Among the officials Alexander notified was his brother Eugene, an ethics specialist in the White House.
Trump sacked the twins after the impeachment, elevating into national prominence their story of coming to the United States as toddlers from the Soviet Union, fleeing persecution of Jews and seeking freedom. In his congressional testimony during the trial, Alexander Vindman assured his father that here in the United States, one was free to expose wrongdoing by the president.
Republican Derrick Anderson has cast Eugene Vindman as being on a “revenge” tour against Trump. Vindman has not focused his campaign on his role in Trump’s impeachment, though he recently began a fundraising email, “It’s been 5 years since Trump made the corrupt phone call that forever altered the lives of me and my twin brother.” Another feature of the campaign: Anderson, who is not married, posed for publicity shots with a family who wasn’t his, and Vindman has not let voters forget it, running an ad with an Anderson double tossing a frisbee at a cardboard cutout daughter.
Michigan Senate: Elissa Slotkin vs. Mike Rogers
Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Jewish Democrat, is fighting hard to keep this swing state Senate seat blue, running to replace longtime Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who is retiring.
The race was for weeks a tossup, but Slotkin solidified as a likely favorite in the waning days of the campaign.
When Slotkin declared her candidacy last year, she seemed like a natural choice: She’s a defense hawk, with a resume that includes years in the CIA and the Department of Defense. Stretches from Detroit’s suburbs to East Lansing, her district encompasses a lot of Republican patches, but she has held it since 2018.
In early polls, she handily led her Republican challenger, former Rep. Mike Rogers, who worked in law enforcement and as a CNN commentator. But the race has tightened in part because of Arab- and Muslim-American disaffection from the Democratic Party because of President Joe Biden’s support for Israel. Michigan has a large population of Arab and Muslim voters and has been a center of pro-Palestinian political organizing.
A pro-Trump political action committee with ties to billionaire Elon Musk has run ads highlighting Slotkin’s Jewish identity and support for Israel in Arab-American areas.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war last year, Slotkin has sought to walk a tightrope, taking meetings with leaders of both communities in her state. And when a controversy last month pitted Michigan Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib against Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, Slotkin was the only Congress member whose name appeared on two letters: one condemning bigotry against Nessel and the other condemning bigotry against Tlaib.
North Carolina governor: Mark Robinson vs. Josh Stein
Of the seven swing states where the Trump and Harris campaigns have spent scads of money and time in recent weeks, North Carolina is seen as among the likeliest to go red, with Trump consistently enjoying a small lead in the polls.
The state’s Republican nominee for governor, Mark Robinson, isn’t faring as well. Robinson, the state’s lieutenant governor, has been mired in a succession of embarrassing revelations about past statements, including invoking antisemitic stereotypes about Jews and money, and writing in an online forum that he is a “Black NAZI.”
Those scandals have led the race to look like a blowout win for the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Josh Stein, who is Jewish. Stein is a centrist Democrat, and the son of leading civil rights attorney Adam Stein. He previously worked as a lawyer and state senator.
California Senate: Adam Schiff vs. Steve Garvey
Rep. Adam Schiff, a Jewish Democrat, is a shoo-in to replace the late Dianne Feinstein, the Jewish Democrat who died in office a year ago. (The incumbent Sen. Laphonza Butler, named by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill out Feinstein’s term, is not running.) He is well ahead of his Republican rival, former baseball star Steve Garvey, in the polls in the deep blue state.
Schiff, in many respects, is a conventional old-school Jewish Democrat: He’s a security hawk who, like Feinstein, earned his congressional chops in the Intelligence Committee. He is also pro-Israel and has the endorsement of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s affiliated political action committee.
What makes Schiff stand out on the national stage is how much Trump despises him for taking leading roles in the president’s two impeachments. Later, Schiff was in the spotlight for his work on the committee to investigate the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump dubbed Schiff “Shifty Schiff,” a moniker that was seen by some as antisemitic. The former president now calls Schiff an “enemy from within” and has threatened to jail him along with the other members of the Jan. 6 Committee. Responding to the threat, Schiff told a local California outlet, “We’re taking this seriously, because we have to.”
Should both of them win their races, that presages a difficult relationship, to say the least.
Arizona House and Senate: Paul Gosar, Abraham Hamadeh, Kari Lake, Ruben Gallego
Arizona is notable for its preponderance of far-right Republican House members. Five of the state’s six Republicans (out of nine total representatives) have peddled falsehoods about the 2020 election.
At least two GOP candidates in this cycle, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar in the 9th and Abraham Hamadeh in the 8th, have been dogged by accusations of antisemitic statements or associations with antisemites.
In 2008, when he was a teenager, Hamadeh wrote “If you think Jews aren’t big in america (2%) how come 56% of them are CEO’S,” in a post on an online forum. Gosar was among the speakers at a 2022 conference run by Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist and Holocaust denier.
Two years ago, four like-minded far-right Republicans — whose candidacies all disquieted local Jews — lost elections in the state, among them Hamadeh and Kari Lake, a former newscaster who then ran for governor (and who never conceded despite her loss). Lake is now running against Rep. Ruben Gallego.
Lake, who once exchanged pleasantries online with a Nazi sympathizer with whom she had posed for a photo, and who endorsed (and then withdrew her endorsement) of a virulently antisemitic Oklahoma State House candidate, is trailing Gallego.
Despite her far-right and insurgent bona fides, Lake has the endorsement of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which conventionally favors traditional Republicans and has worked to defeat Republicans with reputations for antisemitism or opposing Israel.
Nevada Senate: Jacky Rosen vs. Sam Brown
Harry Reid, the former Senate Majority leader, ruled Democratic politics in his home state with an iron hand.
There was puzzlement when he selected Jacky Rosen, a software developer with no political record except the presidency of her synagogue, to run for the U.S. House in 2016 in a competitive race in suburban Las Vegas — but the state party fell into line, and Rosen won the primary and then the race. (Maybe Reid’s choice should not have been such a surprise: His wife was born Jewish and he had a longstanding and deep affection for Israel.)
Less than two years later, with her freshman term barely under her belt, Reid tapped Rosen to run for Senate. Reid had retired but still exercised considerable influence. Once again, Rosen validated Reid’s pick when she won the purple state. (She likes to say it was harder leading a synagogue than working in national politics.)
Rosen has become a leading figure in combating antisemitism on Capitol Hill, setting up a Senate task force on the issue with Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford. She is a lead cosponsor of the Countering Antisemitism Act, which would create a coordinator to combat antisemitism domestically. Last year, she faced death threats in the wake of the launch of the Israel-Hamas war.
She has also earned a derisive Trump nickname, “Wacky Jacky.”
Reid died in 2021, but his legacy looks to extend beyond the grave: Nevada is must-win if Democrats hope to keep the Senate, and for a while the race was touch-and-go for Rosen. In the final days of the campaign, however, polls show her pulling ahead of Republican challenger Sam Brown, a businessman and decorated war veteran.
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