Jewish Democrats Pick Up 5 Seats — Led By Big Gains In Suburbs
By Dave Goldiner November 7, 2018
Jewish Democrats were poised to make major gains in the House of Representatives, eying at least five pickups from Republicans.
Led by a shocking upset win for veteran Max Rose on Staten Island and wins across suburbs nationwide, Jewish candidates were set to take 28 seats in the House, compared to 23 now. That’s a historic 23% boost.
Jacky Rosen, who retired from her House seat to run for Senate, was locked in a tight battle in Nevada.
Elaine Luria pulled off a major upset to win a narrow victory in a Virginia Beach-based district.
Dean Phillips, whose grandmother was advice columnist Dear Abby pulled off a comfortable win in the Minneapolis suburbs.
Susan Wild won a thumping victory in the Lehigh Valley, and Andy Levin captured his father’s Michigan seat.
Mike Levin was considered a shoo-in to grab a seat in Southern California after the GOP incumbent Darrell Issa condeded he would win.
Pediatrician Kim Schrier opened up a big lead in polls in her suburban Seattle seat. But mail-in votes can still be counted Wednesday or later.
Elissa Slotkin grabbed a lead late in her fight to grab a Michigan seat from incumbent GOP Rep. Mike Bishop.
All Jewish Democratic incumbents won their seats by wide margins, including stalwarts like Debbie Wasserman Schultz in south Florida and Jerry Nadler in New York.
Meanwhile, Kathy Manning fell short in a North Carolina district. Dana Balter, whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors, was trailing in a Syracuse area seat.
Two Florida Democrats — Lauren Baer in a district north of Palm Beach, and David Shapiro on the Gulf Coast — fell to GOP incubents by about 10% margins.
Two Republican Jews were set to return to Congress, with Lee Zeldin pulling ahead by a fairly wide margin over Jewish Democrat Perry Gershon on Long Island’s East End.
One Jewish Republican, Lena Epstein, failed in her bid to replace hold onto a Republican seat in Michigan. She took a torrent of bad publicity for inviting a Messianic Jewish “rabbi” to pray for the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack at a campaign rally.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
