Elaine Luria
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Helen Chernikoff November 30, 2018
Inspired By The Times
Seders tend to be noisy, but Elaine Luria’s Seder on an aircraft carrier in the Middle East took the kosher-for-Passover cake.
“We’re going through the Haggadah … having our little makeshift Seder there while we’re launching and recovering aircraft that are striking terrorist targets in Afghanistan,” Luria told the Forward about a month before she won a tight race — 51% to 49% — for a Virginian congressional district that includes several military facilities and the biggest naval base on the East Coast.
As a veteran, a woman and a Jew, the 43-year-old Luria boasted a profile that was valued among Democrat strategists.
She grew up in Alabama and ran as a moderate, telling the Forward that she was inspired to run by her daughter.
“I don’t want her to ask me that question in ten years, ‘What did you do in this trying time?’”
— Helen Chernikoff
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