Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Top Congress Stories Include Weiner, Giffords

Three Jewish stories made Politico’s end-of-year list of the Top 10 Congressional stories of 2011.

The return of Gabby Giffords after she was shot and nearly killed, the battle between Howard Berman and Brad Sherman in Los Angeles, and the Democrats’ loss of Anthony Weiner’s old seat in New York all made the list.

Giffords made headlines with her inspirational fight to survive after being shot by a crazed young man at a constituents’ event in January.

The political web site says Giffords is still deciding whether or not to run for reelection in her Tuscon, Ariz.-area seat. Pundits say she would also be a strong contender for U.S. Senate. If Giffords is unable to run, an aide may run in her place to hold onto the seat until she can return, Politico reported.

Berman and Sherman have both represented parts of suburban Los Angeles. They were tossed together into a single district by the once-a-decade redistricting process that created another majority Latino district in the area.

Sherman started out with an edge in grass-roots support, both men said. Berman has lined up support from Democratic colleagues and fundraisers for the June primary showdown.

Republicans had never held New York’s Ninth District until Anthony Weiner started texting.

In short order, he resigned and Democrats had to scramble to find a new candidate for the seat that includes parts of Brooklyn and Queens and includes many Orthodox Jewish voters.

Riding a wave of anger over the economy and President Obama’s perceived lack of support for Israel, the GOP’s Bob Turner beat lackluster Democrat David Weprin to grab the seat.

It’s possible he won’t be there for long. Conventional wisdom says the seat will be sliced when New York draws new districts next year.

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

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.