In the weeks leading up to last week’s election, the race receiving the most attention among Jewish Americans was the Senate seat in Michigan, where progressive Abdul El-Sayed defeated pro-Israel Rep. Haley Stevens in the primary. His supporters took a gamble on him, arguing that if he could win in a battleground state, then progressives could win anywhere in the country.
“What we do is that we break open the entire political calculus in America,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said at a New York fundraiser for El-Sayed last month. “If Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere.”
His victory was powered by the state’s sizable Arab American population and an uncompromising platform of DSA promises: Medicare for All, taxing billionaires, abolishing ICE, and cutting off aid to Israel. A relatively young Muslim with facial hair and charisma in the manner of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, his political résumé was nearly as thin, as he had never held any elected office prior to his Senate run.
Supporters of the Jewish state poured millions of dollars into the campaign of his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers. He received a last-minute endorsement from Stevens following an ad by Rogers that blamed the high cost of consumer goods on aid to Israel.
President Trump barnstormed the country with rallies to encourage the MAGA base, encouraging voters to see the midterm election as a referendum on his administration. “Pretend I’m on the ballot,” he declared during his last-month “midterm blitz,” which brought him to 20 states, including Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, and South Carolina twice each; Ohio three times; and Texas four times.
Trump’s New York visit involved a rally in Nassau County on behalf of gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman and congressional candidates Mike LiPetri and Jeanine Driscoll. In most of these states, his appearance cost his party seats at the federal and state levels.
Ironically, his adopted home state of Florida, where he campaigned the least, was the exception. Rep. Byron Donalds succeeded in the race for governor, and Ashley Moody won a full term in the Senate. Perhaps it was their distance from Trump, running on their own reputations, that earned them wins. Moody’s opponent, Angie Nixon, is a progressive who supported the genocide smear against Israel, certainly an element that brought out Jewish voters in favor of Moody. But Donalds’ opponent, David Jolly, ran as a moderate, losing by a razor-thin 1.3 points.
This is the election takeaway that progressives on social media do not wish to share. Michigan was as much an exception to the story as Florida. Nearly all of the seats flipped last week were won by moderate Democrats who kept their distance from AIPAC but did not share in the apartheid and genocide accusations promoted by the party’s leftist flank.
In Texas, Senator-elect James Talarico spoke of his religious education and past visits to the Holy Land as he condemned Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the Gaza war. In Mississippi, former prosecutor Scott Colom spoke of his record in fighting crime while addressing the high cost of living, connecting with voters who previously elected Trump and the sense of history in his run.
A seventh-generation native of the state, his final ad had him visiting the home of slain civil rights activist Rev. Medgar Evers, who lost his life for trying to register voters. In Georgia, Governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms spoke of her enslaved great-great-grandmother at her election-night party. “I don’t know what dreams Betsy Peek had for her children or for her grandchildren or the generations that she would never meet, but I know I am standing on shoulders made of steel,” she said.
Americans respect a good comeback story, particularly one that beats the odds. Democratic victories in these Deep South states are as historic as the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004, when they ended an 86-year championship drought. Americans also enjoy an underdog victory. When Elon Musk relocated to Texas with the intention of building data centers and the nation’s largest office complex, spending record amounts to support Republican candidates, the result was the opposite outcome, with voters eager to defeat the world’s wealthiest man.
Kansas also made history by electing Adam Hamilton. A pastor at the nation’s largest United Methodist church, his victory was the first for a Kansas Democrat running for the Senate since 1932, evoking the Wizard of Oz novel in his victory speech. “We need senators with a brain who use it, with a heart who feel with it, and who have courage and speak up because of it.” Hamilton also surprised the party establishment by calling for a new leader in the Senate.
“I mean no disrespect for Chuck Schumer,” Hamilton told NBC News’ Kristen Welker. “And I’ve told him that as well. But I think, at least where I live in Kansas, he is kind of a polarizing figure.” During his run for office, Hamilton’s opponent tried to tie him to Schumer as a liberal bogeyman. “What I’d be looking for is a leader who can lead from the center.”
Schumer’s expected promotion to Senate Majority Leader is also facing attacks from incoming leftist voices: Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, Maine’s Troy Jackson, and Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan. It is a personal embarrassment, as he campaigned for them, publicly rebuking colleagues who failed to support the party’s candidates.
Despite these critics, Schumer has enough votes to lead the Senate, and the party overall is not likely to publicly split in the same way that Republicans did before they chose Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House in 2023. In the House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn is expected to become Speaker. Such freshman outbursts generate publicity in a crowded chamber of 435 members, resembling Ocasio-Cortez’s call for Nancy Pelosi to step down on account of her age when she was first elected in 2018.
Most of the progressives who won their seats represent deep-blue districts where the party would have won anyway. It is the moderates who made the incoming Democratic majority possible in both houses. Their clout will be vital in preventing the cutoff of relations with Israel. On Long Island, Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen campaigned in Orthodox Jewish communities where Trump and Blakeman have overwhelming support. They spoke of affordability, access to healthcare, and maintaining this relationship. In the northern suburbs, Cait Conley also reached out to Orthodox Jews in her run against incumbent Mike Lawler, defying conventional wisdom that their votes are irretrievably Republican.
Alongside outreach to communities affected by Trump’s immigration crackdown, tariffs, and fuel prices, their victory was reflected in down-ballot victories at the county and town levels. The incoming Hempstead Town Supervisor, Joe Scianablo, is a Marine veteran, former cop, and prosecutor, Italian American by way of his father and Jewish on account of his mother. He will be only the second Democrat elected to lead the town in more than a century. It is a victory reminiscent of the Deep South states, in which the winners spoke of faith, family, security, and affordability.
Gains in seats won by progressives at the state level are matched by the record number of Orthodox lawmakers, which includes incoming Assemblymen-elect Pesach Osina of Far Rockaway and Joey Cohen-Saban of Brooklyn, and State Senator-elect Malkie Vider of the Five Towns. Their voices will be vital in opposing BDS legislation aiming to divest the state from doing business with Israel and penalize pro-Israel causes.
Gov. Kathy Hochul also made history by exceeding expectations. Upon assuming the role in 2021, she was labeled by Republicans as an accidental governor and narrowly won her first full term four years ago.
“Mike Lawler. Elise Stefanik. Bruce Blakeman. Her own lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado. Each of them looked at the Governor’s margin in 2022, which was much closer than it should have been, and saw easy pickings,” her campaign communications director, Sarafina Chitka, wrote in Empire Report. “The Governor was clear-eyed about the challenge ahead, and hired the team to outwork the opposition.”
Her endorsement of Mamdani’s mayoral run last year blunted the progressive challenge by Delgado. It upset many Jewish voters, opening up a path for Blakeman, but in working together with the mayor and campaigning with AOC, Hochul was rewarded with votes from the city and suburbs. “There’s a lesson in that for moderates – not only across New York, but across the country: Voters, it turns out, like to see elected officials making progress on the things we as Democrats agree on – affordability, healthcare, childcare,” Chitka wrote.
By Sergey Kadinsky
