The “blue wave” which brought the Democrats to power on Capitol Hill four years ago swept in a number of impressive Jewish candidates.
Now, with the political tide predicted to turn when voters return to the polls in two weeks’ time, they are on the frontline of the party’s uphill battle to retain its wafer-thin majorities in the US Congress.
The fate of these high-profile young moderates will help determine whether the Democrats hang on to the House of Representatives or are buried by a Republican landslide.
It will also decide whether Joe Biden ends up a lame duck for the last two years of his first term and form the backdrop for the next presidential election; the contest for which will begin in earnest soon after votes in the mid-terms are counted on 8 November.
And, while a series of legislative victories during the summer and anger about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the nationwide right to abortion lifted Democrat hopes that they might defy the historical odds and hold onto Congress, the Republicans now appear to have renewed momentum as the campaign enters its final stretch.
That’s bad news for Elaine Luria, whose Virginia district – which Donald Trump narrowly won in 2016 and Biden captured in 2020 in an equally tight contest – is attracting nationwide attention and is now rated as “leans Republican” by the RealClearPolitics website.
Luria, who served for twenty years in the navy, has set a doggedly centrist course since arriving in Washington, joining both the moderate New Democrat Coalition caucus and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. While attempting to take some of the heat out of hot-button issues like immigration, she has also sought to work across the aisle with Republicans.
On foreign policy, Luria has proven a strong supporter of Israel: taking on members of the small but noisy “Squad” of hard-left congressional Democrats, opposing efforts to resurrect the 2015 Iran deal, and praising Trump’s “leadership” in helping to secure the Abraham Accords.
Luria’s difficulties in hanging on to her seat – which is home to the Norfolk naval base – have been compounded not simply by boundary changes, but by the Republicans’ choice of another female Navy vet, state senator Jen Kiggans, as her challenger.
Luria, however, hasn’t pulled any punches. When the two women came face to face in their first debate last week, she assailed Kiggans on abortion, labelled her an “election denier”, and accused her of “political expediency”.
A fellow “national security Democrat” – so-called because of their military and intelligence backgrounds – Elissa Slotkin is engaged in an equally tough fight to hold her Michigan district. The seat was won by Trump in 2016 by seven points but narrowly carried by Biden in 2020. While one poll last month showed the former CIA analyst besting Republican challenger Tom Barrett by 18 points, analysts still rate the seat a “toss-up”.
Nonetheless, Barrett’s hard line on abortion, combined with the reported unpopularity of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision in the district, may assist Slotkin in defying the inauspicious national political headwinds.
But, as Jewish Insider highlighted earlier this year, the contest between Slotkin and Barrett captures a wider divide between the Democrats and the Trumpified Republican party which goes beyond the traditional issues which dominate election season. While Slotkin has laboured hard to highlight and combat the threat of domestic extremism, Barrett appeared somewhat dismissive of the issue when questioned about it by the website.
Luria and Slotkin are among up to half a dozen “national security Democrats” facing defeat. Their loss, suggested New York Times political analyst Blake Hounshell, wouldn’t just be felt by the Democratic party.
“Together, they represent a fading tradition: the quaint notion that politics stops at the water’s edge,” he wrote earlier this month. Combined with some key retirements, their defeat, Hounshell added, threatens to “hollow out decades of national experience in Congress at a time of great turmoil abroad”.
Other observers note the manner in which the “national security Democrats” helped to steady the ship as the party threatened to lurch to the left. “What they did is they served as ballast within the Democratic Party when there were some pretty loud voices that were trying to pull the Democrats off the cliff and into oblivion,” Brian Katulis of the Middle East Institute told the New York Times. He cited failed efforts by the “Squad” to cut off funding to Israel’s Iron Dome last year.
Of course, a national security background isn’t a prerequisite of centrist politics.
In Pennsylvania’s seventh district, another moderate Jewish Democrat, Susan Wild, is also fighting for her political life.
Despite Republican efforts to paint her as a reliable liberal vote for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Wild has attempted to steer clear of polarising “culture war” issues, while staunchly defending her pro-choice stance on abortion and support for gay rights. Moreover, as a Washington Post reporter who joined her on the campaign trail earlier in the summer suggested, Wild – a self-described “pro-business Democrat” and New Deal Coalition member – “made exuberantly clear that she is not a member of her party’s liberal wing”.
In New Jersey, Clinton White House alumni Josh Gottheimer is a similarly unapologetic New Democrat who continues to argue for the party to return to his former boss’ winning centrist message. Noting Gottheimer’s campaign signs emblazoned with the words “Josh Gottheimer for Congress: Lower Taxes, Jersey Values” – a reference, he says, to “cops, firefighters, vets” – the writer Jason Zengerle noted: “It would not be hyperbole to say that Gottheimer runs his political life there according to Clinton’s tenets.”
The co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, Gottheimer has relentlessly pushed Pelosi to adopt a more bipartisan stance – even threatening to throw a spanner in the Speaker’s bid for re-election in 2018 – and his moderate record earned him a primary challenge in 2020 in which he was (unfairly) branded “Trump’s favourite Democrat”.
The Democrats look likely to retain Gottheimer’s district – although his Trumpite Republican opponent says https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/josh-gottheimer-frank-pallotta-new-jersey-5th-congressional-district-election/ he’s banking on winning over some of the nearly 40 percent of voters who remain undecided – but moderates, who tend to represent swing seats, seem particularly vulnerable.
As another Jewish member of the New Democrat Coalition caucus, Minnesota Democrat Dean Phillips told the New York Times this summer: “We are, almost by definition, the low-hanging fruit in every election.”
Put politics to one side, the qualities represented by these Jewish moderates are admirable ones. Their courage is evident in the manner Slotkin and Luria played a pivotal role in 2019 in backing Trump’s impeachment. Despite the risk of a backlash in her Trump-voting district, Slotkin argued after voting for impeachment: “Whether I’m elected or not, I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning.”
Luria has similarly admitted that she initially worried that her decision to join the House select committee investigating the 6 January assault on the US Capitol might cost her dearly back home.
The independence that Gottheimer, Slotkin and their colleagues have shown at times from Pelosi and Biden stands in stark contrast to the slavish manner in which the House Republicans, following the example of their leader, Kevin McCarthy, prostrate themselves before Trump.
Whatever the results, however, the moderate wing will be infused with some fresh blood. In August, Dan Goldman, the Democrats’ chief counsel in Trump’s first impeachment trial, won a primary in New York’s solidly blue 10th congressional district, seeing off the left-winger Yuh-Line Niou. But Max Rose, a former veteran elected in 2018 who frequently tangled with the prominent “Squad” congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is having less luck in his bid to recapture the Staten Island district snatched from him by the Republicans in 2020.
Win or lose, even political opponents believe the likes of Slotkin and Phillips have a bright political future ahead.
That’s not just good for the Democratic party or US Jews. It’s also good for American democracy.
