Last week, a congressional primary election in an Ohio district that covers the city of Cleveland delivered its surprise verdict in an ideological showdown between the Democratic Party’s moderate establishment and its insurgent hard left: a crushing defeat for Nina Turner, an abrasive left-winger and high-profile supporter of former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
The victorious candidate, local party chair Shontel Brown, is almost certain to defeat her Republican opponent and win an autumn by-election in the solidly Democratic seat in the House of Representatives.
Brown, who overcame a 35-point poll deficit to beat Turner by six per cent, was helped to victory by Cleveland’s large Jewish community and the strong backing of national pro-Israel and Jewish groups.
Brown’s success follows a pattern of wins by moderate Democrats against the party’s left which stretch from Louisiana to New York and Virginia.
Turner, a former state senator who co-chaired Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, was backed by a slew of progressive groups and politicians.
Our Revolution, the pro-Sanders pressure group of which Turner is a former president, and Justice Democrats, which seeks to topple moderate Democrat incumbents, poured resources into the district.
All four members of “The Squad” –the group of prominent, controversial left-wing congresswomen first elected in 2018 — endorsed Turner, with one of their number, New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, urging: “Please send me Nina.” Sanders himself campaigned with Turner the weekend before the election.
But Brown — who declared “the other candidate made a commitment to be a member of the Squad, I’m running to be a member of Congress” – managed to rally her own powerful coalition of support.
Alongside endorsements from the Congressional Black Congress, Hillary Clinton and a number of senior House Democrats, she also won the backing of the Democratic Majority for Israel (DFMI), the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA), and the cross-party Pro-Israel America PAC.
While Turner insists that she is not anti-Israel and opposes the BDS movement, she supports conditioning US military aid to the Jewish state. During May’s Gaza conflict, she shared a social media post with the hashtag #SaveSheikhJarrah and #EndApartheid. Brown, by contrast, spoke at a rally during the outbreak of violence in which she condemned Hamas rocket fire and backed Israel’s right to defend itself.
In all, the JDCA spent a five-figure sum on ads targeting Jewish voters in the district.
That sum, however, was dwarfed by the $2million which DMFI splashed out backing Brown. Some of the group’s ads attacked Turner for her alleged divisiveness, citing her refusal to back Clinton in 2016 and her description of voting for Biden as like “eating half a bowl of sh*t”.
Given the president’s 90 per cent-plus approval rating among Democrats, it proved a lethal line of attack.
Doug Thornell, a Democratic strategist who advised Brown, said her winning coalition of African-American, suburban and Jewish voters represented a potent bloc for a candidate seen as a “Biden Democrat”. “They tend to be more moderate voters … a bit more practical,” he told the New York Times.
Voting in historically Jewish areas such as Shaker Heights and Beachwood outstripped turnout elsewhere in the district.
The JDCA said that given their high turnout and overwhelming backing for Brown, Jewish voters had “made the difference” in the race, while DMFI hailed a “tremendous victory” for “the pro-Biden-Harris, pro-Israel majority in the Democratic Party”.
Brown herself appeared to echo that sentiment, thanking her “Jewish brothers and sisters” during her victory speech, and speaking of her support for Israel.
Turner, however, had a rather different perspective.
Despite outraising Brown by some $3million, she made a controversial statement: “We didn’t lose this race, evil money manipulated and maligned this election.”
The Anti-Defamation League tweeted in response: “We are extremely troubled by Nina Turner’s comments. Intentional or not, they echo long-standing #antisemitic tropes.”
However, Turner’s remarks will no doubt have convinced many Jewish voters who backed Brown that they had indeed made the right choice.
“This is Joe Biden’s party now,” suggested political commentator Marcus Johnson after the Ohio result, reflecting the belief seemingly confirmed by the result that the president’s brand of centrist politics is popular among Democratic voters, despite criticism from left-wing activists.