The Week After Michigan

Jewish Politics & Power is published every other week. Sign up for our newsletter for updates.

---

1. The day after Michigan

Michigan’s Senate primary last week marks the last major battle for pro-Israel Democrats in this election cycle. A grueling period of division, fierce political battles, and millions of dollars spent on negative campaigns is coming to an end. Now it’s time for Democrats to take stock and figure out how that thorny issue known as Israel will play out in the run-up to the November midterms.

Michigan was the most coveted prize for progressives and critics of Israel. Sixty million dollars later (more than half of it from an AIPAC-affiliated Super PAC), the pro-Israel camp lost. By a tiny margin, but still a loss. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan public health official known for his harsh criticism of Israel, narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens, who was favored by AIPAC and by many in the Michigan Jewish community.

Progressives added that win to a list of other high-profile achievements in this year’s primary races, among them three House candidates from New York who are aligned with mayor Zohran Mamdani and support his views on Israel; a New Jersey House seat won by a candidate harshly critical of Israel in a special election; an Ohio Jewish progressive running on an anti-AIPAC ticket; and a Colorado candidate who focused her campaign on Israel and Gaza. 

There were also a fair number of defeats for the anti-Israel camp, among them the most recent resounding loss in Missouri of former congresswoman Cori Bush, who failed to win back her seat after running a campaign centering on criticism of AIPAC.

In Maine, Democrats dodged a bullet when the campaign of populist progressive Graham Platner, a harsh critic of Israel, imploded following revelations of his sexual misconduct. 

It’s a mixed bag, but several trendlines emerge:

First, criticizing Israel—even focusing a majority of their campaign on criticism of Israel—is no longer a losing strategy. Once seen as a political kiss of death, attacking Israel’s government, policies or even its existence as a Jewish state is now totally acceptable, and at times can even help win a race.

At the same time, the growing power and involvement of mainstream pro-Israel players, mainly AIPAC, has proven effective at times. The pro-Israel lobby has caused some anti-Israel candidates to lose their congressional bids, forced others to spend millions in countering AIPAC’s negative ads and perhaps even deterred some left-leaning candidates from expressing too harsh a view on Israel.

And perhaps most important, as the primary season nears its end, is that for the first time ever, Israel is a hot-button political issue for Democrats across the board. 

Focusing campaigns on attacking or defending Israel can be politically beneficial for candidates, but it is always bad for Israel and for its American supporters. The bedrock of pro-Israel advocacy has always been the notion that even when there were differences regarding specific Israeli policies and actions, all agreed on several key principles: that the United States and Israel are allies, that the two nations share both interests and values and that America needs to provide Israel with necessary military aid to help it survive in a hostile region. Now, each one of these ideas is open to debate.

2. Democrats’ moment of decision

Looking ahead to the November elections, Jewish and pro-Israel Democrats now have to make tough decisions, with no great options at hand.

– The angry approach: Some Jewish Michiganders who supported Stevens and who are appalled by El-Sayed’s views on Israel have decided to switch sides. One of them is Rabbi Asher Lopatin, a Stevens supporter, who told The Forward that he is considering voting for Republican Mike Rogers, but in any case, “I will not vote for Abdul El-Sayed, definitely, and I would tell people they should not.” 

Long term, this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the more Democrats refuse to vote for far-left anti-Israel candidates, the stronger the message is to the party to avoid such candidates in the future. On the other side, helping Republicans like Rogers win would cost the Dems the chance of winning over the Senate and would deliver a blow to many Democratic domestic and international priorities.

– The “always blue” approach: Here, even those who strongly oppose the views of the progressive candidates running in their state or district will support them unequivocally, fearing that not doing so will hand a victory to the Republicans. The downside of this approach is that pro-Israel voters lose any leverage they had in the party and can only expect more candidates they disagree with to emerge in the next election cycle.

– The engagement approach: This is the toughest but perhaps the most effective approach. With less than 90 days to the midterms, now could be the right time for concerned Jewish voters to engage with the candidates they didn’t support and do not agree with, seeking common ground and conveying their concerns.

El-Sayed, who described Israel as “bloodthirsty” a day after winning his primary race, has also promised full protection to the Jewish community, and in interviews has expressed a more nuanced approach to the issues of U.S. military aid to Israel and to “Israel’s right to exist.” 

What would such an engagement look like? It won’t convince the candidate to support Netanyahu’s policies, nor will it dissuade them from describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” or “war crimes.” But, at least in the case of El-Sayed, concerned Jewish Democrats can explain why his expression of understanding for a Lebanese-American who carried out an attack on a West Bloomfield synagogue after his relatives were killed by Israel is wrong and raises fears of antisemitism and of blaming American Jews for Israeli actions. They can try and make the case for choosing more careful words to describe actions of the Jewish state, or explain why they believe military aid to Israel can definitely be discussed, and perhaps even limited or conditioned, but not described as the reason blue-collar Americans don’t have health insurance.

This might work with candidates like El-Sayed. It will definitely be effective with New York’s Brad Lander, though probably not move the needle at all with his fellow New Yorker Darializa Avila Chevalier. But it’s worth trying. Like it or not, many of these candidates will end up in Congress and will vote on policies American Jews care about.

3. AIPAC’s next move

How should AIPAC view the outcome of the Michigan Senate race? 

On the one hand, it could serve as a sign that sometimes all the money and the effort in the world aren’t enough to sway an electorate energized by a talented candidate whose criticism of Israel is front and center. Or, it could be seen as proof that leaning in heavily to defeat El-Sayed was the right move, because it almost worked.

AIPAC chose the latter approach.

“This narrow loss stings, but [Stevens’s] defeat doesn’t change our principled opposition to the dangerous policies El-Sayed wants to bring to the U.S. Senate,” wrote AIPAC president Bernie Kaminetsky in a letter to supporters. The lobby made clear it intends to gear up for a second round, this time mobilizing its donors and members to defeat El-Sayed in the midterms and send Republican Mike Rogers to the Senate. “Now, as the race turns to November, our members remain determined to ensure that voters reject Dr. El-Sayed and his radical anti-Israel agenda,” AIPAC wrote, adding that the group’s success should not be measured by one single race, since this is a “generational fight.”

Doubling down could seem the natural course of action, but it is not free of perils for the lobby. Raising massive amounts of money once again will not be an easy task, but that’s not the biggest problem. AIPAC would rather get anti-Israel candidates out during the primaries, thus avoiding the semblance of partisanship. Having missed that opportunity, now the lobby will have to go in big in order to defeat a Democrat and help a Republican, a move that carries problematic optics for a group that insists it is nonpartisan.

4. Does Fetterman still belong?

During his brief visit to Washington last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held only a few meetings with lawmakers. One of the few to make their way to Blair House for a sitdown with the visiting Israeli leader was Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. The prime minister’s office sent out a detailed press release and video of the meeting, in which Netanyahu praised Fetterman for his “courage and clarity,” and Fetterman responded that “it’s been disappointing, as a Democratic politician, how our party continues to behave—and we had the culmination of that, where that worthless mayor in New York, you know, saying these kinds of ridiculous claims. Now I think, as far as I know, I was the only Democrat that was proud to push that trash back.”

For Netanyahu, the meeting served both as an opportunity to demonstrate that his government still has support among congressional Democrats and to take a swing at progressives who criticize him.

Fetterman later sat down for an interview on Jon Stewart’s podcast, where he stated that Israel is his “red line” and that he will always stand up for it. Stewart tried to push back, asking Fetterman how it could be that his only red line is Israel, since “that is not our country.”

Fetterman didn’t flinch and insisted that Democrats who have turned their back on Israel do not belong in the party, at a certain point even accusing members of his own party of supporting the Iranian regime.

Fetterman isn’t up for reelection until 2028, but if the midterms deliver a tight win for the Dems in the Senate, he will emerge as their weakest link. The more the party drifts away from Israel, the likelier Fetterman will be to cross the lines and align with Senate Republicans.

5. A bipartisan moment

Last week, Republicans and Democrats in both chambers joined forces to introduce the Right to Worship Act, which, similar to legislation recently passed in New York, would set a 100-foot buffer zone free of protests and demonstrations around places of worship. The motivation behind this legislation is the need to protect Jews from protests blocking access to their synagogues or intimidating them from attending services.

The bill is co-sponsored in the Senate by Texas Republican Ted Cruz and Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin; in the House it’s co-sponsored by Republican Brad Knott of North Carolina and New York Democrat Tom Suozzi.

Bipartisanship. That happens too, sometimes.

(Top image credit: Kenneth C. Zirkel (CC BY-SA 4.0) / Tessa Bury (CC BY 4.0) / Marc A. Hermann/MTA (CC BY 4.0) / A LO CLARO and Indhira Baez (CC BY 4.0) / Charles Edward Miller (CC BY-SA 2.0) / Andra Turner (CC BY-SA 4.0))