US and Texas flags flying over Texas State Capitol building, Austin, USA

It’s primary day in Texas, the official start of the 2022 election season. Across the state, hundreds of candidates are seeking to oust or replace current members in what already appears to be a year of record turnover, as many legislators opt not to seek reelection amid the political turbulence in Washington. While a number of races will be decided outright when polls close at 7 p.m. local time, automatic runoffs — scheduled for May 24 — will be triggered in districts where a candidate does not reach the 50% threshold. Here are some of the races we’re watching today:

TX-08: An open-seat race in the suburbs north of Houston has split Republican legislators between two leading candidates, Morgan Luttrell and Christian Collins. In Luttrell’s camp are Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, while Collins has shored up support from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), and Arizona state Rep. Wendy Rogers, who along with Greene addressed the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference last weekend. But with 11 Republicans vying for the nomination, the race is likely to head to a runoff.

TX-28: Progressive upstart candidate Jessica Cisneros, who came within 3,000 votes of unseating Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) in 2020, is taking on the nine-term congressman, who is considered to be one of the most conservative members of the Democratic caucus. Cisneros has received endorsements from a range of left-wing Democrats — including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), as well as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) — as she again takes on Cuellar, whose home and campaign headquarters were raided by the FBI last month.

TX-30: The crowded Democratic primary to succeed outgoing Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) is likely heading to a May runoff election, according to a range of experts who predict that no candidate will garner a majority of the vote required to avoid such an outcome. The ostensible frontrunners in the Dallas-based district, political observers told Jewish Insider, include the left-leaning Texas state legislator Jasmine Crockett, who notched an endorsement from Johnson — despite having previously criticized the congresswoman’s record — and Jane Hope Hamilton, a former chief of staff to Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX), who has shored up support from local establishment figures as well as Democratic Majority for Israel’s political action committee. DMFI PAC hasn’t committed any resources to the race but could get involved if the election goes to a head-to-head matchup this spring. Hamilton supports continued U.S. military assistance to Israel and rejects the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, DMFI PAC’s president, Mark Mellman, said last month. Crockett, for her part, has yet to make her Middle East foreign policy views known to the public. In a brief email exchange earlier this month, she said that such issues “haven’t been discussed within” the district and would need some time to fill out a candidate questionnaire shared with her by JI. She has yet to return it. In a broad follow-up statement provided by her campaign, Crockett said she is “running to address the many needs of the people in the district,” including “fairness, equity, education, good jobs and for the right of every Texan and American to have access to the ballot box and for their vote to be counted.”

TX-35: In Texas’ 35th Congressional District, Austin City Councilmember Greg Casar is facing state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez in the congressional district’s Democratic primary. In a letter sent from Casar last month to a local rabbi, which was obtained by JI, the progressive candidate and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — who has also been endorsed by Ocasio-Cortez and Warren — stated his opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and said that, if elected, he would support military aid to Israel. The letter drew a response from DSA, whose Austin chapter said it would no longer support Casar and that Casar was withdrawing his request for an endorsement. In addition to Casar and Rodriguez, the candidacy of Rebecca Viagran, a former San Antonio councilwoman — San Antonio makes up a sizable portion of the district — has the potential to force the race into a runoff in May.

Carla Sands, ambassador to Denmark, seen at the official inauguration of the Australian War Monument at the Churchill Memorial Park on September 17, 2020 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Carla Sands, a candidate in Pennsylvania’s crowded Republican Senate primary, often boasts of a unique connection with former President Donald Trump, who appointed her as ambassador to Denmark in his administration. But according to two sources familiar with Trump’s thinking who spoke with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel, the former president has repeatedly conveyed, even as recently as last week, that he has no intention of endorsing Sands ahead of the May primary.

‘Big favor’: “He feels like it’s a big damn deal to be ambassador and he’s already done her a big favor,” said one source who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with the former president. “He’s not going to do one here. He doesn’t think she’s going to win.” Trump conveyed a version of those sentiments directly to Sands during a meeting last summer at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., the source told JI, and has yet to change his mind.

Après Parnell: The question of who, if anyone, will receive the former president’s nod has remained a source of speculation since November, when the Trump-backed candidate Sean Parnell dropped out of the race amid allegations of domestic abuse. But Trump has since reiterated that he won’t be throwing his support behind Sands, even as the 61-year-old Senate hopeful has continued to tout her “America First” bona fides, according to another source who often speaks with the former president. “I don’t think he believes that she will be able to win in the general,” the source told JI.

Broader struggle: Since launching her campaign last July, Sands has struggled to gain momentum in the high-profile race to succeed retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA). Sands — the widow of the late real estate investor Fred Sands who became the CEO of his company, Vantage Capital, after his death in 2015 — loaned her campaign more than $3 million last year. But a source familiar with the campaign said she has been unwilling to spend more of her own money, even as she has otherwise only raised $620,000 in an increasingly expensive race where top-tier contenders like Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick are spending record sums.

‘Skeleton crew’: The apparent resistance to additional investments resulted in the departure of Sands’ consulting firm last week, following a mass resignation of campaign staff in January. Before leaving, the firm had told Sands that she would likely be better off dropping out of the race absent any future spending, according to the source. It is the second firm to have parted ways with Sands over the course of her campaign. “They are running a skeleton crew, to be sure,” the source told JI.

Read the full story here.

A person is seen at the site targeted by aerial attacks on December 05, 2021 in Sana’a, Yemen.

Dana Stroul, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said on Monday that Iranian support is helping fuel the Yemeni Houthis’ escalating attacks on the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, while distancing Tehran’s support for the militant group from the ongoing nuclear talks in Vienna,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Red-Handed: “Iranian fingerprints are all over” the Houthis’ “increasingly sophisticated, increasingly lethal and increasingly complex attack capabilities,” Stroul said at a virtual event organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “There is no indication that the Iranians are willing to dial back that support or support a political process,” she added.

Keeping Separate: Stroul characterized the efforts as largely distinct from the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran in Vienna, noting that Iranian-backed terrorism and regional aggression predated the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), continued while the agreement was in place and has escalated since the U.S. withdrew from the deal in 2018. “Inside the JCPOA, there’s no illusion that Iranian aggression is going to change in the region, which is why the United States isn’t going to make commitments about changing our posture in the region or anything like [that], even if there’s a reentry into the JCPOA,” she said.

Come Together: Stroul also spoke about the possibilities for regional missile-defense cooperation, including cooperation between Israel and states targeted by the Houthis. She said that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has been a proponent of regional air-defense cooperation. “We are working to build on this progress that [Central Command] has been doing on a daily basis,” she said. “Israel has so much to offer here and its proven air- and missile-defense capabilities present yet another opportunity to advance on the important work of the Abraham Accords.”

Case by Case: Stroul said the U.S.’s approach to integrated air defense in the region has varied by case, with Israel as a willing participant. “Israel — it’s very clear — has demonstrated the capability to defend against these kinds of attacks and is willing to offer its assistance, consultation and support to other partners in the region,” she said. “There are certain areas where U.S. involvement and facilitation is helpful, and there are others where the demand signal is there and we are in a supporting role but Israel and the countries with which it has normalized are doing just fine on their own.”

Read the full story here.

Meanwhile in Turtle Bay: The U.N. Security Council voted to impose an arms embargo on the Houthis, with 11 countries voting in favor and four — Ireland, Mexico, Brazil and Norway — abstaining.

Asher Fredman (right), Israel director of AAPI, and Eyal Biram, co-founder and CEO of ISRAEL-is signed a memorandum of understanding in Marrakesh, Morocco, on Sunday.

Seeking to spur dialogue between young Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders in the Middle East and build on the emerging ties forged by the recent Abraham Accords, the Washington-based Abraham Accords Peace Institute (AAPI) signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tel Aviv-based NGO ISRAEL-is during a special ceremony last weekend, The Circuit’s Ruth Marks Eglash reports from Marrakesh, Morocco. Taking place on the sidelines of the Leaders of Tomorrow Summit, a forum that brought together young Israeli and Moroccan leaders, the two organizations said the new arrangement would bolster such interactions and help the parties develop sustainable innovation projects, build additional cultural exchanges and promote influencer delegations between Israel and Morocco, as well as other Arab countries —  primarily the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

People ties: Asher Fredman, Israel director of AAPI, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the implementation and expansion of the Abraham Accords, who was present at the weekend seminar, told JI that the new cooperation would serve to “strengthen culture, tourism and people-to-people ties.”

Shared future: Eyal Biram, co-founder and CEO of ISRAEL-is, which educates and trains young Israelis to conduct meaningful encounters with their international peers, said the cooperation with AAPI was “deeply important.” “The seeds of this effort were planted by the United States government,” he said. “Every development could not have happened without the support of the U.S., and we are looking forward to creating more wonderful opportunities and building a shared future.”

Tomorrow’s leaders: The two organizations said they will work together to bring regional delegations to Israel to meet with both Jews and Arabs in diverse fields such as politics, business and culture, and to bring Israeli young leaders and prominent figures to the Arab world. “The key to ensuring that the Abraham Accords continue to flourish for generations is through deepening people-to-people cooperation,” AAPI’s president and executive director, Robert Greenway, said in a statement.

Read the full story here.