Joe O’Dea celebrates the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate over state Rep. Ron Hanks with his family at Mile High Station in Denver, Colorado on Tuesday, June 28, 2022.

With Senate Republicans suffering from, in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), “candidate quality” issues in several key battleground states that had once been seen as likely to flip red, Republicans have honed in on Joe O’Dea, once viewed as a long shot candidate against two-term Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), as giving them an opportunity for victory in Colorado, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Breaking the mold: In breaking with a number of first-time GOP Senate candidates this cycle, O’Dea, 60, is a self-described “moderate” who supports allowing abortions up to 20 weeks of pregnancy and opposes the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, accepts the 2020 presidential election results and has said he does not want former President Donald Trump to seek a second White House term in 2024. 

Joining the field: “My wife and I have been blessed, we’ve really been able to live the American dream here in Colorado,” O’Dea, a businessman and political novice, told JI on Monday. “I’ve been watching our country and I really don’t like the direction that it’s headed. They’re taking away our freedoms, the policies in place have promoted record inflation, record price on gas, record crime. I just think we can do better.”

Cutting both ways: Despite his criticisms of the former president, O’Dea described the recent FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago as a “political stunt” that is “undermining” Americans’ faith in the federal bureaucracy. “The American people really want to know what’s going on,” O’Dea said. “If it was something wrong, he should be held accountable. If it’s just another political stunt by the Biden administration, which is what it looks like, that should come out as well.” 

Dealmaking: O’Dea described Israel as a “great ally,” explaining that the country’s “security is dependent on us, and our security is dependent on them to some extent.” O’Dea supports a two-state solution, and said the U.S. needs to “encourage the dialogue” between Israel and the Palestinians, but opposes sending U.S. aid to the Palestinians. “My business career has demonstrated [the importance of dialogue] throughout it. Here I am running a construction company that deals with mostly municipalities. And so in order to get a good project, to get a good outcome, you need both parties at the table and you need to negotiate a tough deal,” he explained.

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Bonus: The New York Times described O’Dea this morning as “a welcome relief for Senate Republicans,” noting his chances of flipping the seat red.

New York State Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, Democratic candidate for New York’s 10th Congressional District, campaigns in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., on Saturday, August 20, 2022.

Yuh-Line Niou, the runner-up in last Tuesday’s Democratic primary for an open House seat representing Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, drew intense scrutiny as the only candidate in a crowded field to express support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. Her endorsement of BDS last month, in a statement to JI, is almost certain to face renewed attention if she runs on the Working Families Party line in the November election — a possibility that Niou, a progressive state assemblymember, has yet to rule out.

Third-party prospect: Niou was endorsed by the Working Families Party and is now weighing a third-party challenge in New York’s redrawn 10th Congressional District, after losing the Democratic nomination to Dan Goldman, a former Trump impeachment prosecutor who narrowly prevailed by a margin of two points, with 95 percent of the vote reported. The Associated Press has called the race for Goldman, but Niou has not conceded, insisting, “We must count every vote.” Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), who lost his bid for another term, was removed from the Working Families Party ballot on Monday, opening up a possible avenue for Niou.

Site specific: While Niou had explicitly backed the BDS movement in an email to JI, however, she has since vacillated in her approach. Earlier this month, for instance, Niou’s campaign site quietly added a section on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to its issues page, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which recorded the change. “While Yuh-Line has not personally participated in the BDS movement, she supports the free speech rights of BDS activists,” the site reads. “Yuh-Line believes that protest rights are fundamental to a free society, and we must never enact laws that punish the free exercise of those rights. At the same time, Yuh-Line does not agree with all of the BDS movement’s demands nor does she embrace all of its tactics.”

Political position: Meanwhile, Niou makes no mention of BDS in an Israel policy paper drafted for her House campaign and recently obtained by JI. The paper touches in brief detail on such issues as a two-state solution, Israeli settlement expansion and legislation introduced last year by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) that would place restrictions on U.S. military aid to Israel. “Israelis, like all people, deserve to live in safety and security, and I support genuine efforts to ensure that this is the case, including defensive military aid,” Niou writes. “Our tax dollars should always have transparency for how they are used. They should never be used for harm or violations against human rights.” That passage, like several in the paper, matches almost word-for-word with comments Niou gave during a phone interview with JI in early July.

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Cargo carrying pallets of baby formula are removed from a United Airlines passenger plane arriving from London Heathrow Airport at the Dulles International Airport June 17, 2022 in Dulles, Virginia.

Among the Americans hit hard by the ongoing baby formula shortage is the Orthodox Jewish community, which has over double the average U.S. birth rate and only uses kosher-certified formulas (deemed to be in accordance with Jewish dietary law) – meaning, more mouths to feed with fewer choices of formula. So the Orthodox Union is operating an emergency team of rabbis to quickly certify overseas factories and get kosher formula to the U.S., reports Lev Gringauz for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Big fish: The OU is working with Abbott Laboratories and Mead Johnson Nutrition, two of the largest manufacturers of baby formula in the world, to kosher-certify production. “This is really to the credit of these companies,” Rabbi Moshe Elefant, CEO and chief rabbinic coordinator of OU Kosher, said. “They are strongly working on getting product into the country, but they’re very much sensitive to the kosher community to make sure that the product is kosher certified, recognizing the needs of our community.”

Speedy process: Kosher certification takes about two to three weeks, with rabbis checking both the ingredients of the formula, and what other ingredients are handled by factory equipment to avoid contamination with non-kosher material. Elefant likens the attention to detail to cooking a kosher chicken. “You could go to the store and buy a kosher chicken, and the kosher chicken is perfectly kosher,” he said. “But if you take it home to a home that’s not kosher, and that chicken is cooked in a non-kosher pot, you can’t eat that chicken, because it now became non-kosher. Same thing goes for [baby formula production equipment].”

End in sight?: “What will happen when the domestic production gets back up to snuff, and they’re able to produce enough?” Elefant said. “Will [companies] still be anxious to bring their product in? I don’t know. I really can’t answer.” The OU will likely find out soon, as Abbott’s Sturgis, Mich., factory is restarting operations to produce baby formula, though it will take another six weeks for the product to hit shelves. “If that facility opens up, and that facility is an OU-certified facility…that will alleviate the shortage, I would say very quickly,” Elefant said.

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