Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Thursday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we interview N.J. gubernatorial candidate Steven Fulop, and look at the fallout from Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen’s move to publicize his meeting with his Libyan counterpart. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Stephanie Hallett, Elliott Abrams and Claudia Sheinbaum.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning to meet with Jewish leaders on Sept. 20 during the annual gathering of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, two people familiar with the matter told Jewish Insider on Wednesday.
Participants will include “a diverse cross section of American Jewish leaders as well as Turkish Jewish community leaders,” according to Ezra Friedlander, a lobbyist whose clients include the Turkish government. It is being organized by the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., Friedlander said.
Erdogan, who won reelection to a third five-year term in May, also met with Jewish leaders during last year’s UNGA, when he convened with representatives from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, AIPAC and J Street, among other groups, for an hour-long discussion at the Turkish mission to the U.N. in Manhattan.
During the conversation, Erdogan said he would visit Israel, which restored full diplomatic ties with Turkey in 2022 after years of strained relations. He has yet to follow through on the pledge, for which he did not set a firm date. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been scheduled to visit Ankara in late July but postponed the trip due to health issues.
And in Michigan, the state’s 2024 Senate race got a lot more interesting yesterday when former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) announced his campaign. “No candidate is better prepared to have an impact on day one. I’m ready to serve again,” Rogers said in his videotaped announcement.
Rogers, a former congressman who has won tough races in a swing district centered around the state capital of Lansing, hails from the pragmatic wing of the party — and has spoken critically of former President Donald Trump, particularly in his role as a CNN political analyst. Yet national Republican officials are bullish about his candidacy, believing he holds the potential to win over the Trump-skeptical faction of the party while still being acceptable to the ascendant MAGA wing.
One of his likely primary rivals, former Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI), faces deeper resistance from the Trump wing of the party. In 2022, he lost in a tight primary to a Trump-endorsed candidate after voting for Trump’s impeachment. (Meijer announced earlier this week that he’s forming an exploratory committee.)
More consequentially, Rogers faces the likelihood of primary opponents to his right, with former Detroit Police Chief James Craig emerging as the best-known potential challenger. But Craig’s poor political track record is giving Republicans hope that a more traditional candidate like Rogers can emerge. Craig was disqualified from the 2022 governor’s race after gathering fraudulent signatures.
The GOP nominee will likely face Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), the Democratic frontrunner.
A Slotkin-Rogers matchup would pit two lawmakers with significant national security experience. Rogers, who served in the House from 2001-2015, is the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, while Slotkin is a former CIA analyst.
Both also represented the same district, based in Lansing, one of the biggest battlegrounds in the country.
garden state gambit
Steven Fulop wants to be the first Jewish governor of New Jersey

Steven Fulop, the popular three-term mayor of Jersey City who launched an early campaign for governor in April, has long embraced his Jewish background as a key part of his biography. The 46-year-old Democrat studied at an Orthodox Jewish day school that he credits with influencing his “moral compass.” As the grandson of Holocaust survivors, Fulop was among the first state officials to call a 2019 shooting at a kosher market in Jersey City an antisemitic hate crime. The mayor literally wears his Jewish identity on his sleeve: His son’s Hebrew name, Yosef — the same as Fulop’s late brother — is tattooed on his right forearm, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel writes in a profile of the candidate.
‘Always room for a first’: Now that he is running for the Garden State’s top job, Fulop recognizes that his Judaism may carry broader significance — if elected, he would become New Jersey’s first Jewish governor. In an interview with JI last month, Fulop said he was surprised to learn recently that New Jersey has never elected a Jewish chief executive, given its long history and sizable Jewish population. “But there’s always room for a first,” he reasoned, sounding a note of optimism. “That’s the good thing.”
Drawing a distinction: Even as he could set a historic precedent, however, Fulop stressed that he is not necessarily running as a Jewish candidate. Instead, he sees himself as “a candidate who happens to be Jewish,” he said, noting that the difference is “nuanced” but informs his approach to the race. “Having a very, very strong Judaic foundation has been a moral compass for me — about service, about how to treat people, about right and wrong,” said Fulop, a former investment banker who joined the Marines shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks and served in Iraq before seeking public office. “I’m not running as a Jewish candidate, but it is intertwined. It’s who I am.”