Daily Kickoff
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report from a Republican Jewish Coalition event in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., with former Rep. Mike Rogers and Sen. Lindsey Graham, and cover Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s closing pitch to Jewish voters in Pittsburgh. We have the scoop on a call from members of Congress to France against a proposed arms embargo on Israel, report on Sen. J.D. Vance’s comments on what he sees as conflicting Israeli and U.S. interests and cover last night’s Knesset vote banning UNRWA operations in Israel. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Marc Rowan, Jeff Bezos and Liev Schreiber.
What We’re Watching
- Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver a closing argument for her candidacy tonight on the Ellipse, just off the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The speech will take place around 7 p.m. ET.
- Former President Donald Trump will be attending a roundtable event hosted by the conservative group Building America’s Future in Delaware County, Pa. in the afternoon. He then will travel to Allentown, Pa., where he will be headlining an evening rally. Trump is also holding a press conference at Mar-a-Lago this morning at 10 a.m. ET.
- The three-day annual Future Investment Initiative, widely dubbed “Davos in the Desert,” kicked off in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, earlier today. Featured speakers today include Citadel’s Ken Griffin, Alphabet’s Ruth Porat, Eric Schmidt, Starwood Capital’s Barry Sternlicht, Blackstone‘s Stephen Schwarzman, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Carlyle’s David Rubenstein and Harvey Schwartz, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Manna Tree co-founder Gabrielle Rubenstein, Apollo’s Marc Rowan, Goldman’s David Solomon, BDT-MSD partner Dina Powell McCormick, Sir Martin Sorrell, Oak Hill Advisors’ Glenn August, Canyon Partners’ Joshua Friedman, former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Ken Moelis from Moelis & Co., Treasury co-founder Eli Broverman, Brevan Howard CEO Aron Landy, Third Point’s Dan Loeb and CloudKitchens’ Travis Kalanick.
What You Should Know
With a week until Election Day, it’s worth offering an in-depth breakdown of the political state of play, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes.
The presidential race is very close, but former President Donald Trump has been gaining ground throughout October, and holds a narrow advantage over Vice President Kamala Harris. That said, the race is competitive enough that even a last-minute momentum shift could make the difference.
There are signs for the Trump campaign to be concerned about: 1) overconfidence verging on hubris leading the candidate to hold an ill-advised MAGA rally on Sunday in New York City and spending time in blue states that won’t decide the election; 2) polling suggesting voters who are undecided or could change their minds favor Harris; 3) the Trump campaign’s overreliance on low-propensity or first-time voters, in contrast to the Harris advantage with the most dependable voters.
But the big-picture indicators are challenging for Harris. Most high-quality public polls show Trump either narrowly ahead or statistically tied and in a more favorable position than a month ago. Operatives from both parties in the three “blue wall” states we’ve talked to suggest that the battlegrounds are all very close, but Trump has been gaining ground. The more Harris has been exposed to sustained interviews in the mainstream media, her favorability rating has declined.
Her most likely path to 270 electoral votes is looking similar to the one President Joe Biden faced before his disastrous debate: sweeping the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. With the high concentration of white working-class voters in all three states, she faces more resilient headwinds from skeptics than even the embattled former president.
Operatives we’ve talked to in both parties agree Arizona and North Carolina are looking tougher for Harris to win, but Democrats are hopeful that if the vice president can rebound with Black men and drive high turnout in Atlanta and its suburbs, she still has a pathway to prevail in Georgia.
The battle for the Senate is looking like Republicans will win between 51-55 seats, with the lower end counting as a moral victory for Democrats. Republicans are confident they’ve got West Virginia and Montana locked down, and are growing increasingly optimistic about winning GOP-leaning Ohio. If Trump carries the Midwestern battlegrounds, all of which feature close Senate contests, there’s a very real chance for a GOP sweep, which would get the party to a healthy 54-seat majority.
The Nevada Senate race between Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Republican Sam Brown is tightening in the final days, with the top GOP Senate super PAC belatedly investing millions in a race the party thought was lost. This is another state where a decisive Trump victory could offer coattails to an underdog Republican challenger — even if the odds still favor Rosen.
Democrats still hold out hope of ousting Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rick Scott (R-FL) or Deb Fischer (R-NE), but the GOP fundamentals of those states should still pull them over the finish line even if they’re close. Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) will probably need a stronger-than-expected Harris performance to pull off the upset.
Democrats have a solid shot to win back the House, especially if Harris prevails or the presidential race is very close. Many of the biggest battlegrounds are in the Democratic strongholds of New York and California, in districts that Biden carried in 2020. Republican lawmakers in affluent suburban districts — like Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), Ken Calvert (R-CA) and Dave Schweikert (R-AZ) — will find it hard to outperform a weak Trump showing.
But if Trump wins the presidency by more than a whisker, it’s hard to see Republicans losing their narrow House majority. They’ll have opportunities to flip a handful of Democratic-held Trump seats in Alaska, Maine and Washington state, and are benefiting from the partisan redistricting in North Carolina.
Either way, it’s hard to see whichever party wins the majority holding a significant edge. And with slow vote counting expected in California and New York, it may take up to a week to conclude which party will hold the gavel in the lower chamber.
michigan matters
Rogers looks to assure Jewish voters that Arab, Muslim outreach won’t compromise support for Israel

Speaking to Jewish voters in Michigan on Monday evening, former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the Republican Senate candidate in Michigan, made his closing pitch to the potentially decisive voting bloc, and sought to assure attendees that his outreach to Michigan’s sizable Muslim and Arab population doesn’t mean he’s compromising his support for Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports from Bloomfield Hills.
Outreach efforts: “We’re trying to do outreach in the Muslim community, but I also tell them where I’m at,” Rogers said during a Republican Jewish Coalition event on Monday evening in the Detroit suburbs. “I never walk away from where I’m at on Israel, and let me tell you, the first 30 minutes are always a little bumpy.” But Rogers said that Muslim voters respect and support him for other policies even if there are intractable differences on Israel. And he said he thinks his frankness about Israel policy differences is winning him respect and support.