Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign knows it can’t take Jewish voters — who comprise significant populations in several key swing states across the country — for granted in a post-Oct. 7 environment, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) said on Thursday, following a visit to Philadelphia’s Jewish community as a Harris campaign surrogate.

The Harris campaign appears to be making a concerted push to shore up its support in those key communities. In the last week, the campaign dispatched Goldman to speak to Jewish voters in the Philadelphia suburbs, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) to Atlanta and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) to Phoenix, Ariz. The campaign’s Jewish liaison, Ilan Goldenberg, also spoke in Atlanta and Phoenix. Similar events are planned in Pittsburgh and elsewhere in key swing states.

Goldman told Jewish Insider on Thursday that the Jewish voting population this election cycle “probably has more undecided voters than most [populations] because I think Oct. 7 has completely altered the landscape for Jews.” 

“That has thrown a whole ‘nother wrinkle into the consideration, when most other people certainly are very familiar with Donald Trump and all of his fallibilities, and generally have made up their mind about him,” Goldman said. “So I think that Jews constitute a group of voters that’s not a monolith, by any stretch, but that probably has more considerations for this election than other groups of voters might.”

Goldman said that Democrats can “absolutely not” take Jewish voters for granted as the reliably Democratic voting population they have been in the past. He said that all of the swing state races are “very close” and the Harris campaign is not taking “any voter for granted.” He said the campaign is “enlisting people to represent them who can speak to all sorts of different perspectives” in a range of communities.

Goldman said that concerns in the Jewish electorate make it “very important” for Jewish elected officials like himself “to make sure that voters understand that the Democratic Party is the party that is steady, that is reliable, and that wants to solve problems, and that the Republican Party is focused purely on partisanship and political gamesmanship.”

Sam Lauter, a longtime friend of Harris and an AIPAC activist, was a panelist at the outreach event in Phoenix on Wednesday alongside Wasserman Schultz and Goldenberg. He said that while he believes a super majority of Jews will support Democrats, the Jewish community is justifiably anxious and angry after the past year.

“They don’t know who the vice president is because frankly she’s relatively new to a lot of people,” Lauter said. “People are feeling that anxiety and then they see the very loud — small in quantity, but very loud voices” criticizing Israel inside the Democratic Party.

“I get the anxiety and what is incumbent on the campaign — and what the campaign is doing — is not leaving any stone unturned, going to these people and saying, ‘This is the story we’ll share with you,’” Lauter said.

Trump and his GOP allies have also been making an aggressive push to expand his share of the Jewish vote, aiming to cast Democrats as dangerous to Israel’s security and unreliable on or outright supportive of antisemitism at home. Some in the GOP have predicted significant swings in the Jewish vote toward the former president.

Goldman said that “many” of the Jewish voters he met in the Philadelphia area were, going into the event, undecided. He also headlined a Jewish Voters for Harris fireside chat in Bryn Mawr, as well as attended a canvassing event in Lower Merion, both Philadelphia suburbs.

Lauter said there were several hundred voters in attendance at the Phoenix event, which was held in a local synagogue.

“Some of them were already on board with Harris. Some of them wanted to hear more. My understanding is that there were some folks there who actually were considering her opponent,” Lauter said. “[They] wanted to hear what people who know the vice president — in my case, for 30 years — where she is on issues that impact our community.”

Asked about the questions and concerns the undecided voters expressed, Goldman said there’s a “general perception” that, because Republicans have been vocal about campus antisemitism and campus protesters are seen as affiliated with the Democratic Party (Goldman argued that the protesters are largely not Democrats) Republicans may be seen as more “reliable on antisemitism.”

Goldman said he “took some time to point out that Republicans are very loud and they are very eager to use [antisemitism], use Jews as a political wedge issue,” but said Republicans are not serious about “substantive” solutions, like increasing funding for the Department of Education’s civil rights enforcement arm. 

Seeking resignations of university presidents, while warranted, “will not solve the problem for Jewish students,” Goldman argued.

He said he also told the Jewish voters that Trump “is actually very dangerous for Israel and dangerous for Jews,” referencing Trump’s comments blaming Jews for a potential election loss and claiming that Israel would be destroyed if Harris is elected. He further suggested that a significant faction of Republicans might ultimately cease support for Israel as they have for Ukraine.

Goldman said he framed Democrats as “steady and broadly, very supportive of Israel,” adding that he’s “sick and tired of being used as a political pawn” as a Jew and a Zionist.

The New York congressman said the response from the Pennsylvania voters was “very, very positive. I was actually a little surprised at how positive the response was, because people are struggling in the Jewish community.”

“But I think when you’re able to spend some time with them and really work through all of these different issues, it becomes very, very clear that Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party is the party that will always be there for Israel, and that will try to get at the root causes of antisemitism and eliminate it,’ Goldman continued, “and that the voices that people hear from the extreme left are really not representative of the Democratic Party at all.”

Lauter said that he spoke after the panel to voters who said they’d been “anxious” and “came here to help relieve that anxiety, and it did,” as well as committed Harris supporters who said the event had provided them with more information they could share with other Jewish voters.

Lauter said he’d shared a number of anecdotes about his relationship with Harris, including her work as San Francisco district attorney to increase hate crimes penalties after Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel was assaulted during a visit to the city, his conversations with her after her first trip to Israel and her commitment to meeting personally with AIPAC activists during her presidential campaign, and to publicizing that meeting.