As Democrats reckon with a stinging loss in last month’s presidential election, the party is facing questions about how it will handle bruising divisions over Israel that Vice President Kamala Harris struggled to navigate during her brief campaign.

Among the party leaders who will be expected to confront such challenges directly and set a tone for handling internal disagreements over Israel, which have fueled ongoing tensions, is the next chair of the Democratic National Committee, a role that several candidates are seeking ahead of the scheduled Feb. 1 election.

Underscoring a direction that candidates for the position have largely embraced, Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chair and a leading contender for the DNC job, suggested in a recent interview with Jewish Insider that he is in favor of what he called a “big-tent” approach to managing conflicts over Israel between warring moderate and far-left factions, rather than enforcing red lines on key issues.

“In a big-tent party, ensuring the voices of all different parts of our coalition unite around our nominee and our message is a source of strength for us,” he explained. 

Despite some major clashes over policy on Israel and the broader Middle East, “the vast majority of Democrats,” he said, “think Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve safety and freedom and respect — and have supported the Biden administration’s call for a cease-fire, return of hostages and a better future for Israelis and Palestinians.”

While he did not address some of the most extreme demands from activists who advocated for harsher policies toward Israel during the election, including an arms embargo, Wikler suggested that he believed the DNC made a strategic error in refusing to allow a representative of the “Uncommitted” movement to deliver remarks at its nominating convention in Chicago last summer.

Referring to the convention, he said that “featuring a voice like” Ruwa Romann, a Palestinian-American state lawmaker from Georgia who was championed by the “Uncommitted” movement but faced scrutiny over her record of anti-Israel commentary, “would have conveyed the strength and unity of purpose of the Democratic Party.”

Likewise, “lifting up the voices of so many Jewish leaders was a critical part of how we convey what our party is about,” argued Wikler, who is himself Jewish and said he helped launch his state party’s Jewish caucus.

“There’s always going to be disagreement within a big-tent party,” Wikler reasoned. “At the same time, knowing that we are deeply committed to ensuring that there’s a future of safety and security and peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike is a core value that unites Democrats and is reflected in our platform and by our nominees and elected officials across the board.”

Even as some prominent Democrats have tilted to the center on Israel in the wake of the election, his comments to JI indicate that, like other candidates for the chairmanship, Wikler, 43, is unlikely to take a confrontational approach to the activist left as it continues to speak out against Israel — alienating some party members disenchanted by such rhetoric.

In addition to Wikler, Ken Martin, the Minnesota state party chair and another front-runner to lead the DNC, said at a recent candidate forum hosted by Young Democrats of America that he also believed Romann “should have been allowed to speak at the convention, period,” drawing some cheers from the crowd.

The Democratic Party “should not be afraid of debate or dissent,” Martin argued, noting that his state boasts what he approvingly described as “the largest Uncommitted caucus” in the country. “That’s what we do in Minnesota,” he told the audience of younger party activists earlier this month. “In our party, we have a process that empowers people to organize around issues and not be afraid to stand up for what they believe in, because they will be heard and their voice will matter.”

Two other DNC chair candidates who joined the forum — Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, and James Skoufis, a state senator from New York — also promoted a “big-tent” philosophy in addressing tensions over Israel and the Middle East.

“The conflict in Gaza is the perfect example as to how we’ve gotten to this point, where we frayed on both edges of the once large Democratic tent,” said Skoufis. “Our national party has gotten into this bad habit of running away from the hard conversations.”

For his part, Wikler characterized the issue as an “existential question” in his own remarks to the candidate forum. “If we are not able to have those conversations together,” he said, “then we’re not going to be able to find the common ground to move forward and figure out what our values should call us to do.”

“We know that that fundamental idea, that every person should count, that every person should be able to live and breathe, that that informs all the work we do,” he added, “and that common value is at the heart not just of how we’ll win elections, but how we’ll deliver change in people’s lives when we do. That is what we do going forward.”

In the interview with JI, Wikler spoke in similarly broad strokes about balancing such conversations. “Our core belief is that no matter your ethnicity or race or national origin, no matter how you pray or whether you pray, the Democratic Party can be your home if you believe that everyone deserves freedom and justice and dignity and self-determination and respect,” he said. 

As Wisconsin’s Democratic Party leader, Wikler, who earlier this month launched his campaign to succeed Jaime Harrison, the outgoing DNC chair, has won plaudits for his organizing skills in a key swing state. But during his tenure, the state party has also drawn criticism from local Jewish leaders for adopting controversial resolutions on Israel and antisemitism during its convention last summer.

Wikler has been a longtime supporter of J Street, the left-leaning Israel advocacy group, as well as a critic of AIPAC — particularly when he helped lead a campaign to back the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement as an organizer for MoveOn, the progressive organization.

In response to a recent memo from Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders calling on the DNC chair hopefuls to commit to such demands as prohibiting corporate PAC donations and super PAC spending in Democatic primaries — where pro-Israel groups have claimed some of their most notable victories — Wikler said he was open to engaging in a discussion about the matter but made no firm promises for the moment.

“I think that Democrats, across the board, want to think about the influences — want people rather than money to be at the center of how political power works in the country,” said Wikler, who is eager to “rebuild trust and earn support” from working-class voters shifting to the Republican Party.

Even as he has claimed endorsements from Israel critics on the far left, including Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), Wikler has also gained support from more moderate backers such as the centrist group Third Way — whose president has recently praised him for holding “true to his mainstream, Midwestern values while recognizing that the real job is not to shift the Overton Window but to broaden the party’s tent.”

As he vies for the chair, Wikler said he views rising antisemitism as an urgent threat, most notably from the right. But he also suggested that Democrats and members of the party’s coalition will need to remain mindful about “what antisemitism can look like,” as he put it to JI.

“There’s a difference between policy disagreements and antisemitism,” he said. “But it takes building some familiarity with the way antisemitic tropes can play out to be able to help our party navigate those waters.”