Inside Scott Wiener’s bid to succeed Pelosi
Plus, Qatar’s prime minister says Hamas violated ceasefire
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In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to California state Sen. Scott Wiener about his bid for the congressional seat currently held by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and report on President Donald Trump’s continuing support for Amer Ghalib, his embattled nominee to be ambassador to Kuwait. We spotlight former Rep. Cori Bush’s recent extreme rhetoric as she mounts a comeback bid for her St. Louis-area congressional seat, and report on Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani’s comments yesterday blaming Hamas for violating the ceasefire with Israel. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Alon Ohel, Michael Bloomberg and Len Blavatnik.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with an assist from Danielle Cohen-Kanik. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav, CNN’s Dana Bash, Oct. 7 survivor Aya Meydan and former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov are being honored tonight at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s annual tribute dinner in Los Angeles. Steven Spielberg will present Zaslav with this year’s Humanitarian Award, SWC’s highest honor.
- In Washington, Sony Pictures, the Motion Picture Association and the German Embassy are hosting a special screening of “Nuremberg.”
- Tikvah Ideas is hosting a conversation this afternoon between historian Jack Wertheimer and North American Values Institute founder David Bernstein about the challenges Jewish institutions face in combating antisemitism.
- The Future Investment Initiative wraps up today in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
- In Israel, we’re keeping an eye on the fallout from the announcement by the World Zionist Congress’ Likud delegation that it planned to appoint Yair Netanyahu, the son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to a top World Zionist Organization post. The announcement collapsed the coalition agreement that had been reached earlier in the day, prompting the WZC to vote to reconvene in two weeks. Read more from eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross here.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR
A new Quinnipiac poll of the New York City mayoral race with less than a week until Election Day shows Zohran Mamdani on track to win, but with a narrow plurality that underscores the breadth and resilience of the political opposition against him. In short, he’s set to prevail thanks to a divided opposition and backing from an enthusiastic left-wing faction of the electorate — not because he’s winning over hearts and minds in Gotham.
If the polling is accurate, Mamdani would be the first New York City mayor to win without a majority of the vote since John Lindsay in 1969. Mamdani leads former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo 43-33% in the Quinnipiac poll, with Republican Curtis Sliwa tallying 14%. Mamdani, in a sign of his political ceiling, has lost several points of support since the pollster’s survey earlier this month.
Among Sliwa voters, 55% said that Cuomo was their second choice, while only 7% said the same of Mamdani. If New York City utilized a ranked-choice voting system as it did in the primary, this race would be neck-and-neck.
The Quinnipiac poll finds Mamdani building an unconventional coalition of secular progressives and Muslims in New York City politics, running up the score with voters of no religion (71% support) or of a religion other than Christianity and Judaism (50%). Mamdani struggles badly with Jewish voters, winning just 16% support, while only receiving 28% of the vote among Catholics and 36% among Protestants.
Mamdani is winning support from just 59% of Democrats, with 31% backing Cuomo — an unusually weak showing for a Democratic nominee. But Republicans are evenly divided between Cuomo and Sliwa, preventing the former governor from capitalizing on Mamdani’s deep unpopularity with GOP voters. Mamdani is tied with Cuomo among independents at 34% apiece.
CALIFORNIA CAMPAIGN TRAIL
Scott Wiener, looking to succeed Pelosi, balances progressive politics with Jewish allyship
Scott Wiener, a veteran California state senator from San Francisco, has long coupled his lifelong support for Israel with vocal opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right members of his governing coalition. Now, the 55-year-old Jewish Democrat finds himself navigating delicate political terrain as he balances those competing views while mounting a new campaign to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in the Bay Area congressional seat that she has held for nearly four decades. With Pelosi rumored to soon announce she will retire at the end of her current term, Wiener has been fielding attacks from a far-left primary rival, Saikat Chakrabarti, as Israel and Gaza emerge as a source of division in the nascent race that is already shaping up to be among the more bitterly contested Democratic battles of the upcoming election cycle, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Israel issues: Chakrabarti, 39, a former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), is a fierce critic of Israel who has called its war in Gaza a genocide and pushed for ending all military funding to the Jewish state. He has also backed a controversial House bill, called the Block the Bombs Act, that aims to impose severe restrictions on U.S. weapons sales to Israel — and is needling Wiener for so far declining to clarify his own position on the measure, which is not likely to pass. In an interview with JI earlier this week, Wiener continued to deflect when asked for his stance on the matter, saying only that, if elected next year, “there will be new bills introduced” when he serves in the House. Despite treading cautiously around the legislation, however, Wiener confirmed that he is broadly in favor of withholding offensive arms to the current Israeli government that, in his view, “is not committed to peace or democracy.”
CROSSING THE RUBICON
Moulton doubles down on AIPAC criticism in Massachusetts Senate race
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), who recently announced a primary challenge to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), said this week that his break with AIPAC was “a long time coming.” A day after entering the Senate race, Moulton announced that he would reject any further donations from AIPAC and would return more than $30,000 from the group, a move that has continued to be a major talking point and feature of his early campaign. Coming from an outspoken moderate like Moulton, the move has also raised strategic questions in a race against a committed Israel critic like Markey, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Mouton’s move: In an online interview with a progressive commentator published on Tuesday, Moulton reiterated comments he made in his public announcement rejecting AIPAC. “Israel is our most important ally in the Middle East, but I have strong disagreements with the Bibi Netanyahu government, and I’ve been very public about those disagreements for a long time,” Moulton said. “The problem is that AIPAC is aligned with that government, so I’ve been pushing them privately to separate themselves, but they wouldn’t do that. And so ultimately, it was my decision to distance myself from the organization.” AIPAC has a history of supporting Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship regardless of who is in power.
TURNING UP THE VOLUME
Cori Bush shows no signs of dialing down extreme rhetoric in comeback campaign
In her congressional comeback attempt against Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO), former Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) is continuing to lean into extreme rhetoric and stances, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Recent rhetoric: Speaking at an anti-Trump “No Kings” rally in St. Louis shortly after launching her campaign, Bush dedicated extensive time to eulogizing murderer and escaped convict Assata Shakur, an activist who killed a police officer in 1977 and later escaped from prison. Shakur died in Cuba in September. Bush, in her remarks, described Shakur as “an activist that we recently lost” who “gave us a mantra that we live by. She said it is our duty to fight for our freedom.” During those remarks, Bush — who has faced repeated accusations of antisemitism — made passing reference to fighting antisemitism and other forms of bigotry. She finished other remarks about the Trump administration — seemingly unrelated to Israel policy — with a shout of “Free Palestine.” On X, Bush continues to attack Israel and its supporters as a central message of her campaign, including reposting unfounded claims accusing Israel of violating its ceasefire agreement with Hamas — a subject she has otherwise not addressed on her account, including when the agreement was initially announced.
sticking by his nom
Trump refuses to pull Kuwait ambassador pick despite broad, bipartisan opposition
The White House has told Republicans that President Donald Trump will not pull the nomination of Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Mich., to be U.S. ambassador to Kuwait and wants the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to hold a vote on his candidacy, despite the growing bipartisan opposition to his nomination, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs has learned.
Staying loyal: White House officials have communicated to committee Republicans in recent days that Trump would not withdraw Ghalib’s nomination because the president credits the Democratic Hamtramck mayor with helping him turn out Michigan’s Arab American vote and win the state in last November’s presidential election, two sources familiar with the ongoing discussions told JI. “We were told Trump believes he [Ghalib] helped him deliver Michigan. He doesn’t want to abandon him,” one GOP senator on the committee said of the White House’s characterization of the president’s thinking.
DOHA DIARIES
Qatari PM acknowledges Hamas violated ceasefire
Qatar’s prime minister acknowledged on Wednesday that Hamas violated the ceasefire with Israel the day prior by striking IDF troops in Gaza, calling the incident “disappointing and frustrating.” Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that, though Tuesday’s violation was highlighted by the media, “this is something that is expected throughout the ceasefire,” Jewish Insider’s Danielle Cohen-Kanik reports.
What he said: “I believe what happened yesterday was a violation, and then what we were expecting [was] that … there will be a response. But fortunately, I think the main parties, both of them, are acknowledging that the ceasefire should hold and they should stick to the agreement,” Al-Thani said. Israel did respond to Hamas’ attack with strikes in Gaza on Tuesday and said it was resuming its ceasefire commitments on Wednesday. Pressed by moderator and MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin on who exactly committed the violation, Al-Thani admitted, “Well, look, if we start to describe the violations, it will be an open-ended question. But what happened yesterday, the attack on the Israeli soldiers, that’s basically a violation by the Palestinian party.”
Bonus: The Wall Street Journal reports on frustrations in Israel over Hamas’ slow-walking of the return of the bodies of the remaining 13 hostages.
LEGAL SHIELD
ADL joins growing field of legal aid providers fighting antisemitism
Responding to historic levels of antisemitism in the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League and Gibson Dunn LLP announced on Wednesday a new joint network offering pro bono legal assistance to victims of antisemitic incidents. The new initiative joins an already crowded space of Jewish groups offering legal services, including the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, The Lawfare Project and StandWithUs, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Details: While leaders of those organizations told JI they welcome the ADL’s new venture — and some already have plans to collaborate — the network appears to overlap with existing Jewish nonprofit work, though none with the scale of lawyers and firms the ADL is engaging. Called the ADL Legal Action Network, the antisemitism watchdog’s latest initiative will involve more than 40 law firms across the U.S., with more than 39,000 attorneys offering support as co-counsel and referral counsel to people who have experienced discrimination, intimidation, harassment, vandalism or violence on the basis of their Jewish identity. Victims will be instructed to submit information about their case online to be evaluated by a professional litigation team, which will assess whether the situation warrants free representation.
Worthy Reads
Adams on Mamdani: In an interview with Molly Ball for Time, New York City Mayor Eric Adams raises concerns about New York City mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani. “Adams considers Mamdani’s promises unrealistic; he predicts buyer’s remorse when the frontrunner’s supporters realize he can’t actually freeze most people’s rent, make buses free, or bring down the cost of living. Adams is also concerned about the threat of Islamic extremism, with which he thinks Mamdani is too comfortable, and perplexed by polls that show Mamdani getting a large proportion of the Jewish vote. … In 2023, Adams hosted Mamdani and his father, a scholar of post-colonialism at Columbia University, for dinner. ‘The frightening thing is, he really believes this stuff!’ Adams tells me as he mixes the veggies. ‘Globalize the intifada, there’s nothing wrong with that! He believes, you know, I don’t have anything against Jews, I just don’t like Israel. Well, who’s in Israel, bro?’ At the dinner’s end, Adams says he told the Mamdanis, ‘Listen, I just don’t believe what you do.’” [Time]
Poisoned (Big) Apple: In The Wall Street Journal, Bernard-Henri Lévy warns of what a Mamdani victory in the mayoral election could portend for New York City and beyond. “It would be a black day for the Jews of New York. An insult to the memory of Saul Bellow, Elie Wiesel and Leonard Bernstein. A spit in the face of Emma Lazarus, the poet whose words of welcome to the humiliated, afflicted, nameless and stateless who arrived at Ellis Island are engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. It would be a beginning of rupture of the age-old pact between the world’s most cosmopolitan city and the people of the Book. It would be an earthquake in the history of Judaism: At the hour when the threat of annihilation was everywhere, New York was the last place on the planet where Judaism and Jews could not only be saved, but reinvented. Beyond the Jews, it would be the entire Democratic Party turning its back on the legacy of Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton to rally to a faction that, under the cover of ‘intersectionality,’ confuses the green flag of Hamas with that of the workers.” [WSJ]
The Power of Prayer: In the Jewish Journal, Tevi Troy reflects on the prayers — by his estimate, in the billions — said over the course of the hostages’ captivity in Gaza. “Many of the hostages themselves prayed as well. Some of them were religious when they were taken hostage. Some became religious because of the experience. The sustaining of hope through prayer is often derided in Western liberal societies. But the hostages themselves have attested to the power of prayer in giving them not only hope, but agency. And that gave them a grasp on life itself. … Even as we prayed for the hostages, most people had little expectation that they would survive the horrors that Hamas had in store for them. I myself wondered whether these prayers would have any effectiveness, even as I dutifully said them, day in and day out, for two years. And while we mourn the 83 who did not make it, we must also celebrate the miracle that 168 of them have survived, an outcome no one would have imagined possible two years ago.” [JewishJournal]
Windows of the Soul: The Forward’s Benyamin Cohen spotlights the efforts of retired Illinois judge Jerry Orbach to salvage stained glass windows from shuttering synagogues. “‘I’ve heard many congregations describe their windows as the soul of their congregation,’ [Case Western Reserve University professor Alanna] Cooper said. She found in Orbach what her fieldwork had only theorized. ‘He’s creating an afterlife for these windows,’ she said at a dedication ceremony at Northbrook, where they both spoke [and where many of the windows are kept]. Standing before the crowd that day, Cooper described the scene she’d witnessed when windows were removed from Ahavath Israel in Kingston, New York, which Orbach also rescued and relocated to Northbrook. Cooper recalled workmen carrying the panels to their crates as the last members of the congregation looked on. ‘As they lowered the windows into the boxes,’ she said, ‘it felt like a burial.’ Now she gestured toward the sanctuary, the glass alive with color once more. ‘And this,’ she said, ‘is the afterlife.’” [TheForward]
Word on the Street
The FBI is pushing back on an effort by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to make DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s office the federal government’s primary counterintelligence agency, underscoring tensions between the two agencies days after they clashed over National Counterterrorism Center head Joe Kent’s attempted investigation into the killing of Charlie Kirk…
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave $1.5 million to the Fix the City super PAC backing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, days before the city’s mayoral election…
CBS News conducted a fresh round of layoffs that included Johannesburg, South Africa-based foreign correspondent Deb Patta, whom Puck described as “one of the most prominent voices on Gaza”…
A federal judge sentenced the two men convicted of attempting to kill Iranian dissident and writer Masih Alinejad on behalf of Iran to 25 years in prison…
An inquest into the attack on a synagogue in Manchester, U.K., on Yom Kippur found that one of the attack’s two victims was mistakenly killed by a single police bullet as he attempted to hold the synagogue’s door closed, while another congregant died of multiple stab wounds after being attacked by Jihad Al-Shamie…
DAZN is teaming up with FIFA to relaunch FIFA+, a global soccer streaming service; DAZN founder and chair Len Blavatnik and FIFA President Gianni Infantino inked the deal in Riyadh on Wednesday, joined by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman…
The IDF said it conducted an overnight raid in the southern Lebanon village of Blida targeting Hezbollah infrastructure…
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is mulling the possibility of moving the country’s capital to the southern coastal city of Makran, citing the degree to which Tehran, with a population of 10 million, has become “expanded and overloaded”…
International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said that inspectors have noticed movement around Iranian sites where enriched nuclear material is stored, but that the Islamic Republic does not appear to be actively enriching uranium…
Grossi’s comments come amid reports that Iran is working to rebuild its ballistic missile program following the 12-day war with Israel in June; European intelligence sources said that Iran has received thousands of tons of sodium perchlorate from China in the last month following the reimposition of snapback sanctions on Iran…
The New York Times looks at the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of Syrians and sectarian violence around the country since the ouster of Bashar al-Assad last year…
Longtime NYPD Chief Chaplain Rabbi Alvin Kass, the oldest and longest-serving member of the department, died at 89…
Pic of the Day
The cast of Israeli satire show “Eretz Nehederet” performed David Broza’s song “Under the Sky,” accompanied by former hostage Alon Ohel on piano.
Birthdays
Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert Caro turns 90…
Former president of the University of Minnesota and chancellor of the University of Texas System and current president of the University of California, Mark Yudof turns 81… Actor, best known for his portrayal of Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli in the “Happy Days” sitcom, Henry Winkler turns 80… NBC anchor, reporter and commentator, she is married to former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell turns 79… South African-born rabbi, now leading Kehillat Bnei Aharon in Raanana, Israel, David Lapin turns 76… Professor of physics at Syracuse University, Peter Reed Saulson turns 71… Former basketball player for five seasons with the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, now a managing director at CBIZ, Joel Bruce Kramer turns 70… Israeli violinist, violist and conductor, Shlomo Mintz turns 68… President of New York University since July 2023, she is the first Jewish individual and first woman to serve in that role, Linda Gayle Mills turns 68… Meatpacking executive, sentenced to 27 years in prison in 2009 for fraud, his sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump in 2017 after serving eight years, Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin turns 66… Former CEO and later executive chairman of Qualcomm, now CEO of Globalstar, he is a co-owner of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings, Paul E. Jacobs turns 63… Partner in the D.C. office of Cadwalader, he previously served as the attorney general of Maryland, Douglas F. “Doug” Gansler turns 63… Partner and co-founder of the Irvine, Calif., law firm of Wolfe & Wyman, Stuart B. Wolfe… Global head of public policy at Apollo Global Management, David Krone… White House correspondent for The New York Times and a political analyst for CNN, Maggie Haberman turns 52… Principal in the D.C. office of Korn Ferry, Jeremy Seth Gold… Assistant secretary for investment security at the U.S. Treasury during the Biden administration, now a partner at Latham & Watkins, Paul M. Rosen turns 47… Public information officer of the City and County of Denver, Joshua Eric Rosenblum… Businesswoman, fashion designer, author and former White House advisor, Ivanka “Yael” Trump turns 44… Magician, author and lecturer, Joshua Jay turns 44… Founding director at Tech Tribe and director of social media for Chabad, Mordechai Lightstone… Bioinformatics scientist at Specifica, she earned a Ph.D in Genetics from Stanford and was on the 2010 U.S. Olympic Biathlon team, Laura Spector turns 38… Senior congressional reporter for Punchbowl News, Ally Mutnick… VP of public affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, Rebecca Schieber Brown… Senior spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, Mia Ehrenberg…
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