Alma Hernandez, a Jewish Democrat and Arizona representative now running for an open state Senate seat in Tucson, is raising alarms about rhetoric from her primary opponent that she and other Jewish leaders claim has crossed a line into antisemitism — with no pushback from local elected officials.

Hernandez, who is term-limited in Arizona’s House, has long been an outspoken supporter of Israel and identifies as a “proud Zionist,” fueling tensions with some Democratic colleagues, particularly on the left. 

But her left-wing rival in the state’s July 21 primary election, Rocque Perez, a former Tucson city council member, has throughout his campaign fixated to an unusual degree on her pro-Israel views, while using language that Hernandez says promotes antisemitic tropes about dual loyalty and Jewish control of U.S. politics.

“At the end of the day, I consider this guy to be an antisemite, and someone who is so obsessed that this is all he talks about,” Hernandez told Jewish Insider in an interview. “He hasn’t told voters what he would do differently from me. He is just telling voters that I support genocide.”

In fundraising solicitations, campaign literature and online posts, Perez has frequently cast Hernandez as influenced by “foreign” and “overseas interests” in a thinly veiled allusion to Israel, saying that he is vying “to unseat” an “Israel-First Dem tied to big money.” 

“Wish I was fooling with y’all, but I don’t think genocide is a joke,” Perez wrote in a characteristic post in April. “If anything, it’s made me even more determined to give Tucson a real choice — someone who isn’t beholden to corporations of allegiances abroad.”

Elsewhere, he has accused Hernandez of being “bankrolled” by AIPAC, the increasingly villainized federal lobbying group whose political arm does not engage in state-level races, where foreign policy is not typically a top issue. In a recent message, meanwhile, he asked his supporters to contribute $5 to “unseat a Zionist!”

“Alma’s record of placing her own political identity above the needs of her district is the true concern,” Perez wrote in the Arizona Daily Star last December, equating Hernandez’s efforts to secure funding for a Holocaust education center in Phoenix to pro-Israel legislative advocacy he dismissed as “largely directed toward international posturing” at the expense of other urgent local challenges.

For Hernandez and Jewish activists in the state who have been troubled by Perez’s messaging, his attacks are a local example of how rising anti-Zionism on the far left has increasingly intersected with antisemitism that has often been met with silence from Democratic Party leaders.

While Perez has won endorsements from several Tucson city council members as well as the county attorney, among others, none have commented on his rhetoric or responded to concerns from Jewish community members. On Tuesday, he said in a post that he had also been endorsed by Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) and Tucson Mayor Regina Romero.

Last month, the Center for Jewish Resilience at Jewish Philanthropies of Southern Arizona, which tracks local incidents of antisemitism, sent a letter to city council members supporting Perez, highlighting what the group called his “repeated pattern of public rhetoric” espousing “longstanding antisemitic tropes and narratives.” 

The organization, which did not return a request for comment on Tuesday, invited the officials “to speak further” but did not hear back from them, according to Hernandez.

“What is alarming about this cycle is there is this individual who is so out there with his rhetoric and people are just pretending that it’s not a big deal,” said Hernandez, 33. “I have been in office for a total of eight years representing this community. The fact that I’m a Mexican Jew has never been disqualifying for anyone to say, ‘Hey, I can’t support you because of that.’”

Perez’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. 

Erika Neuberg, a Jewish community leader in Arizona who is close to Hernandez, said the “race is exposing” Democratic leaders as unwilling to even acknowledge rhetoric that Jewish voters have found concerning. “You don’t have one Democratic leader looking at this rhetoric and saying this is alarming,” she told JI. “This is an attempt to disenfranchise a segment of the population.”

Andrew Kunsberg, a Jewish Democratic leader in Tucson who is backing Hernandez, said, “When you accuse somebody of being a Zionist, to me, you’re accusing them of being Jewish, and it’s already affected her race.” In canvassing for her campaign recently, he has heard from voters who say they won’t vote for a Zionist, he told JI. “To me, this is not normal.”

Kunsberg said that he has been involved in a range of local legislative races, “but quite frankly, I have never seen anything like it in my entire life.”

“She is running against the most flawed candidate I have ever seen and yet is being supported by almost our entire city council and our county attorney,” he said.

Perez’s backers have continued to stand behind him, even as the 27-year-old has faced unrelated scrutiny over past deleted posts advocating political violence against conservatives, which he has called “material put out without my consent.”

“It just seems that in our Democratic politics, individuals do not care, as we’re seeing with what’s going on with” Graham Platner, Hernandez told JI, referring to Maine’s Democratic Senate nominee. “I mean, the man literally had a Nazi tattoo, and people are like, ‘Oh, he’s fine, he’s great, he’s a progressive.’”

As early voting begins next week, Hernandez, who has clashed with local Democrats for her votes with Republicans in the Legislature, echoed other Jewish supporters in saying she was not certain whether she would prevail in the primary, even as she dismissed Perez as unserious.

“I don’t want to say that I’m completely safe in this election, because I don’t think that anyone is at this point,” she said. “Do I consider him a serious person? Absolutely not. I think he’s a joke.”

But that “doesn’t mean he can’t win an election when he is receiving the support of the establishment,” she added.

“In any other world, I felt like people would be ringing the alarms,” she told JI. “Unfortunately, these folks are encouraging the behavior.”