New Mexico gubernatorial candidate Sam Bregman looks the part of an outlaw in the B-roll video on his campaign website, sporting a close-cropped, salt-and-pepper beard and a cowboy hat as he rides a horse through the high desert. 

But growing up in suburban Bethesda, Md., Sam Bregman’s life was more Beltway establishment than High Plains Drifter. 

His father Stan, a lawyer and political activist, was introduced to his wife by Hubert Humphrey, the Minnesota Democratic senator and, later, vice president. But what the younger Bregman took from his father was not politics — rather, it was baseball: Stan Bregman represented the Washington Senators in the 1960s before the baseball team moved to Houston. 

The sport, which Bregman played growing up, was what initially brought him to New Mexico. He moved to the state to play baseball at the University of New Mexico, but that dream faded quickly. 

“When I first got out to New Mexico, I figured out fairly quickly that I wasn’t that good in baseball, perhaps as good as I thought I was at the time, and I ended up not not playing for the University of New Mexico very long,” Bregman told Jewish Insider in an interview this month. “I ended up going, my brother and I, moving to a rural area just outside of Albuquerque and raising roping and cutting horses, and loved every bit of it.” 

Baseball still lives on in the Bregman family — Bregman’s son, Alex, is the star third baseman on the Chicago Cubs, and one of the highest-paid players in Major League Baseball — but Sam Bregman chose to follow his father’s lead and become a lawyer, and to get involved in politics. 

“I realized I could accomplish good. I was a precinct chairman of the Democratic Party when I was 18 years old in this rural place where my brother and I moved up to, and it made a big impact on my life in the sense that I realized I could be an advocate and get certain things done for the community,” said Bregman.

Bregman was elected to the Albuquerque City Council in the 1990s, and he introduced the state’s first hate crimes ordinance during that time. He spent most of his career as a lawyer in private practice before Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, tapped him to be district attorney of Bernalillo County, home to Albuquerque, in 2023. He was elected to a full term in 2024. 

Now mounting a gubernatorial bid, Bregman will face Deb Haaland, a former congresswoman who served as interior secretary in the Biden administration, in the Democratic primary on June 2. Seeking to win in a state that leans blue but isn’t a lock for Democrats, Bregman is positioning himself as a moderate who is focused on kitchen-table issues.

“On the political spectrum, many people call me a moderate. I’m not part of the radical left of our party. It’s very frustrating to see the radical left and the radical right. I’m somewhere in the middle who just wants to get things done, to better the quality of life for people, and very policy-oriented,” Bregman said. 

But even as a moderate, Bregman is taking aim at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement as the federal agency targets undocumented immigrants across the country, and faces increasing criticism of its heavy-handed tactics. 

“People are scared. People don’t want this for the future of our country. And I can tell you, I’m someone who is going to push back at every opportunity when this president does things that hurt New Mexicans, and what we’re seeing in other parts of this country is unacceptable,” said Bregman. “Using brutality on our fellow citizens — this is not the America that I see for the future. This is something far more troubling.” 

Bregman is a proud member of Albuquerque’s small Jewish community. Around 100 years ago, his grandfather fled to Baltimore from Russia. 

“He always said the greatest thing his parents ever did for him was to get him to America. I’ll never forget that,” Bregman said of his father, who was born in the U.S. 

His family’s story drives his support for immigrants and his opposition to ICE. Bregman said he was shocked by the “horrific” reports from Minneapolis last month, where federal immigration officials killed two American citizens during protests surrounding immigration enforcement actions in the region. 

“It reminds me, quite frankly, of what I’ve learned in history in the 1930s in Europe. We are seeing people who are being stopped with no reasonable suspicion, probable cause or an arrest warrant, based not on some criminal activity, but based on perhaps the color of their skin or the accent that they have, and asked for no valid reason to show them their papers to prove that they’re a United States citizen. That is not the America I grew up in,” said Bregman. “I’m going to stand up and be heard.”

As Bregman travels around the state for his first statewide race, he’ll be talking to voters about his record as a prosecutor and an activist in the state Democratic Party. But on the weekends, he still tries to visit the ranch where he used to raise cattle.

“I still try and get up there a couple times a month,” Bregman said, “and try and ride the horse as much as I can.”

Ibrar Nadeem, a Muslim affairs advisor to New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli, bragged that he wasn’t taking money from Jews at a campaign event last weekend organized by a group called Muslims 4 Jack.

Ciattarelli, the Republican nominee, appeared alongside Nadeem on Saturday evening at the event, held in Piscataway, N.J, where he called Nadeem one of his closest advisors. At the event, Nadeem alleged some Muslims in his community had accused him of “taking money from Jews” to support Ciattarelli, which he pointedly denied. 

An invitation to the event, which described the gathering as a “community dinner honoring” the GOP gubernatorial hopeful, listed Nadeem’s official title as “executive director” of “New Jersey – Muslim relations.” 

“Every time I got tired, people from my community — when I was blamed that — somebody said ‘You are taking money from Jews.’ I said, ‘I check my bank account every day, brother, it is not there,’” Nadeem told the crowd, after also having made remarks against same-sex marriage.   

Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), the state’s Democratic nominee for governor, criticized Ciattarelli in a social media post on Monday for not condemning Nadeem’s comments at the event.

“This blatant antisemitism is coming from a member of Jack’s inner circle. Jack could have condemned it but instead sang his praises. Absolutely disgraceful,” Sherrill wrote. 

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Ciattarelli’s campaign referred Jewish Insider to a post by Ciattarelli on X explaining Nadeem’s remarks and attacking Sherrill for her refusal to weigh in on the New York City mayoral race against Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani.

“Do you ever get tired of lying @MikieSherrill? You know I support same sex marriage,” Ciattarelli wrote on X on Monday night. “You also know the full clip of Dr. Nadeem’s remarks are clear: He was talking about the grief he gets from some BECAUSE of my unwavering support for the Jewish community and Israel and his own efforts to build bridges between Muslim and non-Muslim communities.”

Nadeem defended his support of Ciattarelli’s candidacy during his remarks on Saturday, arguing that an embrace of his campaign could ensure that the Muslim community could have “a seat at the table” if he were elected. 

“We want to have a seat at the table. We want to be in those rooms where decisions will be made. I do not necessarily mean me,” Nadeem explained, adding that he planned to collect resumes from some attendees in the room to recommend for positions in Ciattarelli’s potential administration. Nadeem also noted that he “wants to have a ban on same-sex marriage” in New Jersey. 

In remarks delivered shortly after Nadeem’s speech, Ciattarelli embraced the local Arab leader as a close confidante without condemning his comments about Jews.

“Dr. Ibrar Nadeem: Just once, I wish you would say what’s exactly on your mind,” Ciattarelli said, prompting laughter from the crowd. The gubernatorial nominee went on to call for a round of applause for Nadeem to thank him for his political engagement. 

“I am the first [Republican] gubernatorial candidate in history that has a Muslim as part of his inner circle of advisors, and that advisor is Dr. Ibrar Nadeem,” he later added. 

Ciattarelli then detailed how he and Nadeem, whom he described as a “very, very impressive man,” were first introduced in February. “He said to me, eight months ago, ‘I am going to help you be the next governor of New Jersey,’ and that man hasn’t let me down one day since that very day,” Ciattarelli said of Nadeem.

Ciattarelli posted about the event on Sunday, writing on Instagram alongside several photos that featured Nadeem that it was “great to be in Piscataway last night for a Meet & Greet with members of New Jersey’s thriving Muslim community. Our state is built on respect for all faiths and traditions, and I remain committed to being a Governor for every New Jerseyan — ensuring every voice is heard and every family feels welcome.”

Following the murder of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a New Jersey gubernatorial candidate, wrote to federal leaders to call for further action to protect the Jewish community and raised concerns about growing trends of antisemitic violence across the country.

Sherrill wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi to call on the government to provide additional resources and funding to allow houses of worship and nonprofits to protect themselves — including through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program — and ensure that law enforcement can properly investigate and prevent antisemitic violence.

In the letter, Sherrill described the shooting as unequivocally motivated by antisemitism and as  “an assault on the core values and ideals of our nation — particularly the right to religious expression and to practice one’s faith without fear of violence” and said “we must take every effort to prevent it from happening again.” She said the attack “highlight[s] the threat of violence against Jewish Americans and residents across the United States.”

“As antisemitic violence and threats have increased, I remain concerned that synagogues, Jewish faith-based organizations, and nonprofits are under-resourced for the heightened threats that they face,” Sherrill said. “I urge you to take whatever actions you can to ensure that the programs that support these organizations are properly resourced and staffed.”

In addition to NSGP funding, Sherrill expressed concerns that funding cuts will leave “initiatives within your departments meant to combat antisemitism and other hate crimes … unable to address the rising threat that we face today.” She pointed specifically to a range of programs to address and prevent hate crimes.

The administration has sought to cut funding from hate crime grant programs it claimed violate the First Amendment. Sherrill urged the administration to “maintain and expand funding for these programs.”

Sherrill linked the shooting to the April arson attack on the residence of Penn. Gov. Josh Shapiro, pointing to the arson as another example of the “ever-present risk of antisemitism and violence to all Jewish Americans,” given that the arsonist, who targeted the governor’s mansion on the first night of Passover, was allegedly motivated by Shapiro’s support for Israel. Sherrill also highlighted vandalism and firebombing incidents at synagogues in her district. 

“Our country faces a crisis of antisemitic violence and threats that show no signs of abating,” Sherrill wrote. “It is vital that the federal government take urgent action to protect Jewish communities, prosecute perpetrators of antisemitic hate crimes, and support community programs to counter antisemitism. Jewish Americans face the severe threat of antisemitic violence every day, and it is long past time that the U.S. federal government prioritizes their safety.”

Another gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), publicly urged other candidates in the race to support state legislation to codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism last week, in response to the shooting. Sherrill has said she supports that bill.

Some in the Jewish community have seen Sherrill’s record on Jewish issues as spotty at times compared to Gottheimer, but a pair of progressive candidates with more questionable records on such issues have become increasingly competitive against Sherrill, who leads in polling.