Signs point to a second Squad defeat in next Tuesday’s Missouri primary

Wesley Bell’s campaign is projecting confidence he will pull off an upset over Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) in next Tuesday’s closely watched primary in St. Louis, amid growing signs he is well-positioned to become the second candidate to unseat a Squad incumbent this election cycle.

With just a few days remaining until the primary concludes in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, has been gaining momentum against Bush, a two-term lawmaker who herself rose to office in 2021 after beating an incumbent.

The outspoken progressive is facing a formidable threat from Bell, a pro-Israel Democrat, as he seeks to claim a victory that would follow in the path of George Latimer, the Westchester County executive who in June defeated Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), another Squad member, in a high-profile New York primary battle.

“Wesley is finishing the last few days of this primary campaign the way he’s been running the whole time: talking with people, hearing their concerns and sharing his vision for better representation for this district,” Anjan Mukherjee, a spokesperson for the Bell campaign, said in a statement to Jewish Insider on Thursday. “That’s how he was elected as a city councilman and county prosecutor, and it’s why he will be the next member of Congress from MO-01.”

The campaign has reasons for positivity, including a new poll released last week by the political arm of Democratic Majority for Israel, DMFI PAC, showing Bell with a 48-42% lead over his opponent. 

The popular county prosecutor has won support from a wide coalition of backers including labor unions, Black leaders and the progressive group Indivisible, among other Democratic groups. Last week, he picked up an endorsement from the editorial board of The St. Louis Post Dispatch, the city’s largest newspaper.

In addition, Bell succeeded in chipping away at segments of Bush’s political base where she had drawn strong support, including Black women, according to a recent poll described to JI by a source familiar with its findings. Another poll, commissioned by the The National Black Empowerment Action Fund and released last week, suggested that Bell’s positions on public safety and infrastructure investment, among other key issues, are closely aligned with Black voters in the district.

Bell’s supporters say they feel cautiously optimistic as the race enters its final stretch.

“We’re pleased by the direction it’s going in,” said Mark Mellman, the chairman of DMFI PAC, which is among several pro-Israel groups backing the Bell campaign as Bush has grown increasingly hostile to Israel in the wake of Hamas’ attacks. “On the other hand,” he told JI on Thursday, adding a caveat, “it’s far from over.”

Bell has outraised Bush over the course of the primary, which has quietly become one of the most expensive of the cycle. The race has drawn several millions of dollars from an array of outside groups such as the super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, United Democracy Project, which is the biggest spender by far, having invested more than $8.5 million to boost Bell’s campaign.

The pro-Israel group has also conducted polling in the district that has shown margins similar to DMFI PAC’s recent survey, according to a source familiar with the matter.

“We’re not taking anything for granted,” Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for UDP, told JI. “Bush has an atrocious record on Israel and also has adopted a fringe agenda in Congress, including voting against President Biden. So we are going to make the case until Election Day.”

Bush’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

The congresswoman’s supporters, such as the progressive group Justice Democrats, have been spending heavily in the race, even as they have struggled to compete with UDP’s warchest. In recent days, Bush’s campaign has also received contributions from some left-leaning colleagues including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Delia Ramirez (D-IL), as progressives on the Hill have raised concerns about the direction of the race.

Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA), the House minority whip, is expected to campaign with Bush in her district on Friday. But while the embattled Squad member has claimed endorsements from Democratic leadership, the party’s establishment wing has largely kept its distance from the primary. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), for instance, has indicated that he has no plans to campaign for Bush in the district.

The local Jewish community, which has coalesced behind Bell, has been heavily involved in the race, including through a new group, St. Louis Votes, a nonpartisan nonprofit mobilizing Jewish voters to turn out in the election.

Benjamin Singer, the group’s CEO, told JI he anticipated “record turnout among Jewish St. Louisans, in part due to our grassroots organizing, door-knocking, phone banking and work with synagogues and other community institutions.”

“People are incredibly worried and upset by the skyrocketing antisemitism across our country,” he said, noting that his group is not telling voters who to support. “The Jewish people are simply fighting for our right to survive.”

Stacey Newman, a former state lawmaker leading Jewish outreach for Bell’s campaign, told JI that the Bell campaign office has been subjected to frequent protests which have included slurs and other hateful messages. 

“I’ve never worked on a race where I had to think about mine and my staff’s safety every day or had to check in with a security advisor frequently,” Newman said. But, she added, “it only seems to motivate volunteers to keep showing up.”

Bell’s campaign has organized several Jewish get-out-the-vote events, Jewish supporters of Bell’s campaign told JI, with another one set for this Sunday, focused on Orthodox precincts.

Meanwhile, Newman said that over 200 Jewish volunteers around the country are making daily calls for the campaign.

She said a group of 30 volunteers held a phone bank in Los Angeles on Thursday night and a synagogue in Skokie, Ill., has been making calls twice a week, while students affiliated with AIPAC and the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which has endorsed Bell, have been making calls almost daily.

In a statement to JI on Thursday, JDCA said it is expecting a win next week.

“JDCA endorsed Wesley Bell because of his commitment to public service and partnership with the Jewish community in his district,” said Sam Crystal, the organization’s chief of staff. “Bell not only shares our values but has taken the time to build strong and genuine relationships in the Jewish community, especially after Oct. 7th. The voters in Missouri’s 1st District know Wesley Bell and we’re confident that on Tuesday he’ll come out on top.”

Additional reporting contributed by JI’s senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod.

Inside the College Democrats’ antisemitism problem

As anti-Israel encampments on college campuses sprung up at dozens of universities last week, the national leadership of the College Democrats of America (CDA) asked the group’s Jewish and Muslim caucuses to draft a statement condemning the antisemitism that was quickly appearing among some protesters. 

The byzantine process that followed would lead the College Democrats’ top Jewish leader to accuse the influential organization of ignoring antisemitism at campus protests to further a one-sided, anti-Israel agenda, after the organization’s leadership nixed the inclusive statement that had been created by the top Jewish and Muslim activists in the group.

Allyson Bell, chair of the CDA’s national Jewish caucus and an MBA student at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., got to work writing a statement about antisemitism with Hasan Pyarali, the Muslim caucus chair and a senior at Wake Forest University. The two of them turned in a draft of a statement detailing antisemitism at Columbia University and stating that the College Democrats “absolutely and irrevocably denounce the antisemitism that has taken place at Columbia University and other college campuses over the past week,” according to a document shared with Jewish Insider.

But College Democrats’ national leaders weren’t pleased with this draft, Bell stated. “They wanted us to write a 50/50 approach, to both protect the peaceful side of the protesters and stand against antisemitism,” Bell told JI on Wednesday night. So she and Pyarali gave it another stab. (“It’s been really tough for people to work together on this issue, so I’m so glad that we’ve been able to work together,” Pyarali told JI.)

This time, the draft statement began with a denunciation of antisemitism and a statement of support for the “broad and interfaith coalitions of students who call for a ceasefire, release of the hostages, and a two-state solution where both Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace.” This too, was voted down. 

The statement that was ultimately released by the College Democrats on Tuesday ignored the middle path proposed by Bell and Pyarali. Instead, the statement described “heroic actions on the part of students around the country to protest and sit in for an end to the war in Palestine and the release of the hostages.” It called Israel’s war against Hamas “destructive, genocidal, and unjust” — language that Bell had never seen. An Instagram post with the statement touted the endorsement of Pyarali and the Muslim caucus, with no mention of the Jewish caucus — except a comment on the post from the Jewish caucus’ own Instagram account. 

“This should not have ever been released without Jewish students’ support. Protect Jewish students, do better,” the College Democrats’ Jewish caucus commented. 

“It’s a hurtful thing, not only to not feel heard, but also to know that the organization you’re in doesn’t believe that the antisemitism is happening and doesn’t care enough about it to even include the factual things that we’ve seen on video,” explained Bell. 

For months, the Democratic Party has faced criticism from young activists for President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas. In March, a cadre of influential progressive activist groups, including the Sunrise Movement and March for Our Lives, signed onto a “youth agenda” that focused on climate change, gun violence prevention, immigration reform and reaching a “permanent ceasefire” in Gaza. Debates over Israel and antisemitism have roiled progressive organizations since Oct. 7. 

College Democrats touts itself as the official collegiate arm of the Democratic National Committee, the party’s campaign apparatus. The group endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign, and in the past it has served as a crucial tool for reaching young people in an election year, even as the organization has drifted far to the left of the national party in recent years. Spokespeople for the DNC and the Biden campaign declined to comment when asked if they support the message adopted by College Democrats.

The statement sharply diverged from the path charted by Biden, who has supported Israel in its war against Hamas after the Oct. 7 terror attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, while also seeking humanitarian protections for Palestinian civilians. College Democrats’ national communications chair, Sohali Vaddula, a New York University undergraduate, told JI on Wednesday that the group “has opposed President Biden’s support for Israel in terms of providing military aid, which would further the genocide that’s ongoing.” 

On Tuesday morning, hours before CDA came out in favor of campus protests, a White House spokesperson slammed the violent tactics and antisemitism exhibited by some anti-Israel protesters at U.S. college campuses after activists at Columbia violently stormed a campus administrative building. Biden offered a similar message in a Thursday morning speech, the president’s first major remarks on the campus protests. 

The College Democrats statement recognizes antisemitism halfway through, with a line that university administrations “need to protect students from all forms of hatred — antisemitism and Islamophobia — without impeding on the rights of students.” It refers to antisemitism having increased “in the weeks following October 7th” with no mention of what occurred that day. College Democrats did not issue a statement on the violence in the Middle East until December, two months after the Hamas attack, when they issued a call for a cease-fire and hostage deal. They refrained from doing so sooner because the issue was “controversial,” said Vaddula. 

“This issue has always been controversial, even before Oct. 7, and especially after Oct. 7,” Vaddula said. (She was not an executive board member at the time and wasn’t involved in that decision.) 

The College Democrats’ Tuesday statement says the group stands alongside protesters who are calling for an “immediate permanent ceasefire, releases of hostages, and a two-state solution where both Palestinians and Israelis can live side by side in peace.” But this is not what most of the protesters are demanding. Chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — widely seen as a call for the extermination of the Jewish state — are heard frequently from protesters, who also often chant about “intifada.” More than 1,000 Israelis were killed in the Second Intifada two decades ago. Other language and signage exhibited at encampments across the country state that Zionists are not welcome among the protesters.

“I have not seen one student encampment talking about a two-state solution with both sides living side by side,” one former longtime Democratic Party staffer and White House aide observed. 

Pyarali, the Muslim caucus chair, disagreed: “I think the majority of people are standing for a two-state solution, and at least we want them to know that at least the majority of College Democrats are,” he told JI on Thursday. “We do think it is possible to be supportive of Israel without being supportive of this genocidal campaign.” 

Stephanie Hausner, now the chief operating officer at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and a former senior leader with both CDA and the Young Democrats of America, which serves young professionals, lamented the group’s approach to the protests and the war.

“It’s hurtful to see so many progressive allies look at the situation as a black-and-white issue, where they can’t hold in themselves, in their hearts, empathy for the Israeli people, for hostages, for Jewish people who are victims of antisemitism,” Hausner told JI. “As someone who was deeply involved in the organization, both College Democrats and Young Democrats and the Democratic Party, it’s really hard to see what’s going on in those spaces.” 

Young Democrats’ Jewish caucus chair, Zach Shartiag, echoed that assessment. “Our organization has turned a blind eye, even in my mind pre-10/7, to issues of antisemitism,” he told JI. 

“Jewish Dems and the Democratic Party firmly stand with Israel and support its right to self-defense, especially in the aftermath of the horrific attacks perpetrated by Hamas,” Jewish Democratic Council of America CEO Halie Soifer told JI on Thursday. “President Biden, the head of the Democratic Party, has never wavered from his staunch commitment to Israel’s safety and security, while Republicans in Congress blocked emergency aid to Israel for more than six months. We stand with Israel and any statement to the contrary isn’t representative of the vast majority of Democrats and President Biden.”

Vaddula, the College Democrats board member, acknowledged that the Jewish caucus did not approve of the group’s final statement. But, she added, condemning only antisemitism would present a “double standard.” The statement was adopted by a vote of 8-2 among executive board members. She said the group didn’t need to specifically mention instances of antisemitism “because we didn’t feel that the existence of antisemitism at the protests was in question.”

“The Jewish caucus had not signed off on this particular statement because we felt like this one was more representative of what our organization wanted to support,” she said. “We just don’t want statements to focus entirely on antisemitism because that is a double standard. We should also be focusing on the rising Islamophobia on campuses. There are other students that feel unwelcome on these campuses, not just Jewish students. We wanted to highlight that and not make it one-sided. We felt that the Jewish caucus was making it one-sided.” 

By ignoring Islamophobia, as the first drafts did, “certain students and identity groups [would] feel excluded from organization,” said Vaddula. When asked about Jewish Democrats who feel excluded, Vaddula said “there’s a seat at the table and the Democratic Party for everybody.”

Ultimately, she said the reason for not aligning with the Jewish caucus came down to the Jewish caucus’ difference of opinion on the war on Gaza. Vaddula said the Jewish caucus might not be “representative” of the Jewish community and cited groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization whose positions opposing the Jewish state represent a far-left fringe of the U.S. Jewish community.

“Unfortunately, the Jewish caucus just wasn’t willing to denounce genocide,” said Vaddula. “We felt like maybe that wasn’t the best representative sample of Jewish College Democrats or just Jewish young Democrats in general.” (In a follow-up conversation on Thursday, Vaddula clarified that “well-informed people of goodwill will continue to disagree when we use the word ‘genocide’ to describe the situation in Gaza, and of course, there is room for them in College Democrats.”)

“When I look at organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and all these other organizations, some of whom actually are Jewish and are also calling out a genocide, I think it’s important to think about the larger messaging that we’re sending out,” Vaddula added. “I think that is in line with what most of the Jewish groups are saying.” (A March Pew poll found that 62% of U.S. Jews say the way Israel is carrying out its war in Gaza is acceptable, and 89% see Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas as valid.)

Bell, the Jewish caucus leader, said that in conversations with other top College Democrats, someone implied that she supported genocide, even though no one had discussed the matter with her.

“The irony of saying that to a Jewish student — I honestly just can’t wrap my head around it at this point,” said Bell, who signed onto the December statement supporting a cease-fire. “It does feel like the administration, or at least members of the executive board, believe that Jewish students are pro-genocide or anti-Palestine simply for being Jewish. That conversation hasn’t even been had, but it’s assumed. And like I said before, it’s isolating. It’s alienating. It’s disheartening, and it’s hurtful. I feel for my caucus members. I hate that we’re in this position where we’re trying to figure out like, How do we get heard? How do we share how we’re feeling without getting in trouble for it?”

College Democrats’ turn away from Israel is striking against the backdrop of the organization’s long history of alignment with Israel and pro-Israel organizations such as AIPAC, which is now viewed as a target by many progressive activists. AIPAC used to bring the leaders of both College Democrats and College Republicans on bipartisan missions to Israel, a tradition it continued as recently as 2017. The leaders of both groups also used to travel to Washington each year for AIPAC’s annual policy conference. 

“College Democrats owe it to their president and national party, not to mention the Israelis and Palestinians still committed to peace and coexistence, to avoid incendiary statements that will only exacerbate the already explosive situation on campus,” Jonathan Kessler, former leadership development director at AIPAC and founder of the peacebuilding NGO Heart of a Nation.

Despite the Gaza war and campus unrest, in an April Harvard Kennedy School poll, 18- to 29-year-olds ranked the Israeli-Palestinian conflict near the bottom of a list of most important topics; it ranked 15th out of 16 topics mentioned. But Vaddula and Pyarali both told JI they are struggling with College Democrats’ endorsement of Biden in light of his support for Israel. 

“I’ve spoken to so many people who have seen his unfettered support as so soul-crushing, because we voted for Joe Biden with the thought that this is someone who’s gonna bring dignity back, someone who’s gonna bring compassion back to the White House,” said Pyarali, who called Biden “complicit in genocide.” Pyarali said Israel was “justified in their targeting of Hamas” after the “horrific” events of Oct. 7, but “it’s never been about targeting just Hamas.” He called the war genocidal from the beginning. 

The College Democrats’ Jewish caucus chair said the experience over the past week has made her question her future with the organization.

“At this point, I’ve kind of just decided that it’s worth speaking out about, even if it means that I need to move away from College Democrats of America,” Bell said. “This is important enough that I think more people need to be speaking out in support of Jewish students and the rising antisemitism that is happening across college campuses, even though currently it’s not a popular stance.”

In new ads, Jewish Dems highlight ‘antisemitic’ attacks by GOP candidates in GA, MI

The Jewish Democratic Council of America is set to launch two digital ads aimed at Jewish voters in the states of Michigan and Georgia, targeting Republican senatorial candidates in close races ahead of the November 3 elections.

The ads, which were shared in advance with Jewish Insider, accuse Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) and John James, who is challenging Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), of employing antisemitic tropes in attacks against their rivals. The ads are part of JDCA’s six-figure digital ad spend leading up to Election Day.

The 15-second video targeting James highlights a 2018 campaign ad in which a swastika briefly appears on screen — James later apologized for the symbol’s inclusion in the ad — and comments made by the candidate in June suggesting that the political establishment was “genuflecting” for the Jewish community.

Recent polling in the Michigan Senate race shows James beginning to close the gap with Peters, who is serving his first term in the upper chamber.

A screenshot from the JDCA ad featuring candidate Jon Ossoff.

The ad targeting Perdue, who is fighting a challenge from Jon Ossoff, spotlights a July Facebook ad promoted by the Georgia senator, which included an image of Ossoff with an enlarged nose — a classic antisemitic stereotype. Perdue took down the ad after coming under fire for the image. 

JDCA executive director Halie Soifer told JI that she expected Jewish support for Ossoff and Peters to increase as a result of allegations that the two Republican candidates “have invoked antisemitic language, imagery, and tropes in their campaigns.” 

“There’s a reason these two ads are similar — sadly, Republicans are using antisemitism and other forms of bigotry as part of their political strategy in 2020,” she said. 

In a candidate questionnaire submitted to JI last month, Perdue, who has maintained a slight lead on Ossoff in recent polling, touted his fight against antisemitism as a top priority. “I’ve been a friend of Israel and the Jewish community since I was very young,” the Republican senator averred. “Since I got to the U.S. Senate, I’ve made fighting antisemitism and all forms of bigotry a top priority.”