As Gavin Newsom travels around the country promoting his book — a memoir widely seen as a first step on his journey toward a 2028 presidential campaign — the California governor made appearances in South Carolina and New Hampshire, two early Democratic primary states that are important stops for any likely candidate.

For a trip signaling presidential ambitions, Newsom’s choice of interviewer is revealing. On Thursday night, he was interviewed in Portsmouth, N.H., by Jack Cocchiarella, a self-described “progressive political pundit,” part of a group of Gen Z influencers with growing clout among Democratic voters. 

Courting those content creators has been central to Newsom’s efforts to build an engaged national audience. 

He’s adopted a go-anywhere media strategy that has put him in conversation with everyone from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, to conservative Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro. On Thursday, at the event with Cocchiarella, Newsom said he would sit for a conversation with the far-left streamer Hasan Piker, one of the most recognizable names among young political influencers — and who has an unshakeable predisposition toward antisemitism.

In recent months, Cocchiarella has adopted a stridently anti-Israel posture that mirrors some of the incendiary rhetoric frequently employed by Piker, though Cocchiarella isn’t yet as prominent as Piker.

But the Columbia University graduate has quickly gone from being a small-time digital strategist for Democratic candidates in Florida to a YouTuber who has scored interviews with some of the most important members of the Democratic Party. In the 20 months since he posted his first YouTube video, he has garnered 1.47 million subscribers, with some of his videos fetching up to 5 million views. Most of them feature Cocchiarella attacking President Donald Trump.

While Cocchiarella has developed a somewhat cheeky style drawing on Democrats’ opposition to Trump, he’s far less aggressive than Piker, and more in line with the talking points of mainstream Democrats. He’s interviewed many of them: Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Mark Warner (D-VA); House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY); and Reps. Greg Landsman (D-OH), Robert Garcia (D-CA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Eric Swalwell (D-MA) all appeared in video interviews with Cocchiarella, as did Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. 

But against this backdrop, Cocchiarella also has a combative streak. In October, weeks after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed, Cocchiarella drafted a tweet responding to news that Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk created, would be putting together an “All-American” halftime show to compete with the Super Bowl’s official halftime show, where the Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny was set to perform. “Shoot him again,” Cocchiarella wrote. 

The message was never posted on X, but he shared a screenshot of the draft to a private Instagram story. “Thoughts?” Cocchiarella wrote. He did not respond to a request for comment. (A screenshot of the post was obtained by Jewish Insider.)

Israel did not appear to be an issue Cocchiarella cared much about until last year. “Also f*** Israel just to be clear,” he wrote in a post on X in October. “STOP SENDING MY F***ING TAX DOLLARS TO ISRAEL,” he wrote in December. “Israel is a terrorist state that threatens and kill [sic] Americans,” Cocchiarella posted this week, days after the U.S. and Israel began military strikes against Iran. 

In December, Cocchiarella interviewed Newsom and asked him about whether he would accept money from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby.

“AIPAC, DMFI [Democratic Majority for Israel], the Israel lobby at large. This has become a big conversation, [for] someone like myself, and I think at this point a broad majority of Democrats are saying we don’t want candidates who are taking money from AIPAC. We don’t want candidates who are beholden to the Israel lobby,” Cocchiarella said. 

In response, Newsom said he had never received financial support from AIPAC — which only contributed to federal campaigns — just like he has never accepted donations from the tobacco or oil lobbies. 

On Thursday, at the New Hampshire event, Cocchiarella asked Newsom to clarify comments he had made two days earlier suggesting that Israel could be considered an “apartheid state.” Cocchiarella said some online conversation has suggested Newsom is just following the polling, that “you don’t actually believe what you said there,” that “it’s kind of like a shape-shifting move.” But he said it reminded him of Newsom’s decision in 2004, when he was mayor of San Francisco, to give out same-sex marriage licenses — much to the chagrin even of other liberal Democrats in the state who had not yet come out in support of gay marriage.

“History echoes a little bit in the same way,” Cocchiarella said. 

In response, Newsom spoke about growing up deeply connected to the Bay Area Jewish community and even traveling to Israel with his family. 

“I want to level set on that basis. What I can’t accept today, though, is what Bibi Netanyahu is doing in Israel, and I just can’t countenance that,” said Newsom, who compared his anger at Netanyahu’s efforts to annex the West Bank to the way he felt when same-sex marriage was not yet legal.

“I can’t sit back in the spirit of this book, in the spirit that defined marriage equality, in terms of my values and beliefs, and watch that,” said Newsom. 

Before Newsom’s interview with Cocchiarella, a spokesperson said the governor often sits for interviews with people whose views diverge from his own.

“Of course the governor doesn’t agree with every statement of every person he ever sits down with,” Izzy Gardon, Newsom’s communications director, told JI. “He is proud to engage with people across the political spectrum — from Ben Shapiro to Mayor Mamdani. The governor believes in free speech and open debate, something Donald Trump, who dines with neo-Nazis like Nick Fuentes, clearly doesn’t understand.”

Authorities said on Sunday that they believe the suspected gunman in the fatal shooting at a country club in New Hampshire on Saturday night shouted “Free Palestine” in order to “create chaos” at the scene, suggesting they do not view the case as motivated by antisemitism. 

Hunter Nadeau, a 23-year-old Nashua, N.H., resident, was apprehended and taken into custody near the Sky Meadow Country Club on Saturday. Shortly before, Robert Steven DeCesare, 59, was killed in the shooting while attending dinner at the club, located about 40 miles north of Boston, and two other adults, another restaurant patron and an employee were injured. The employee was in stable but critical condition as of Sunday, Nashua Police Chief Kevin Rourke said. 

Four other restaurant patrons were wounded as a result of the chaos as people tried to escape the shooting.

According to local reports, as a wedding was taking place at the club, gunfire rang out as guests were gathering around the dance floor for the bride and groom’s first dance, which was set to include some individuals breaking dishes, a traditional custom in Greek weddings. Attendees quickly scattered amid the realization of gunfire, with some hiding inside the event room and others running into the kitchen and the club’s restaurant, located directly next door. 

Several witnesses reported hearing the suspect shout “Free Palestine,” including Tom Bartelson, the groom’s uncle, who told WCVB that the shooter also shouted: “The children are safe.”

“It looked like a target, that he was going right for this person. I feel terrible for him,” Bartleson later told WMUR.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said that the suspect made a series of statements during the shooting, and that authorities did not currently have evidence of the attack being motivated by antisemitism or other hate-based reasons. 

“He was making a lot of different statements, and it appears to us that it’s more likely that those statements were intended to create chaos during the event and that they don’t really give us much of a sense of his motive,” Formella said at a news conference.

Formella said Nadeau had been charged with one count of second-degree murder for knowingly shooting DeCesare, whose mother told CNN her son lunged at the gunman in an attempt to stop the shooting when he was killed. While police originally believed there to be two suspects, prompting a local shelter in place order to be issued temporarily, they reversed course later Saturday after apprehending Nadeau, who is expected to face additional charges relating to the victims with non-gunshot wounds.

The state attorney general revealed that Nadeau was a former employee of the club, but had not been employed there in about a year.

Maura Sullivan, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and later worked as a senior Defense Department official, is aiming to leverage that experience to win the New Hampshire congressional seat currently held by Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH), who is running for the Senate. She’s also leaning on that background as she stakes out her positions on the conflict in the Middle East.

Speaking to Jewish Insider, Sullivan strongly criticized Israel for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying it must take action to ensure more aid to the Palestinian people, but at the same time said that she would not support efforts to cut off U.S. aid to the Jewish state and affirmed her commitment to the U.S.-Israel relationship and the need to eliminate Hamas.

As a Pentagon official, Sullivan said she spent time in the Middle East on “allied reassurance tours,” visiting allies and meeting with top officials, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Moshe Ya’alon, then Israel’s defense minister, to learn about Israel’s challenges and capabilities and “talking about the incredibly important relationship between the United States and Israel and strongly reaffirming the United States commitment to our ally Israel.”

“I’ll bring that perspective to the work I do in Congress and will greatly inform because I have that firsthand perspective, experience and knowledge,” Sullivan said, adding that she’d be seeking a spot on the House Armed Services Committee if elected.

“I’ve been very clear since the devastating, absolutely deplorable Oct. 7 attacks that Hamas perpetrated that Israel has the right to defend itself,” Sullivan continued. “I also want to be clear that the conditions in Gaza are inhumane, they’re deplorable and they must be improved immediately. … Hamas can be destroyed and significant aid can be let in at the same time. It’s a false choice to think that those two objectives cannot occur simultaneously.”

She said she has firsthand experience with humanitarian supply issues in a war zone, having served as a logistics and operations officer in Fallujah, Iraq, to move food and other supplies through what was at times an urban combat zone.

Doing so, she said, is “logistically complex” but also “doable” and “necessary.” She said the U.S. should apply “maximum pressure” on Netanyahu to increase aid, or provide aid directly if that fails.

Unlike growing numbers of Democrats in Congress, though, Sullivan said that she does not support efforts to cut off the U.S. supply of arms to Israel in response to the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

“I do not think that the answer in this conflict is to make Israeli civilians less secure due to the actions of their government,” Sullivan said. “In an effort to solve this conflict, the Israeli people need to have the ability to defend themselves against not only Hamas, but also other nefarious actors, [like] Hezbollah and … Iran.”

Sullivan added that she wanted to be clear that Hamas is a terrorist organization, its attack on Oct. 7, 2023, was the “catalyst behind all of this” and that it must return the hostages.

The pathway to a lasting peace, through a two-state solution, requires “eradicating Hamas,” she continued. “The Palestinians need to be able to live in a demilitarized state that they control, not Hamas, and the Israelis need to be able to live beside them in peace.”

Sullivan has visited Israel three times, including visiting extended family of her husband, who is Jewish, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. She described a visit to Yad Vashem, while she was a Pentagon official, as particularly “powerful and unforgettable.”

Sullivan said she saw during her time in Iraq that “leadership in Washington was totally out of touch” — on both sides of the aisle — with the actual situation on the ground, “and we were sent to a war we never should have been in without a plan to win and without the resources to succeed, in what was arguably the biggest foreign policy debacle this country has seen since the Vietnam War.”

That experience, she said, showed her firsthand the real consequences of decisions made in Washington. She expressed strong support for long-running efforts in Congress to repeal the Authorizations for Use of Military Force for Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Congress has to go on the record if we are going to declare war,” Sullivan said, asked about the U.S. military strikes on Iran. She urged the administration to prioritize the safety of U.S. troops and “resist any effort to drive the U.S. into another costly and deadly war in the Middle East.”

But, Sullivan continued, “Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism, relentlessly driving violence and chaos against the United States, Israel and our allies. A nuclear armed Iran would represent a direct and unacceptable threat to America’s national security, regional stability, as well as Israel’s very existence.”

Given Iran’s recent violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, she said that “Israel is absolutely justified in taking action to dismantle Iran’s dangerous nuclear ambitions. No nation should be forced to stand by while its survival is threatened.”

Sullivan also served on the American Battle Monuments Commission, visiting gravesites of fallen soldiers around the world, which “greatly heightened my sense of the role of America in the world” and what the U.S. means to its allies.

The Marine veteran described the antisemitism crisis in the United States as particularly personal for her, given that her husband is Jewish and they are raising their children, ages 3 and 5, in an interfaith home.

“I understand these issues at a deep and personal level. Judaism was a first-date conversation for my husband and I,” Sullivan said. “My children are not yet old enough to talk to them about it, but it is something that we will need to address as a family.”

She said that she would be a “strong voice in Washington” against antisemitism and noted that it had recently hit close to home when a group of neo-Nazis marched on the state Capitol in Concord.

Sullivan leads the primary field in fundraising, having pulled in nearly $800,000 as of the end of the last quarter. Her leading Democratic primary challenge is Stefany Shaheen, the daughter of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and a former Portsmouth city councilor, who raised $532,000 in the last quarter.

Carleigh Beriont, a Harvard professor and Hampton, N.H., selectwoman, entered the race in June, raising $162,000 that month. Multiple Republicans have filed to run for the seat, but none have reported raising any funds thus far.

Sullivan ran in the 2018 primary against Pappas, who is leaving the seat to run for the Senate. Sullivan won 30% of the vote in 2018 to Pappas’ 42%, before Pappas went on to win his first term in Congress.

The Marine veteran said that she believes that the Democratic Party and the country “needs new and different leadership,” and argued that her military background will make her more effective in holding the administration accountable.

Sullivan drew explicit comparisons between herself, and other female veterans running in swing districts, and the class of female national security leaders — including Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) — who helped Democrats win back the House in 2018.

She’s part of a group calling itself the Hellcats, which also includes New Jersey congressional candidate and Navy veteran Rebecca Bennett, that is trying to emulate their model.

If elected, Sullivan said she’d be the first female Marine ever elected to Congress.

She said she’s heard from voters in the 1st District, particularly veterans and small business owners who typically vote Republican, that they’re supporting her in part because of her military background.

She said her interest in public office was spurred by a family commitment to service as well — her grandfathers fought in World War II and her grandmothers were both involved in Jesuit education, as well as her own military service.

Coming back from Iraq, Sullivan felt a “very deep-seated obligation to commit my life to public service,” particularly because some of those she served with would not have that chance. “To live your life in a way that matters for something and for people way beyond yourself, something so much bigger than yourself — it was a transformational experience.”