Tensions are flaring between financial services firm Morningstar and a coalition of Jewish and pro-Israel groups that have been lobbying the company to eliminate purported anti-Israel bias in its ratings products. 

In a letter sent to the company last month, the groups allege that Morningstar had failed to meet its commitments to update its ratings and procedures, provide sensitivity training to its staff and engage outside experts to advise it on issues related to Israel and antisemitism. Morningstar defended its actions in a response letter last week, saying that the company had made progress, while attributing some of the delays to the groups themselves.

Morningstar’s subsidiary Sustainalytics has been accused of engaging in anti-Israel bias in the ratings it provides to companies that operate in Israel. The company reached an agreement with a coalition of Jewish and pro-Israel groups last year, commiting publicly to address issues related to its ratings of companies that operate in Israel and the West Bank.

“After months of working with Morningstar in good faith, it appears that Sustainalytics is failing to do its part to implement the commitments that Morningstar made to eliminate the pervasive anti-Israel bias in Sustainalytics’ ESG ratings,” the coalition letter, sent on Dec. 30 and obtained by Jewish Insider, alleges. “We have grave concerns about the rate and direction of progress and have observed what we believe to be several alarming deviations from the October commitments.”

Morningstar insisted that it is continuing to work to fulfill the October commitments.

“We have done our best to be responsive to the coalition group’s concerns and specific requests throughout this process; have already implemented a number of changes; and have operated in good faith throughout this process,” Morningstar spokesperson Sarah Wirth said in a statement. “There’s been no change in our commitment to this work or to working productively with these organizations.”

The coalition letter was signed by the Jewish Federations of North America, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the Combat Antisemitism Movement, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Christians United for Israel, Jewish Funders Network and UJA-Federation of New York.

They accused the company of having worked in direct contravention of its previous commitments, and alleged that “Sustainalytics’ conduct appears designed to prevent rather than promote substantive progress on the implementation of Morningstar’s commitments.”

Morningstar pushed back, claiming in its own letter that the company had not committed to changing its underlying assumptions that doing business with Israeli companies or in Israel is in and of itself a higher-risk proposition — and had agreed only to engage an expert to guide Sustainalytics on the issue.

Morningstar’s October public statement said it would “ensure that its analysts understand that business activity… within the regions linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or related to Israel’s defense against terrorism, do not give rise to a presumption that there is a human rights concern.”

The coalition letter specifically notes that controversy ratings attached to companies operating in Israel have not changed, despite the company’s commitment to “ensure that pro-BDS assumptions would not drive Sustainalytics’ ratings of Israel-related companies.” Morningstar, the letter says, has admitted those companies are not involved in human rights violations.

Some controversy ratings also still state that they could be changed if the companies divested from West Bank operations, which the Jewish groups’ letter refers to as “a naked call to boycott and divest.”

The letter also accuses Morningstar of having disregarded Jewish groups’ recommendations on experts it could consult regarding Israel and antisemitism in favor of using “a slate of individuals who will confirm Sustainalytics’ pre-existing anti-Israel biases.”

Morningstar’s Wirth countered, “The fact remains that companies doing business in Israel continue to fare well in Morningstar’s ratings. Most Israeli companies are assigned an ESG Risk Rating of ‘Medium’ or ‘Low’; nearly three-quarters of Israeli companies are identified as having zero involvement in controversies of any kind; and Israel earns a ‘Low Risk’ Country Risk Rating.”

In the response letter, the company claimed that nearly three-quarters of the notations in its controversies database related to Israel and the Palestinian territories have been removed. It also said that it had removed more than 100 references to BDS, the U.N.’s list of companies linked to Israeli settlements and the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The company said that further changes are contingent upon the selection of an outside expert to advise it. The firm claimed its proposed list of experts was shared with the Jewish and pro-Israel groups in mid-December, and included three candidates proposed by them, but that its selection process was delayed at the Jewish groups’ request to allow the coalition to propose additional candidates. Morningstar’s response also attributed delays in beginning antisemitism training to the Jewish and pro-Israel groups, whom Morningstar claims had requested additional time to propose a training program.

Among the issues Morningstar said in its letter were contingent on the hiring of an expert was removing references to “occupation” from its descriptions of geographic areas; the company had already committed publicly in October to using geographic names.

An individual close to the process dismissed Morningstar’s response letter as “ridiculous” and called its argument that it cannot enact further changes to its existing ratings and processes until it hires an expert “a red herring.” The individual also argued that the steps Morningstar has taken so far have not gone as far as the firm claimed in its letter.

The pro-Israel and Jewish groups also alleged that the company has “sought to minimize the contributions of this coalition and narrow the scope” of training that was set to be provided to Sustainalytics staff on anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bias. The letter specifically claims that Sustainalytics has “discouraged the groups that are part of this coalition from joining together to propose a consensus training approach and content” and “stated that the training may not cover any subject areas that will be under the purview of the to-be-engaged expert(s).”

The letter refers to these conditions as “clearly contradict[ing] Morningstar’s commitments.”

The Jewish groups appeal to Morningstar to “salvage” their work together, but request “prompt and meaningful changes” to both its ratings and its approach, calling for the company to address the concerns laid out in the letter by the end of January.

Arizona’s state treasurer, Kimberly Yee, has found Morningstar to be in violation of its anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions law and it’s facing investigation in multiple other states. A spokesperson for Yee said that the state’s investigation is ongoing and that Morningstar is “not cooperating.”

A House vote on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee appears increasingly uncertain amid emerging questions about whether House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will be able to muster enough support to remove Omar from her seat, and whether any Democrats will join the Republican effort.

Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Victoria Spartz (R-IN) have said they do not support stripping Omar of her seat. Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) remains undecided, an individual familiar with his thinking told Jewish Insider yesterday. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) has also not made up his mind, according to Politico, nor has controversy-plagued Rep. George Santos (R-NY), according to Insider.

Pro-Israel Jewish Democrats, including some who have been critical of Omar’s past comments on Israel, have yet to say if they will support her removal.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said he would not comment on the issue until a resolution has been formally introduced to remove Omar from the panel. “I don’t comment on anything until I read the resolution, but if you show it to me, I’ll see what it says,” he told reporters.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), who pledged on the campaign trail to be an outspoken opponent of Israel critics and antisemitism within the Democratic caucus, told JI he won’t make a decision on the issue until it comes to the floor.

“Frankly I’m uncomfortable with speakers of the opposite party removing people from committees,” he said. “I’m worried that one side removes two members, the next side removes three members and so on and so on. And 10 years from now, the speaker of the opposite party is picking committees. I think it’s a very dangerous thing and I think it’s bad for the legislative body.”

Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL) likewise told JI she hasn’t yet made up her mind, and expressed similar concerns about handing over power for Democratic committee assignments to McCarthy.

“I support the Democrats appointing their own members of committees,” she said. “I don’t agree with her policies on Israel, obviously. But there’s another issue here, which is that the Democrats should be able to appoint our committee members, so I’ll be weighing it… What can happen is they can start kicking everybody off committees — that’s the problem.”

Frankel voted to remove Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) from their committees two years ago.

Others, including Reps. Dean Phillips (D-MN) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), have said outright that they don’t think Omar should be removed, and expect Democrats to ultimately unite behind her. 

House Democrats are lobbying moderate Republicans who have served with Omar on the Foreign Affairs committee, particularly Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Chris Smith (R-NJ), according to Politico. Both Smith and Fitzpatrick are also co-chairs of the House’s bipartisan antisemitism task force.

If McCarthy does not pick up any Democratic votes, he can only afford to lose four Republicans. McCarthy, though, is pushing ahead, and has shored up support with at least some Republican moderates, highlighting Omar’s past statements in a private GOP conference meeting on Wednesday, where he purportedly told his conference that the issue would come up for a vote this week.

Omar defended herself during a press conference on Wednesday, arguing that “policy differences” should not cost her committee seats and insisted she had apologized for past comments. 

The Minnesota representative described the current effort as a “political stunt” in revenge for Democrats removing Greene and Gosar in the prior Congress. While Greene has a history of comments that many Jewish groups have described as antisemitic and both have spoken at conferences organized by white nationalist Nick Fuentes, Democrats have instead tied their committee expulsions to violent rhetoric about fellow members of Congress.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), who voted to remove Greene from her committees in the previous Congress, now sits on the Republican Steering Committee, which determines GOP committee assignments. Diaz-Balart told JI in an interview earlier this week he had voted in 2021 to remove Greene specifically “because of the antisemitism.”

“[Greene] has publicly apologized, she has privately apologized, she has really, really gone out of her way to understand that,” Diaz-Balart said, “which is, by the way, totally different from, for example, my colleague Omar, who is aggressively publicly and unapologetically antisemitic.”

Greene has doubled down on some of her past comments that have troubled Jewish groups, including comparing vaccination mandates to the Holocaust, even after a public apology and a visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, but has recently backpedaled on some of her positions, and denounced Fuentes.

Asked why Gosar deserves to be on committees after repeatedly doubling down on promoting Fuentes and not having gone to the same lengths as Greene to alter his posture, Diaz-Balart told JI, “Well, he got elected, right?”

Pressed on the fact that Omar had also been elected by her constituents, he said former House Speaker “Nancy Pelosi basically opened that doorway, which is regrettable… since the history of this nation, one party would put its people on committees, the other party would put its people on committees.”

He added that he views nothing Gosar has said as “equivalent to the vile antisemitic statements made by some of my Democratic colleagues.”

Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL), a leading Democratic challenger to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, faced a tough line of questioning over his congressional record on Israel in a candidate interview with the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune on Monday, according to audio of the exchange obtained by Jewish Insider.

During the 90-minute meeting at the Tribune’s offices, where Lightfoot and another top rival, Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, were also present, the conversation turned to Middle East policy when an interviewer voiced concerns from Jewish community members about García’s approach to Israel, which has on occasion strayed from the Democratic mainstream.

In 2019, for example, García was among just 16 House Democrats who opposed a resolution condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. In 2021, the congressman, who frequently aligns with his party’s far-left flank, joined an even smaller minority of eight Democrats who voted against the approval of $1 billion in supplemental aid for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system following the May flare-up of violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

“Some in that community saw your early years in Congress, your alignment with the Squad, various votes that were taken as reflecting squishy support for Israel, and some even perceive that as antisemitic,” the Tribune interviewer told García, noting that “some prominent members” of the Jewish community “have at least tacitly said, given that record, this is not the candidate for Jewish Chicago.”

Asked if he believed that was a “fair assumption,” García, a staunch progressive who served in state and local politics before his election to Congress in 2018, pushed back against such reasoning, arguing that it was “not a fair characterization” and explaining that he has had “relationships and friends and allies in the Jewish community going back almost 50 years.”

The 66-year-old congressman touted, among other things, an award he received “almost 15 years ago” from the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and pointed to a “close relationship” with a rabbi and congregation at “a synagogue on the Southwest Side of Chicago near Marquette Park,” which he did not name.

“My history with Jews in Chicago is long, is deep, is rich, and they’ve influenced my political thinking,” García went on, citing “allies in politics” such as Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a Jewish Democrat from Chicago, “former members” of the city council and elected officials in the Illinois state legislature. “No one of them will tell you that there is any iota of antisemitism or anti-Israel sentiment,” García averred.

The Tribune interviewer followed up by asking the congressman, who is one of eight candidates challenging Lightfoot next month in Chicago’s mayoral election, to directly address some of his past votes relating to Israel.

“I took one vote on Iron Dome against it because it was not part of a regular process,” García said in the interview, echoing criticism from progressives who objected when Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the former House majority leader, forced a standalone vote after the funding had been removed from a separate bill. “The Iron Dome funding had been approved through the regular order. Steny Hoyer brought it to the floor.”

Elaborating on his thinking, García said he has voted against the National Defense Authorization Act “most of the time” because he believes “the defense budget is bloated,” adding: “That was the sentiment.”

He assured the Tribune editorial board, though, that the omnibus spending package that passed the House “before the year was over” had “included $3.3 billion in military funding for Israel, including full funding for Iron Dome.”

García is also a co-sponsor of legislation, introduced in 2021 by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), that called for placing restrictions on U.S. military aid to Israel.

The congressman made no mention of his opposition to the anti-BDS resolution passed in 2019, but in a statement at the time of the vote, said he objected because it did “not advance the goal of a negotiated peace process” between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Even before his election to Congress, García had been vocally opposed to such efforts. As a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 2015, he was highly critical of a resolution urging a Chicago pension fund to divest from companies that support boycotts of Israel, saying it was “one-sided” because there had been “no mention of the illegal settlements, the plight of refugees especially in Gaza and many other unilateral and illegal acts that the Israeli government has permitted to be taken by settlers and others.”

Since he entered the House, García has continued to speak out against the Israeli government. In 2020, for instance, he suggested in social media comments that Israel’s planned annexation of parts of the West Bank was “a clear move towards the establishment of an apartheid system.”

In a floor speech two years ago amid mounting violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, García suggested that Israeli evictions of Palestinian homes and “the hostilities around Al Aqsa Mosque” in Jerusalem “seem to have provoked the latest escalation in violence,” while  arguing that the U.S. must “take a hard look at how the situation has changed in recent years.”

He called on the Biden administration to “reverse” former President Donald Trump’s “detrimental actions and take steps to ensure that U.S. aid to Israel cannot be used for the seizure or destruction of Palestinian homes.”

A spokesperson for García’s campaign said he was unable to respond to JI before publication of this article.

García was the only candidate to field questions related to Israel during the Tribune interview earlier this week. The newspaper’s own coverage of the meeting, which did not mention the Middle East policy discussion, made clear that there was otherwise no shortage of contentious moments as Lightfoot traded accusations with García and Johnson, who are among the mayor’s most formidable opponents. The rest of the candidates met with the newspaper’s editorial board last week, the publication wrote.

In an email statement to JI, Chris Jones, the Tribune’s editorial page editor, said the board “met with all the mayoral candidates and asked a variety of questions of the candidates.”

“We place a particular importance on issues brought to us by our readers,” he said of the board’s exchange with Garcia on Israel. “Just because we ask a question on a topic does not, of course, imply anything about our own position.”

The editorial board has not yet made an endorsement in the race.

While U.S. mayors traditionally have no direct influence over foreign policy decisions, issues concerning Israel in particular have sometimes factored into local elections, perhaps most notably in New York City, home to the largest Jewish population in the world outside the Jewish state itself. 

In Chicago, where there are approximately 320,000 Jewish residents — a sizable and growing number —  it is not wholly surprising that García’s record on Israel has now come under scrutiny, even as he seeks to transition to city government.

During her time as mayor, Lightfoot, who had not previously held elective office, has met on at least two occasions with Yinam Cohen, Israel’s consul general to the Midwest, to promote ties between Israel and Chicago, according to social media posts.

In contrast with her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel — Chicago’s first Jewish mayor, who has long been committed to pro-Israel causes — Lightfoot does not, however, appear to have been particularly outspoken on such issues.  

Recent polling suggests that García is a leading contender in the hotly contested race to unseat Lightfoot, who is campaigning for a second term in the Feb. 28 election. The congressman, who won a third House term this past November, previously ran for mayor of Chicago in 2015, losing to Emanuel, the Democratic incumbent, in a runoff. García announced his new mayoral bid days after the midterms.

As the exchange concluded on Monday, the Tribune interviewer asked García to confirm if the congressman had, during their conversation, been “speaking supportively of Israel and its right to exist.” 

“Yes, absolutely,” García said, noting that he has “been aligned with” the liberal Israel advocacy group J Street, which has previously endorsed him. “I totally believe in a two-state solution, and the question has never been posed to me before.”

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), who returned last weekend from leading a group of fellow senators on a delegation to Abraham Accords member countries, told Jewish Insider yesterday that she sees opportunities for the Senate to work this year on efforts to expand Middle East cooperation on air-defense and water-resiliency projects through the Arab-Israeli agreements.

It’s “particularly important that we continue to work and build on” the DEFEND Act — passed last year to promote regional air- and missile-defense cooperation, Rosen told Jewish Insider yesterday, following a press conference with other members of the delegation.

Rosen noted that several members of the delegation — herself and Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) — are members of the Armed Services Committee, making them well-placed to work on the project, and said they’ll be meeting with with Armed Services Committee Chair Jack Reed (D-RI) later this week to discuss the issue further. “I’m sure a lot of others are interested as well as we begin this year’s National Defense Authorization [Act] process,” she added.

She also mentioned possibilities for expanding collaboration to protect waterways in the Gulf. The group met with leaders from Morocco, Bahrain, the UAE, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as well as U.S. military personnel in Bahrain and the UAE, and visited the Abrahamic Family House, a multifaith complex in Abu Dhabi.

Sullivan said during the press conference that he sees an “enormous opportunity to do more” and that the air-defense would “directly address… the biggest threat in the region,” referring to Iran. The delegation members highlighted that Iran was a top concern for all of the leaders the group spoke with, including Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, according to Sullivan.

Sullivan said that the officials in the United Arab Emirates told the group they were “upset” that they felt the Biden administration had failed to respond to an attack a year ago by Iran-backed Houthi militants that killed three people in Abu Dhabi. Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) echoed that message, saying that the group heard “again and again and again… the fear among our Middle East allies that America is not going to have [their] back.”

But Sullivan also cautioned that any Chinese involvement — including that of telecommunications company Huawei — in the participant countries’ security and military communication systems would be a deal-breaker for U.S. participation in any joint air-defense projects

Rosen further highlighted to JI possibilities for cooperative water resiliency projects in the Middle East, which she noted could also help the drought-stricken states of several of the delegation members. Several senators noted Israel’s specialty in innovative irrigation and agricultural projects.

“In the Middle East, water, water, water — they don’t have it,” she said. “And so what they’ve done to improve their conservation, what they’ve done in desalinization, how they modified and improved their farming… wastewater treatment, really important. I think there’s a lot of lessons that we can learn.”

Rosen told JI she thinks projects like this are the best path to facilitating further expansion of the agreements — focusing on the current relationships to deliver “tangible results… to show the benefit” of the agreements to other prospective members.

During the press conference, Rosen and Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), who co-led the delegation, again downplayed a report that Rosen had specifically requested not to meet with controversial far-right members of the Israeli government. 

Rosen told JI that she and Lankford have been planning the trip for a year — well before the new government took office — and that they met with “high-level government officials” at each stop, painting the controversial ministers as “mid-level members” of the government.

Lankford added that he had never met with an Israeli finance minister — the job held now by Bezalel Smotrich — on any of the five trips he’s made to Israel. “It’s fascinating to me the media buzz on who we didn’t meet with, rather than what we actually did,” he said. “There’s, what, 117 members of the Knesset we didn’t meet with?… We’re meeting with all the key people.”

Rosen subsequently told JI that some Arab leaders had raised questions about Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, which has created flashpoints between Israel and its Arab allies in the first weeks of the new government.

“What every leader said is that they wanted to be sure that there was nothing that was going to be done that would impede both the Abraham Accords and the path to a negotiated two-state solution,” Rosen said. “We spoke with Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and our delegation was very clear about keeping the status quo [in Israeli-Palestinian affairs] and not doing anything that would sacrifice or get in the way of a negotiated two-state solution. He heard us loud and clear, we’re going to continue to… let him know how we feel.”

The Nevada senator said during the press conference that the group had also urged Israel to “do more to combat Russian aggression in Ukraine” — an issue that has created some daylight between pro-Israel American lawmakers and the new Israeli government.

Generally, the members of the delegation sounded a positive note about prospects for the Middle East, echoing comments by Gillibrand to JI the day prior.

“When it comes to the Abraham Accords, in the 14 years that I’ve been going to the Middle East, I don’t think I’ve ever been as encouraged by the progress that I’ve seen,” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) said, highlighting increased trade and travel among the new partners. He offered the caveat, though, that “we have a long, long way to go.”

Kelly added the group’s meeting with Palestinian Authority leadership “highlighted to me that there is a lot more work to do, not just with the Abraham Accords.”

Lankford acknowledged a continued “difference of opinion” between the Arab nations’ leaders — who support the Accords — and their citizens — who have been more reluctant to accept the agreements, but emphasized that “we’re going to work through this, understanding that this is a generational shift that’s there” and that the process will take time.

Bennet highlighted that most of the group’s meetings included discussions of rising antisemitism, demonstrating “real possibilities that might arise with the people-to-people engagements that are going to be made possible as a result of the Abraham Accords.”

Lankford noted that the delegation’s flight, on a military aircraft from the UAE to Israel over Saudi airspace, is the first time a U.S. military aircraft has ever made such a flight, itself a sign of regional progress.

Ed. note: This post was updated at 11:30 a.m. ET on 1/25/23 to reflect Rosen’s description of the implementation of the DEFEND Act.

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a progressive congressman from Phoenix, said on Monday that he would run for the seat held by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), whose high-profile defection from the Democratic Party last month drew liberal backlash.

“The problem isn’t that Senator Sinema abandoned the Democratic Party — it’s that she abandoned Arizona,” Gallego, 43, said in a statement. “She’s repeatedly broken her promises, and fought for the interests of big pharma and Wall Street at our expense.”

The announcement, which had been expected, sets up what is likely to be a hotly contested three-way race in a key battleground state, where Democratic gains have contributed to a slim majority in the Senate.

That majority grew even slimmer this past December, when Sinema, a former House member who in 2018 became Arizona’s first Democratic senator in more than two decades, left the party and officially registered as an independent, even as she has continued to caucus with the Democrats.

Sinema, 46, has yet to reveal if she will pursue a second term, and a spokesperson for her office did not respond to a request for comment on Monday in response to Gallego’s challenge. In a statement posted to Twitter from her Senate account on Monday afternoon, Sinema said she is “continuing to do what” she has “done for the last 20 years – deliver results for AZ.”

“Last Congress we delivered landmark laws to make Arizonans’ lives better,” Sinema added, appending a video in which she touted “bipartisan victories” such as the infrastructure bill. “I’m excited to keep up the momentum in the 118th Congress and secure even more wins for our state.”

The tweet was released hours after Gallego had posted his own campaign launch video in English and Spanish. The son of Mexican and Colombian immigrants describes his experience “growing up poor” in Chicago, affirms his commitment to the “American dream” and is pictured speaking to a group of veterans at an American Legion in Guadalupe, Ariz., among other things. 

“Most families feel that they are one or two paychecks away from going under,” says Gallego, a Harvard graduate and Marine veteran who served in Iraq before he became an elected official. “That is not the way that we should be living in this country. The rich and the powerful, they don’t need more advocates. It’s the people that are still trying to decide between groceries and utilities that need a fighter for them.”

The five-term Democrat, who previously served as a state legislator, would be Arizona’s first Latino senator. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. 

As the first candidate from either party to announce a challenge ahead of the 2024 election, Gallego, who had long intimated that he was gearing up for a Senate bid, could ultimately benefit from an uncontested Democratic primary campaign. The race has so far drawn only limited interest from other Democrats in Arizona.

The congressman’s ex-wife, Kate Gallego, the Jewish mayor of Phoenix, had been eyed as a possible Democratic contender but told Axios that she isn’t planning to run for the seat. Rep. Greg Stanton, a Democrat whose district sits entirely within Maricopa County, had also been floated as a potential challenger until last week, when he took himself out of contention in a social media statement. Regina Romero, the Democratic mayor of Tucson, is another Senate prospect whose name has been mentioned in recent weeks, even as she has yet to reveal publicly if she is weighing a challenge.

Among the Republicans who are reportedly considering bids or who have been encouraged to run are Blake Masters, who failed to unseat Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) in the midterms, and Kari Lake, the far-right election denier who has refused to concede her loss to Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, in Arizona’s gubernatorial race.

Two recent polls, including one conducted on behalf of Gallego, showed Lake, a former television news anchor in Phoenix, narrowly winning with a plurality of the vote in a three-way matchup with Gallego and Sinema. The hypothetical general election outcome suggests a possible scenario — as some political observers envisioned to Jewish Insider on Monday — in which the two losing candidates ultimately split the Democratic vote, clearing the way for a Republican upset.

In each of the surveys, Gallego was close behind in second place and statistically tied for first in his own internal poll with 4o% of the vote — just a point short of Lake. Finishing third in both polls, Sinema’s support was in the low teens.

Thomas J. Volgy, a professor of political science at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said it was too early to draw any firm conclusions about the race, which is nearly two years away. “We really have to see what unfolds in the next six months in Washington,” he told JI.

Still, a Democratic strategist in Arizona who is supporting Gallego but is not officially involved with his Senate campaign told JI that the congressman is likely to succeed in peeling a significant number of supporters away from Sinema as the race progresses — including “major donors” who feel that Sinema became uncommunicative when she entered the Senate, even as she has increasingly assumed a national profile.

In her home state, the strategist said that Sinema has “gone into a cocoon that has really hurt her,” alienating many longtime backers who had hoped to see more engagement. “It was like a light switch went off from over-communicating with her constituency and her supporters to not communicating at all,” the strategist, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the discussion, told JI. “She did not need to be in this position. This was self-inflicted.”

A spokesperson for Sinema did not respond to a request for comment.

Alan Zeichick, a Democratic activist and Jewish community member in Phoenix who is supporting Gallego, said he believed the Jewish community will “rally around” the congressman’s campaign, describing him as “very well-traveled within Jewish circles.”

Gallego, whose son is Jewish, has expressed personal consternation over the heightened security presence at synagogues across the U.S., where violent attacks have risen sharply in recent years. “It’s a very sad statement that that is a very common thing now that happens,” he said during a Helsinki Commission hearing on antisemitism in Washington, D.C., last month.

The congressman has also described his appreciation for the story of Israel as a “natural” consequence of his family’s immigrant background. “Israel has a better appreciation, I think, for immigrants and what they bring to the country,” Gallego said in an interview with Tablet magazine when he first ran for Congress in 2014, “and we’re starting to lose that here in the United States, especially in Arizona, and we need to start changing Arizonans more to the Israeli mindset of immigrants as an asset.”

“To the best of my knowledge, he’s been a very reliable vote for Israel,” said Zeichick, who sits on the board of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix. 

Zeichick cited, among other things, Gallego’s opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and his support for continued security aid to Israel, including supplemental funding for its Iron Dome missile-defense system. “He’s also been very fair in the way he’s treated Israel and the Palestinian issue,” Zeichick told JI. “The issues that are really important for Israel’s security, he’s been there, but he’d also like to see less tension.”

During the start of his congressional tenure, Gallego faced some scrutiny from pro-Israel activists who had lobbied for him to oppose the Iran nuclear deal as it was being negotiated by the Obama administration in 2015. While Gallego had initially signed a bipartisan letter in which he and most of his fellow House members in Arizona expressed mutual skepticism of the accord and laid out “requirements for a final deal,” he ultimately put his reservations aside and supported the agreement.

Sinema, for her part, opposed the Iran deal as a congresswoman.

In previous races, Gallego has earned endorsements from the political action committees of both Democratic Majority for Israel and AIPAC, whose political leadership conference he attended earlier this month in Washington, D.C.

“I support a strong U.S-Israel relationship because it’s actually in the best interest of the United States for us to have that relationship,” the congressman said in a video recently shared by AIPAC on social media. “We have common values, common interests and also a common heritage and history — and it’s one of our few partners in the Middle East right now that we can trust 100%.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said she’s “never been more optimistic than today” about the future of peace and cooperation in the Middle East after returning from a congressional delegation last week to Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

“This was an extremely positive trip and it’s one where I felt there was far more hope for a long-term peace solution and a long-term regional alliance than ever before,” Gillibrand told Jewish Insider on Monday. “It was probably the most optimistic trip I’ve taken to Israel in the last 10 years.”

The New York senator, who joined Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), James Lankford (R-OK), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Ted Budd (R-NC) in the region, said that both Arab and Israeli leaders were “extremely optimistic” about the future of the Abraham Accords and their potential for the region.

“There is a Middle East peace plan in these opportunities and [President Joe Biden] could create the greatest Middle East peace plan of generations,” Gillibrand said.

She said that each country’s leaders expressed a desire for expanded economic and security cooperation with Israel and the U.S., highlighting in particular the threat of Iran and its proxies.

“[Iran] is a unifying issue,” she said. “And when we met with Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, we really reiterated the statements from these [Arab] governments and how their talking points aligned almost exactly with the prime minister’s.”

Israel and Sunni Arab states have generally taken a more hawkish position on Iran than the Biden administration, particularly in opposing nuclear negotiations with Iran. Gillibrand argued that a regional security agreement “could address” the urgent questions related to Iran’s nuclear ambitions and said she’d like to meet with the administration and Biden to discuss the subject. 

She said that working to “deepen and strengthen” the Accords “has to be a very significant high priority” for herself and the Senate as well.

Gillibrand added that “you would be blown away” by the existing defense cooperation among the new allies. She cautioned, however, that “we have a lot of work to do” to create a deeper national security alliance between the UAE and the U.S. in particular, given the UAE’s continuing relationship with China, which she said would have to be curtailed.

The New York senator said she has already discussed pathways for expanding collaboration with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides. She also proposed formally bringing Jordan and Egypt into the Abraham Accords and floated the idea of adding Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to the pact — although she said the delegation’s focus was on deepening existing relationships rather than adding new countries to the Accords.

She said that Netanyahu was “extremely optimistic” about the prospect of adding Saudi Arabia to the agreements — “he [said], ‘This is weeks and months away, not years.’”

“From my perspective, I could only imagine some normalization if it was part of a much larger Middle East peace plan that was entirely about regional security, regional economic alliances and a plan to support the Palestinian people as something the Arab countries would put [o]nto the table,” she continued.

Gillibrand described the possibility of expanded Arab support for the Palestinians through the Accords as a potential “game-changer.”

“I think that the real takeaway for me is that what these Arab countries can do for America is to really help stabilize the region, No. 1, and No. 2, support Palestinian well-being,” she said.

Israeli policy with regard to the Palestinians — particularly relating to the status of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem — has already created friction with Jordan and the United Arab Emirates in the first weeks of Netanyahu’s new government. 

Gillibrand told JI that Netanyahu “made assurances that his government follows his lead” on Palestinian issues, adding, “I think he was trying to very directly say to us that, despite perspectives of some members of his coalition government, it is his judgment that is relevant.”

The junior New York senator downplayed a report from early in the trip by Axios that Rosen had requested that the delegation not meet with two controversial far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition government, ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. The group met with Opposition Leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, President Isaac Herzog and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in addition to Netanyahu.

Gillibrand said that the group “never planned to meet with other parties within the government,” that “wasn’t part of what our goals were” and such meetings “would not have been on our agenda regardless.”

Rosen largely sidestepped the issue during a CNN interview last night, emphasizing that they spoke with “all the high-level officials” in Israel and “were quite firm… about not doing anything that would change the status quo and that would impede the process of a negotiated two-state solution.”

Lankford, asked on CNN if he had concerns about Ben Gvir and others in the coalition, responded that the members were elected by the Israeli people. “The United States continues to be able to stand with Israel regardless” of who is in the government, he said, also alluding to “frank conversations… privately” with officials from each of the Abraham Accords countries about points of concern in each country.

“Everything that we were focused in on is how do we continue to advance the Abraham Accords,” he added.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) appeared to fire an implicit barb at colleagues Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Betty McCollum (D-MN) on Friday over tweets from the two legislators earlier in the week about the construction of the planned U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

“I support the [State Department] as it proceeds to build an embassy where it belongs, in a country’s capital. Israel should be no exception,” Torres said on Twitter. “The [siting] of an embassy in Jerusalem in no way forecloses the possibility of a two state solution, which remains the best path forward for both Israelis and Palestinians.”

Tlaib had tweeted earlier in the week that she was “outraged” that the State Department was moving forward on its plans to build the embassy “on land stolen from Palestinians,” adding that in “doing so, the U.S. is complicit in the illegal confiscation of Palestinian property.” 

The Michigan congresswoman followed up the tweet by linking to a New York Times op-ed about the U.S.’s reported plans to build a new embassy in Jerusalem on the Allenby Barracks site — parts of which the op-ed’s author says had been in his family’s possession prior to Israel’s war for independence in 1948.

McCollum likewise tweeted about the op-ed last week, sharing a quote from it.

Torres noted on Friday that the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 required the U.S. to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem. The current embassy facility was previously used by the U.S. consulate that coordinated relations with the Palestinians.

In a floor speech earlier this month, Tlaib again accused Israel of apartheid, accusations that have previously elicited accusations of antisemitism from other House Democrats and Jewish leaders.

While on a trip to the Grand Canyon State with his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff met on Thursday with Jewish students at Arizona State University in Tempe to discuss campus antisemitism.

The roundtable came a week before Emhoff is set to travel to Poland and Germany for events commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

“The second gentleman heard directly from students about the work they are doing to confront antisemitism and promote tolerance,” a White House official told JI. “Mr. Emhoff talked about the importance of living openly as a Jew and the administration’s all-of-government approach to combating antisemitism.”

Student Bella Schneider told JI that one focus of the conversation was how to include Jewish students in conversations about diversity and inclusion on campus. “The conversation went really well. I personally discussed situations in which the Jewish students are often left out of conversations about diversity and inclusion and our experiences as a minority group aren’t taken seriously,” Schneider said. “Mr. Emhoff made me feel very heard and seen in this situation, and less alone as a Jewish student and leader.”

The discussion was facilitated by Hillel at ASU, which is home to 3,500 Jewish undergraduates. The 10 students who participated in the event shared their concerns about antisemitism and being a minority on campus, according to Hillel. 

“Judaism teaches us to hold ideas that may seem opposing but are actually two equal truths,” said Debbie Yunker Kail, director of Hillel at ASU. “Hillel and Jewish life at Arizona State University have never been stronger or more vibrant, and antisemitism is on the rise nationally and locally. Today’s visit was a welcome opportunity to share how current college students experience both truths.”