PITTSBURGH – Few Democrats appear to be more vulnerable to the political fallout of the war between Israel and Hamas than Summer Lee.
His district, based in Pittsburgh, is the first high-profile progressive member of the House of Representatives to face a contested primary this year and is home to a tight-knit Jewish community that is grappling with the effects of war. Last month, dozens of Jewish leaders signed an open letter to the Pennsylvania representative criticizing her for her criticism of Israel’s government and her “divisive rhetoric, which we have, at times, perceived as overtly anti-Semitic.”
And in a district still reeling from the massacre of Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue by an anti-Semitic gunman, many yards display signs in the name of his primary opponent, Bhavini Patel, a small-town council member. along with others who say: “We are standing.” with Israel.”
Yet as much as the war between Israel and Hamas has inflamed intraparty divisions on the left, the April 23 primaries here are set to test the limits of the conflict as an electoral issue.
“If Summer Lee keeps her job, does that mean people don’t care much about the war? No,” said Sue Berman Kress, a Pittsburgh-based Jewish activist who supports Patel. “But if she loses her starting job … I think that will be a big reason.”
Lee has the support of prominent Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, and a robust fundraising apparatus. And in this western Pennsylvania district, where Jews are an important and highly engaged voting bloc, they are not universally abandoning it.
Just a couple of miles north of Squirrel Hill, a historic Jewish enclave, in the leafy residential area of Highland Park, a group under the banner “Jews for Summer Lee” gathered on a recent morning to defend the Democratic incumbent.
“In this time where I think we all have real worries and concerns about a war breaking out, Summer is the person who can bring us together in dialogue and community and try to figure out how to maintain peace and help and support each other.” . “Kenny Moster, a longtime Lee supporter and Jewish activist, told those gathered at the campaign launch, just a day after Iran launched an airstrike against Israel.
Both campaigns maintain that the primary is not a single-issue race. And even the conflict in the Middle East, they maintain, is not as simple as reducing it to Israel versus Palestine.
“That’s always been my biggest complaint, because we’re not dealing with black and white issues,” Lee, who has openly expressed his support for the Palestinians and called for a ceasefire, said in an interview.
But while the issue is a priority for some voters, particularly in the Jewish community, those voters are not the majority of the electorate in the large, reliably blue district. Both campaigns point out that the war hasn’t come up very often when they knock on doors and talk to voters. Lee said she is having conversations about housing, air quality and racial injustice.
Patel, for his part, said voters are expressing concern about the Democratic Party coalition around President Joe Biden.
“Obviously, the war is going on in the background and has exemplified, and a lot of this has accelerated, people’s realization that they are really aligned with a minority of the party,” Patel said.
Still, there is no doubt that war looms over the race. Israel has been a flashpoint in Lee’s campaigns since long before the war when, during his first bid for the seat in 2022, tensions over Israel also arose as a problem in the race. She won the primary by less than 1,000 votes.
This time, the war “has really activated the Jewish community,” said Rabbi Yitzi Genack, who has been encouraging members of his community to vote early, since the primaries fall during Passover. “I don’t think any race is a referendum on an individual issue in general, but I think it’s an important component and it looms large within the Jewish community.”
Genack was one of dozens of Jewish religious leaders who sign open letters criticizing Lee for what they called his “anti-Semitic” rhetoric. In a debate earlier this monthLee said he could not respond to those accusations because he did not “know what they are considering anti-Semitic rhetoric,” and noted that he condemned Hamas and pushed for a reduction in tension in the region, while also criticizing Israel’s Prime Minister. Benjamin Netanyahu for the country’s attacks on the Palestinians.
“There are people who have been politicizing this issue; “They saw it as an opportunity to bring out a black woman who they didn’t want to be in office in the first place,” Lee said in an interview. “We haven’t just seen that in Pittsburgh, we’ve seen it across the country, that Israel and Palestine have been successfully used as a wedge issue by the right for decades and decades.”
Some voters who supported Patel signaled that they were no longer backing Lee in 2022. And there is evidence that Lee has also lost some support since the midterms. While Lee has the endorsement of the Allegheny County Democratic Party, Patel is emboldened by the support she has seen in District 14, which includes Squirrel Hill, which points her way. endorsement of the neighborhood independent democratic club. That group endorsed Lee in 2022.
Patel continues to press Lee on the war, asking him to denounce an effort to write “uncommitted” into Tuesday’s presidential primary — a protest vote formed, in part, in response to Biden’s handling of the conflict.
He criticized Lee for speaking to the Council on American-Islamic Relations that the incumbent planned to attend earlier this year. (Lee finished canceling the appearance after facing backlash for anti-Semitic and homophobic comments from other speakers). And while Patel said the election is not a referendum on war, he maintains that on a variety of issues, Lee is out of step with the Democratic Party.
“You’re so focused on a small minority coalition and improving that coalition that you forget you’re part of a bigger picture,” Patel said of Lee. “There is certainly a time and place to push. And I would do the same. But there is a time and a place to do it, and in this election cycle and this year, that is not the time.”
But public sentiment within the Democratic Party may be shifting in Lee’s favor over the war between Israel and Hamas.
A plurality of Democrats (44 percent) say they sympathize with both the Israelis and the Palestinians in the conflict. according to a POLITICO-Morning Consult poll from early April, made before Iran’s airstrike on Israel. By a margin of 6 percentage points (22 percent to 16 percent), more Democrats say they sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis.
“People want this to be, ‘Oh, The Squad are extremists,’ and that’s a terrible narrative, because the reality is… progressives are truly, truly, truly at the heart of what much of our electorate Democrat wants and is looking for,” Lee said.
The survey also shows that young people are more sympathetic to the Palestinians. Thirty-three percent of Generation Z voters said they sympathize more with Palestinians, while 15 percent said they sympathize more with Israelis.
That generational divide is evident locally, said Rabbi Daniel Fellman, who also signed the letters criticizing Lee. He noted that younger people in the Jewish community have “more animosity toward Israel,” while the older demographic has more support.
In Pittsburgh, Lee’s supporters are banking on that shift in public opinion and the protracted nature of the war.
“If October 7th had happened on March 7th, I think it’s very likely that the timing and the way people responded emotionally would have been very, very dangerous for Summer,” said Moster, who supports Lee. “Support for US wars in the Middle East always peaks early and declines quickly. And that’s what we’re seeing.”
Or as Pittsburgh-based Democratic strategist Mike Mikus, who is not in the race, put it: “Singing on the side of a ceasefire in a Democratic primary is not a lost issue.”