Washington Examiner: Will this Upper West Side-based House district elect a full-throated Israel supporter?

Ron Kampeas for Washington Examiner - January 9, 2026

Micah Lasher attends Rodeph Shalom synagogue and says he understands threats to Jewish people. Jami Floyd says she learned to listen from her father-in-law, a Holocaust survivor. The mother of Alex Bores will tell you how happy she is that her son married a “nice Jewish girl.” Mathew Shurka volunteered to clean up in Israeli communities devastated by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas invasion. When Cameron Kasky flew to Israel in December, it was as a Jew who stood in solidarity with the Palestinians.

There’s a clear thread among these candidates for the Democratic nomination in New York’s 12th Congressional District. In a rare opening for a seat whose contours cover Manhattan from the Upper East and West Sides down to Chelsea and the Flatiron District. The 12th is among the most Jewish congressional districts in the country, if not at the top. So wearing one’s Jewish credentials on one’s sleeve matters.

The district is overwhelmingly Democratic. Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic nominee for president, walloped President Donald Trump there, 81% to 17%, even as New York state moved to the right.

Trump, a Queens native-turned-Florida resident, had lost New York in 2020 to incoming President Joe Biden by a margin of 61% to 38%. But four years later, Trump, in his successful bid for a second, nonconsecutive term, closed the statewide gap against Harris, Biden’s vice president, losing 55% to 43%.

It all puts in stark relief the 12th Congressional District’s durability as a Democratic stronghold. The general election is hardly in doubt, amid House Democrats’ efforts to win a majority in the 2026 midterm elections. Republicans in this Congress will have a slim 220-215 edge when vacant seats that strongly favor GOP or Democratic candidates are filled by special elections in the coming months.

The retiring incumbent, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), has become a liberal icon of sorts over his 30-plus years in Congress. Most recently, as a Democratic congressional foil against longtime nemesis Trump. It’s the latest political chapter in a long-running feud between the pair that goes back to building projects sought by the future president in his 1980s New York real estate developer days. Development proposals along the West Side of Manhattan and elsewhere met opposition from Nadler, then a state assemblyman and a rising Democratic star.

Splits over Israel

Ahead of the June 23 Democratic primary, Israel and antisemitism are emerging as leading issues in the race. Jewish issues would be prominent in any campaign in the district, but two people in particular are shaping this Jewish campaign.

There’s the incumbent, Nadler, 78, who is the longest tenured current Jewish member of Congress. Nadler’s advocacy for Jewish issues has been a hallmark since joining the House in a November 1992 special election to fill the remainder of a deceased predecessor’s term and then cruising to reelection over more than three decades.

There’s also New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a former state assemblyman from a Queens-based district, who took office Jan. 1. Mamdani’s strident anti-Israelism, which came to light during his winning 2025 mayoral campaign, rattled the city with the largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel — up to 12% of the 8.5 million-person city, depending on the survey.

“This is the largest Jewish voting population of any congressional district in the country,” Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in an interview. She estimated that there were 180,000 Jewish voters in the district, accounting for 23% of the total electorate. Others say the representation may be as high as 30% — Jewish numbers are notoriously hard to pin down because the U.S. Census does not ask about religion.

“Just given these numbers and relatively high Jewish voter turnout rates, it is without question that Jewish voters will play a leading role in determining the outcome of this primary,” said Soifer, whose group campaigns for Democrats in the Jewish community. “So where these candidates stand on issues of importance to Jewish voters is critically important.”

Jewish voters in the district want a candidate who will forcefully denounce public expressions of anti-Israel advocacy that can seep into antisemitism, including a November protest outside Park East, a Modern Orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side, said Amanda Berman, the CEO of Zioness Action Fund, which fundraises for pro-Israel Democrats.

“There is this real, extreme feeling of vulnerability as it relates to Jewish life and support of Israel,” said Berman, who resides in the 12th. “There are Jews walking into a synagogue for a Nefesh be-Nefesh event,” she said, referring to a group that encourages Jewish immigration to Israel, “and people are screaming that they need to be made afraid.” About 200 protesters outside the synagogue repeatedly shouted, “We need to make them scared!”

Micah Bergdale, an entrepreneur who is among the candidates, said Jewish people in the district fear for their safety.

“There are safety concerns about how people are perceived as just being Jewish out in public, and the idea that somebody just by nature of wearing a yarmulke or having something that makes them very overtly Jewish, that somehow they might be attacked or harassed, is really disturbing,” he said.

Among the nine declared candidates for the Democratic nomination still in the race, Lasher, Shurka, and Kasky are Jewish, as is Bergdale. Jack Schlossberg, a Kennedy scion, identifies as ethnically Jewish. Floyd and Bores are married to Jews, hence Bores’s mother’s pride in her Jewish daughter-in-law. The Washington Examiner reached out to all nine campaigns for comment; four replied, and the others have made their Jewish bona fides clear while campaigning.

So, less than six months ahead of the Democratic primary, the prominence of Israel and Jewish issues in the Midtown Manhattan district reflects widening community splits over Israel. Differences driven by generational, political, and religious differences, which have been severely exacerbated by Israel’s two-year defensive war in Gaza, prompted by the Oct. 7 attacks, when about 1,200 people in the Jewish state were killed and 251 taken hostage by Hamas.

“In the same way that Mamdani’s views with regard to Israel and antisemitism were closely scrutinized, including by this specific Jewish voting population, these candidates will also be judged based upon their past statements,” Soifer said.

She noted that in some recent polls, Jewish Americans have ranked Israel as fourth among their most important issues when voting, the highest Israel has fared in decades of polling.

“In this post-Oct. 7 world, Israel is a higher voting priority for Jewish Americans,” she said.

The issue has already beset the campaign of Lasher, a onetime aide to Nadler who is in his first term as a state Assembly member whose district overlaps much of the 12th.

In June, months before the mayoral general election but days after Mamdani secured the Democratic nomination, six Orthodox rabbis spoke with Lasher and came away sensing he understood their concerns about the nominee who refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” and who backs the boycott Israel movement. More recently, Mamdani equivocated in condemning the Park East protest, upholding the right of Jews to worship but accusing the synagogue of promoting “activities in violation of international law.”

The rabbis were stunned just days later when Lasher endorsed Mamdani in the general election. Several prominent centrist New York Democrats would not endorse Mamdani, even after he won the primary.

“That both appalls me, and motivates me to leave no stone unturned,” one of the rabbis, Shaul Robinson of Lincoln Square Synagogue, wrote on Facebook.

Lasher, 44, who in his state legislative biography notes his membership in Rodeph Shalom, a Reform synagogue known for its celebrity and wealthy members, said in his endorsement that he hoped “that Zohran can come to better appreciate the deeply personal and historical importance that the survival of Israel as a Jewish state holds for Jewish New Yorkers.”

“I will continue to be among those urging Zohran to speak with clarity when it comes to rhetoric — including the invocation or celebration of intifada — that makes Jewish New Yorkers, or any community in our city, feel threatened,” Lasher said.

He replied directly to Robinson on Facebook: “This is a difficult situation for the Jewish community and we are all trying to navigate it as best we can.”

The “we” was important: When Nadler endorsed Lasher after he declared for Congress in September, the retiring incumbent was blessing not just a former aide, but the candidate whose Jewishness appeared to most mirror his own: committed to the community, supportive of Israel but critical of its government, and outspoken in his resistance to Trump, who is anathema in the district. Nadler helped lead the first impeachment of Trump, in 2019 and 2020, on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress charges, over the withholding of arms sales to Ukraine.

“It remains an electorate remarkably shaped by concerns around any of these Jewish issues,” said a senior New York Jewish political operative who is backing Lasher. “But it’s not everything, and it is a very, very liberal district,” said the operative who requested anonymity to speak candidly about Lasher’s prospects.

Navigating the anxieties Jewish constituents are expressing, and the Democrats’ increased criticism of Israel after a two-year Israel-Hamas war that has devastated the Gaza Strip, is becoming a central challenge for candidates.

“Laura Dunn believes there are necessary distinctions between — on the one hand — standing for Jewish safety and supporting the right for Israel to exist, and opposing the harmful conduct committed by the Israeli government towards Palestinians on the other,” the campaign for the civil rights lawyer said in an email.

Lasher has emerged in the local media as a front-runner, although there has so far been no public polling. A private poll in September assessing Lasher’s popularity — and notably focusing on Israel issues — is believed to have been commissioned by his campaign,

The other front-runner, at least in media exposure, is Bores, 35, who, like Lasher, is a state assemblyman. The deep roots of both men in the Democratic Party and their legislative experience may be why they are accruing inevitability status.

Such establishment credentials may not be enough to win: If nine candidates stay in the race until June, a winner would need only to accumulate just 20% or so of the primary votes.

Those odds are fueling the campaigns of what would, in a smaller stable of candidates, be long shots.

Mike Paul, a senior adviser to Floyd’s campaign, said her strategy is to campaign intensely in all 12 neighborhoods in the district.

“No one is getting handed this district,” Paul said in a text. “Every vote must be earned, and she seeks to hear and see ALL in 12 distinct neighborhoods in D12 — block by block.”

Floyd, 61, a former TV and radio journalist, sees vulnerabilities in Lasher’s endorsement of Mamdani.

“I’ve heard several people use the expression, ‘He threw the Jewish community under the bus,’” she said in an interview. “Sticking your finger in the wind to see if the wind is blowing in the progressive direction, and then leaning over toward Mamdani because you think that’s where your political fortunes lie, is not what we need in this district.”

Floyd, whose husband is Jewish and who was close to her Holocaust survivor father-in-law, noted that as a member of the community board on the Upper West Side, she helped lead a statement that stood with Jewish people after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks — just as she had joined statements after the 2020 murder of George Floyd condemning the police.

“I’m part African American, so I thought that was perfectly fine,” she said of the Floyd statement. “And now was the time to do the same” for the Jewish community.

It may be hard to match Nadler in making the Jewish community in the district feel represented and seen, said his former communications director, Aaron Keyak. Nadler, as a child, attended Orthodox Jewish schools.

“He went to yeshiva,” Keyak said, using the Hebrew name for an Orthodox academy.

“And he genuinely understood the nuances of not just being able to speak with the Jewish community, but understanding what it meant to be Jewish,” added Keyak, who went on to a State Department role in the Biden administration, as Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.

During Nadler’s first congressional bid, in 1992, the New York Times reported on the then-state lawmaker’s ability to weave his religious education into public policy debates.

“He is the sort of lawmaker who can — and did — debate whether Jewish tradition condoned the death penalty, by rattling off memorized passages from the Talmud in Hebrew in a duel with Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn conservative, several years ago,” then-New York Times scribe Todd Purdum wrote.

Nadler, throughout his congressional career, has been a leader in advocating against antisemitism and in supporting Israel. Although, like many Democrats, he has increasingly criticized the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Still, Nadler for decades discouraged his fellow Jewish lawmakers from making their faith a preeminent issue. He used his influence to discourage the establishment of a congressional Jewish caucus similar to existing umbrella bodies for black, Hispanic, and Asian lawmakers. That changed after the Oct. 7 attacks, and such a caucus was established in December of the same year. There are currently 25 Jewish members in the House of Representatives and 10 in the Senate.

Leaning into one’s Jewish identity was inevitable for Jewish lawmakers, given the surge in antisemitism even before Oct. 7, with deadly attacks on Jews proliferating both from the extreme Right, in Trump’s first term, and from the extreme Left, since the Hamas invasion.

“Ten years ago, most Jewish members just saw themselves as members of Congress who represented their districts and who happened to have a certain religion or ethnicity,” Keyak said, describing conversations that took place when he was working for Nadler. “And then, unfortunately, in recent years, especially since Oct. 7, it’s become more pronounced and unfortunately distinctive to be a Jewish member of Congress.”

A wide-open race

Emphasizing one’s identity may be an asset in a wide-open race, said the Jewish operative who is backing Lasher.

“You never know — any individuating factor can play a role,” said the backer, noting that Lasher’s Jewishness would likely help him in the race.

That may explain why so many of the candidates are leaning into personal stories that help them stand out in a field where there is broad agreement on making New York affordable and stopping Trump’s excesses.

Floyd bills herself as a working mother with a black parent; Dunn, 40, calls herself a queer woman with Latina heritage; Schlossberg, 32, is not shy about reminding people that his grandfather was President John F. Kennedy; Alan Pardee, 58, a financier, tells voters off the bat that he is the son of a Dominican immigrant; Bores, a former data scientist, has made artificial intelligence restrictions his central campaign issue; George Conway, 62, a lawyer, is running as perhaps the most prominent former Republican who now despises Trump.

Shurka, 37, is a longtime LGBT activist who has helped pass laws in 27 states banning “conversion therapy,” the controversial treatment that purports to guide gay people back to heterosexuality. He is making Jewish safety and LGBT rights central to his campaign because both are intensely personal to him.

This past Oct. 7, he was at the Supreme Court in Washington tracking an attempt to unravel laws banning conversion therapy.

At the same time, he was checking in on his friend Abie Troen, who exactly two years earlier was texting him on WhatsApp with the horrific news that his sister and her husband were murdered by Hamas terrorists when the group invaded Israel, and their son was lying still in the house waiting for hours to be rescued.

The feelings evoked by confronting the threats to two of his identities — gay and Jewish — were intense, Shurka said. “It was weird,” he said in an interview. “It was personal.”

Kasky, 25, is a gun control advocate who survived the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. He, too, is playing up his Jewishness — as an anti-Zionist Jew. In December, he toured the West Bank to express solidarity with Palestinians. Chronicling the visit on social media, he emphasized his Jewishness.

Mamdani won the New York City mayoralty despite (or because of) a similar Israel-critical outlook, but that won’t likely fly for Kasky in the 12th — the median age of the district is 40, and most of its precincts went for Mamdani’s opponent in the general election, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Jewish Democrats are watching the race as a bellwether of where the party is headed after Mamdani’s victory: Will bashing Israel be considered a winner?

“As a trustee of the Democratic Party, I see things within my party that just terrify me,” said a leading Jewish fundraiser for the party who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. It’s not just the 12th, the fundraiser said: Multiple Democratic candidates are now vocal about declining money from pro-Israel donors. “There’s going to be a lot of races to be concerned about.”

Ron Kampeas is a journalist based in Arlington, Virginia. He was the Jewish Telegraphic Agency‘s Washington bureau chief for more than 20 years and previously reported for the Associated Press from its Jerusalem, New York, London, and Washington, D.C., bureaus.