‘They wanted my voice gone’: A swing-seat, pro-Israel Democrat is fending off criticism from both parties
By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN
Boca Raton, Florida (CNN) — A week before the Israeli elections that will determine Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s future, the only two Jewish candidates running against each other to represent one of the most heavily Jewish House districts in the country met for their first face-to-face at a synagogue the name of which literally translates to “children of Israel” — referring to the people, not the country.
Attendees needed to provide their license plates in advance and bring photo identification to get in the door, passing through a body scanner. Armed and unarmed guards were positioned through the building. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, the Democrat who’d be considered a progressive on most other issues beyond Israel, and former Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer, his Republican challenger, each entered with two large security guards who stood the whole time just to the side of the stage. The hour-long forum went 28 minutes before a question that wasn’t about Israel and antisemitism.
The race, the synagogue’s interim rabbi Cy Stanway told CNN after listening to the forum, is a “bellwether” — on support for Israel, antisemitism, Jews running against each other … he was still ticking through significances as congregants interrupted to share their own takes on what the race represents.
It’s also a referendum on Moskowitz, and whether a loudly pro-Israel and adamant denouncer of antisemitism fits anymore in the Democratic Party.
The answer to that question will resonate far beyond South Florida, as multiple Jewish candidates are gearing up to launch 2028 presidential campaigns at the same moment that condemning Israel is emerging as a clear litmus test for the Democratic primaries.
The shifting Jewish vote
For decades, American Jews were one of the most supportive and consistent Democratic constituencies. But the October 7 attacks, President Donald Trump’s hardline support for Israel and the spread of anti-Israel sentiment among some Democrats have ripped them apart politically in ways that are all playing out in this House race.
By Republicans, American Jews are being told to stomach antisemitism coursing past the conservative fringes and Trump’s embrace of a prime minister deeply unpopular among them. By Democrats, they’re being told to subjugate their concerns to the larger fight for majorities in Congress, to listen to former President Barack Obama at an event in Belfast this month say Israelis “took land off people, and they were excessive,” to accept New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani going from outlier to trendsetter as anti-Zionism becomes de rigueur and antisemitism gets minimized.
“If you don’t want to be with the Democrats as a whole because you feel that way, I understand,” Moskowitz told CNN in an interview. “But in this race, that’s not the case.”
“The reason why the Jewish community is so on edge is because the beginning of those stories of our grandparents are starting to come true again,” Moskowitz said. “We’re being blamed for things we have nothing to do with. The conspiracy theories are out of control. If Hitler had TikTok, I don’t know that the Jews would have survived, and America might be speaking German.”
This is the rare race where the Democrat brags about being the one with AIPAC’s endorsement and embraces being grouped in with renegade Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman on Israel.
Two days before the forum, Moskowitz sat by the large rusting pink flamingo in the back patio of the Ole Ole Steakhouse in Miami Beach, being offered tray after tray of croquettes and flatbreads, a few minutes before he closed out a Latino supporter event by calling out the winning ticket numbers for a raffle of new cookware pieces — “I was born for this moment,” he joked. Moskowitz told CNN that while his main job if he returns to Washington will be tackling the affordability crisis he hears about across every demographic in the district, he now has a larger mission.
Police are permanently stationed outside Moskowitz’s home after a man with an antisemitic manifesto was arrested for targeting him for assassination. Another man was arrested just last week for threatening his life.
Put that together with a Democratic Socialists of America primary challenger who ran against him because of his Israel views and was embraced by likeminded advocates around the country, Moskowitz said, and he’s digging in.
“They wanted my voice gone. That voice is not only not going anywhere, that voice is now pissed,” Moskowitz said. “These people need economic help. They absolutely need economic help, but this litmus test that all of a sudden is breeding in the Democratic Party that you’ve got to be anti- our number one ally, or you’ve got to say things like, ‘It’s a genocide,’ which is a blood libel against Jews in this country and which is making us less safe? Yeah, I’m going to fight that wherever it is.”
What Moskowitz means for Hakeem Jeffries
This is just one House seat amid a battle for the majority that’s playing out in districts red, blue and purple across the country. But because of his antics aimed for the cameras at committee hearings, the proudly impish 45-year-old Moskowitz quickly became one of the best-known junior members of Congress in the country.
Republicans in Tallahassee and DC came up with a plan: as part of their own rushed off-cycle redistricting, they redrew the district to one where Trump won by 9 points in 2024, recruited the well-known but elected as a non-partisan Jewish mayor of one of the best-known cities in it, then poured in millions. Singer, with his South Florida perma-tan and hair spray keeping his gray comb-up perfectly in place, looked the part.
It’s the most expensive House race in America — well over $40 million in cumulative spending already, and expected to edge at least past $50 million in the final days. Ads are running non-stop, full of too many claims and fudged phrases for anyone to make sense of. Signs are hooked onto the fences of condos and at intersections. Voters are having to divine which district they live in post-gerrymandering by sorting through all the brochures swamping their mailboxes.
Now that the race is almost done, Moskowitz says he has told House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries he feels a little guilty with how much cash is being poured into him while multiple other races on the cusp in Florida and beyond could be shifted by a fraction of it.
But Moskowitz and Democrats in DC like that he’s also sucking up money that Republicans weren’t planning to spend there. To Jeffries, a person familiar with the leader’s thinking tells CNN, this and other races where he could buck GOP efforts to redistrict Democrats out of reach of the majority were “personal.”
In another measure of how fraught Israel has become for Democrats, Israel critics like former Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes and several incoming DSA House members blasted Jeffries for betraying party voters for appointing Moskowitz the ranking member on the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee. The truth is, even though Moskowitz thanked the leader for the job, Jeffries wasn’t directly involved.
California Rep. Brad Sherman, who was up for it, decided giving it over to Moskowitz would help in his House race, but also in much bigger ways.
“That he’ll be chair of that subcommittee,” Sherman told CNN by phone, “is significant to everyone who wants a reasonable and balanced policy in the Middle East.”
Meanwhile, at the top of his ticket Moskowitz has Angie Nixon, a former state legislator who joined the DSA to run for Senate and has leaned into claims that Israel has committed genocide, though he said he was too focused on his race to have an opinion on her, but was glad to point out that he hasn’t campaigned with her.
Trump’s ‘shylock’ comment
The race isn’t all coming down to Jews and Israel. The new district, which runs along the coast roughly from Delray Beach to Miami Beach, also has a big Latino population, and Ileana Martinez, who’s been organizing for Republicans many of the years since she first arrived from Colombia in 1979, was eager to put together the steakhouse event for Moskowitz. She and some other Latinos who supported the president in 2024 now feel “we are on a very disgusting thing with Trump.”
But in an interview in an office just off the synagogue’s sanctuary shortly after the forum, Singer told CNN that the overall affluence of the district has meant less stress on affordability than elsewhere, and more time for the race to focus on Democrats’ changing views on Israel and socialism.
In signs around the district and a dozen times on stage at the forum, the Republican tied Moskowitz to Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, the strongly anti-Israel Minnesota congresswoman from the Squad who in a much different political moment back in 2019 — before Moskowitz was in Congress — had to apologize for a post claiming support for Israel was all about money in what was widely condemned as an antisemitic trope.
“People who understand that support for Israel and standing up to antisemitism are key issues will find an easier home in the Republican Party or an easier voting with someone who will stand up to those issues and not empower people like Ilhan Omar as my opponent did,” Singer charged.
The difference between Republicans and Democrats, Singer charged, is that the anti-Israel and antisemitic forces on the right are mostly podcasters and not elected officials. On stage during the forum, he had shrugged off Trump’s use of “shylock” at a Kansas rally last week in describing people who chase more money than they’re owed as “an ill-advised term,” but one that has “multiple meanings.”
“Merchant of Venice,” Singer said, happens to be his favorite Shakespeare play. Asked in the interview if “Shylock” is an antisemitic term, Singer said, “it’s often used that way, yes.”
Asked if he could point to an example outside of a production of “The Merchant of Venice” when it wasn’t used in an antisemitic way, Singer said, “just as a lender. I remember the movie ‘Get Shorty,’ John Travolta used it.”
Anyway, Singer said, he’s more focused on what Trump has done standing by Israel and appointing envoys to fight antisemitism.
Singer and Moskowitz both insist the only election they’re focused on is theirs — but they can’t help looking over to Israel’s and wondering what it will mean for the fight that’s playing out in Florida and beyond.
Netanyahu, Singer said, has been “a transformative leader.”
Moskowitz has been more critical of Netanyahu but says he doesn’t think the fight he’s having is going to be changed much by whoever emerges as the next prime minister.
“Ultimately, Israel could use a new face of the country. It’s not going to, by the way, fundamentally change what’s happening on the far left and in DSA,” he said. “But it will provide maybe a breath to recalibrate here on Israel’s future.”
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