Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.) has joined the list of staunch supporters of Israel and other Jewish causes who will not be re-elected to Congress in November, following his defeat Tuesday in a fiercely contested six-way primary.
Solarz was defeated by Nydia Velazquez in a district redrawn to promote minority representation, in accordance with recent changes in the Voting Rights Act. After his previous, predominately Jewish district was erased by this year’s redistricting, he elected to fight it out in the newly created 12th District, which is nearly 60 percent Hispanic.
Ironically, Solarz had considered running against another Jewish incumbent, Rep. Ted Weiss of Manhattan, who died Monday of heart failure. But he ultimately decided against it.
Still on the ballot, Weiss outpolled a candidate from the fringe New Alliance Party. His replacement as the Democratic nominee in the heavily liberal and Jewish 8th District of Manhattan and Brooklyn will be chosen by Democratic Party officials.
Another New York Jewish Democrat, Rep. James Scheuer, chose not to run again after being pitted against another incumbent by redistricting.
Jewish incumbents Gary Ackerman and Eliot Engel, both Democrats, handily defeated their challengers. Two Republican Jewish representatives, Benjamin Gilman and Bill Green, and one Jewish Democrat, Nita Lowey, did not face primary challengers.
But much of the attention in the New York state primary was focused on the Senate race, in which Democratic state Attorney General Robert Abrams, who is Jewish, claimed victory over Geraldine Ferraro, the former congresswoman and vice presidential candidate.
Ferraro, however, refused to concede defeat, hoping that uncounted absentee ballots would reverse the razor-thin Abrams lead.
Abrams, or possibly Ferraro, will face off in the November general election against incumbent Republican Sen. Alfonse D’Amato. All three of them are considered friends of Israel.
That contest promises to be particularly nasty. And it will pose the question of how much loyalty liberal supporters of Israel owe a staunch supporter of the Jewish state who is extremely conservative.
D’Amato has already launched his appeal to the Jewish vote, attacking Abrams as being soft during last year’s rioting by blacks in the heavily Hasidic community of Crown Heights.
“Where was Bobby Abrams when the police were not allowed to do their jobs?” the New York Post quoted him as saying.
Abrams, however, is not lacking in Jewish credentials, including service as chairman of the New York Council on Soviet Jewry.
He received roughly 60 percent of the Jewish vote in Tuesday’s primary, according to a poll by Voter Research and Surveys that was published in The New York Times.
If Abrams ultimately loses out to Ferraro, he could still run in the general election as the candidate of the small but politically influential New York Liberal Party. This would likely splinter the vote in a scenario similar to the one in 1980 that enabled D’Amato to win his first Senate race.
Another Jewish Democratic candidate for Senate, New York City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman, placed fourth in the race.
Holtzman, who as a congresswoman led the fight to prosecute Nazi war criminals who entered this country illegally, trailed the controversial Rev. Al Sharpton.
Sharpton, seen by many as the African American community’s highest-profile rabble-rouser, particularly for his comments during the Crown Heights riots, received more than 60 percent of the black vote.
In a racially charged congressional primary, City Council member Susan Alter, who is Jewish, failed in her quest to unseat Rep. Edolphus Towns of Brooklyn. Alter succeeded in running in a largely minority district last year, when her City Council district was gerrymandered away, but was unable to duplicate the feat Tuesday.
David Luchins, an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), said the Towns victory reflects an impressive sophistication among Jewish voters.
“There were Orthodox Jews voting for a black, because they saw a strong record of concern for their issues,” he said.
But there was no such cross-ethnic voting pattern in Solarz’s district, where a group of Roman Catholic clergy issued a statement on the eve of the election urging voters to pick any candidate other than Solarz.
“We’re saying that this district was created precisely to empower the Latino community,” Msgr. John Powis was quoted as saying. “We’re saying that Latinos here should vote for one of the Latino candidates.”
By contrast, Solarz’s old district, prior to this summer’s redistricting, was described by the 1990 Almanac of American Politics as “one of the few majority- Jewish districts in the nation and the home of many of the nation’s least affluent Jewish communities.”
Solarz has been a steadfast supporter of Jewish concerns and a strong advocate for oppressed Jews in Syria, Iran and the Soviet Union.
He has sponsored many pieces of legislation sought by Jewish groups, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and a law permitting the wearing of yarmulkes and other religious garb in the military.
A leading crusader against the apartheid system in South Africa, Solarz played a prominent role in mobilizing congressional support for the use of military force against Iraq in the Persian Gulf crisis, becoming one of the few liberal Democrats to back the war.
He is a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and chairman of its subcommittee on Asian and Pacific affairs. Other pro-Israel members of the committee who will not be returning to Congress include Reps. Dante Fascell (D- Fla.) and Mel Levine (D-Calif.).
Solarz’s defeat Tuesday is “a very serious loss,” said Morris Amitay, a pro- Israel activist and former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
“He became an acknowledged foreign policy expert in Congress, one of a handful considered expert on a range of issues,” said Amitay. “He was a consistent, thoughtful supporter of Israel.”
“Those of us who are supporting Bill Clinton certainly hope he will get a very high-level job involving foreign policy in the Clinton administration,” he said.
“We will certainly miss his articulate advocacy, but hope that there will be other opportunities (for him) in public service, either in elected or appointed office,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
“We will miss him enormously and hope he will resurface,” said David Zwiebel, director of government affairs for Agudath Israel of America.
Other primary races of interest around the country Tuesday included one in Washington state, to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Brock Adams, a strong supporter of Israel. The winners were Republican U.S. Rep. Rod Chandler and Democratic state Sen. Patty Murray.
Chandler, who has served since 1983, has a strong record of support for aid to Israel and opposition to arms sales to Arab countries, while Murray is running as an outsider and does not have an established record.
In Massachusetts, Rep. Chester Atkins, a Democrat who has been considered a friend of the pro-Israel community, lost his primary bid in a reconfigured district.
And in Oklahoma, Rep. Mike Synar, a pro-Israel Democrat, won in an especially close runoff against a well-financed challenger. He is favored to win re- election to his House seat in November.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
