Jewish politicians Ossoff, Shapiro and Pritzker easily win races as control of Congress hangs in the balance
By RON KAMPEAS and TOVAH LAZAROFF
(JTA) — The first polls began to close Tuesday night, after Americans voted in congressional elections across the country that could shape President Donald Trump’s legacy and with it the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Democratic supporters of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) hold signs and flags during a midterm election night watch party at The Hyatt Regency on November 3, 2026 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)
A combination of disenchantment with Israel and an increase in rhetoric much of the Jewish community sees as antisemitic has come to define what may be the bleakest elections in recent history for the Jewish community.
Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Jewish Democrat, handily won reelection Tuesday night, a signal of how poorly Trump was faring in swing states he won in 2024. Ossoff is an avatar of where Jewish Democrats seem to be heading: He counts himself as pro-Israel, but favors restricting some weapons sales and is critical of the current government.
Ossoff is considered a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. But two other potential Jewish Democratic competitors also handily won their races on Tuesday night, and the strong showings will help all three make their case for the highest office. Gov. J.B. Pritzker in Illinois and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania cruised to victory. Another Jewish candidate for governor, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, also won his race, according to AP projections.
Still, there have been many aspects of the 2026 midterms that haven’t sat well with Jewish voters and political activists.
“This campaign season has been deeply painful for the American Jewish community,” Ted Deutch, the former Democratic congressman who is now the American Jewish Committee CEO, said in a post on X that summarized the anxiety many in the mainstream Jewish community are feeling.
“We have been told we don’t belong in political spaces,” he said. “When we’ve spoken out against candidates trafficking in antisemitism, we’ve been brushed aside. We have been told that if we embrace any connection to the state of Israel or express our Zionism, we cannot be allies.”
The first exit polls published, by NBC News, showed a 67% to 32% split among Jewish voters favoring Democrats – a partisan split that’s been typical for Jewish voters in recent political cycles, suggesting Democrats have not yet lost one of their historically most loyal constituencies.
Much of the angst was concentrated in Michigan, where the anti-Israel posture of the state’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, has seeded turmoil in the Jewish community there as well as among Democrats nationwide.
Democrats looked set to flip the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate may also come under their control. If those changes take place, the cohort of Democrats who are stridently critical of Israel will expand from what has since 2018 been a handful to a substantial minority in the party.
Democrats who reject Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, moreover, could multiply from a single lawmaker in the House – Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who won reelection Tuesday – to as many as four in the House and one in the Senate, Michigan’s El-Sayed. Even more may favor restrictions on weapons sales to Israel, including defensive weapons, among them the Iron Dome anti-missile system that has proven critical to protecting Israeli civilians. Also likely to increase are the number of Democrats who call Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip a genocide. Hamas launched the war with deadly raids and mass abductions inside Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In New York, strident Israel critics Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier – a leader in the Columbia pro-Palestinian student protests – easily won their districts. But so did Micah Lasher, a conventional pro-Israel Jewish Democrat who is replacing his mentor, long-time Jewish Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler. And Rep. Ritchie Torres, a staunchly pro-Israel Democrat, was reelected.
The vast majority of Democrats still remain supportive of Israel, but increasingly with significant qualifications – favoring limits on the sale of offensive weapons, for example. That’s likely to become the norm if the Democrats do as well as polls have predicted. The best known representative of this outlook is Ossoff. Others include Daniel Biss, who won a bid to replace retiring Jewish Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky in her Chicago-area district, and Brad Lander in New York, who bested incumbent Jewish Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman in the primary and who cruised to election on Tuesday.
Republicans, for their part, remain overwhelmingly pro-Israel, but there are signs that conservative figures who are sharply critical of Israel are growing in influence. Significantly, Trump on Tuesday morning said that defense assistance for Israel would soon end because it has become an electoral burden on Republicans.
In Florida, sitting Republican Sen. Ashley Moody defeated the Israel-critical Democratic state representative and democratic socialist Angie Nixon. Moody was formerly the state attorney general and was appointed to the Senate by Gov. Ron DeSantis in January 2025 after Marco Rubio vacated the seat to become secretary of state.
Moody, who was endorsed by the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC and President Donald Trump, is a staunch supporter of Israel who has said she wants the U.S. to be “the most pro-Israel country in the world.” She also said that she “worked to make Florida the most pro-Israel state in the nation” as attorney general.
Jews have also been troubled by the emergence of Republicans who maintain associations with people widely considered to be unabashed antisemites, among them Mike Collins, who lost to Ossoff.
Republicans now hold 53 seats in the 100-seat Senate, while the Democratic bloc has 47 members, including two independents who caucus with the party. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to seize control. Among the most closely watched races – where both parties have a good shot at winning – are those in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, New Hampshire and, in a sign of the woes that Republicans could face Tuesday night, Kansas. Democrats are defending seats in Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire and seeking to flip Republican-held seats in the other seven states. Additionally, the Minnesota race could give progressive Israel critic Peggy Flanagan a seat.
Michigan’s Senate contest, in particular, has been among the most closely watched of these races and has strained Jewish relationships with the Democratic Party.
At its center is El-Sayed, the former county health director and Democratic nominee whose anti-corporate, Medicare for All candidacy has become a new rallying cry for the national progressive movement.
But his uncompromising stances against Israel – including his refusal to say at a recent debate whether it or Iran is a bigger threat to the United States – have also made him a cause for concern among pro-Israel groups. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has worked to defeat him and has backed his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.
In Maine, Democratic candidate and strong Israel critic Troy Jackson, a former Maine Senate leader, is taking on Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, who has held the state’s U.S. Senate seat for 29 years.
Jackson opposes “giving a blank check” to Israel, saying that he does not want “any more offensive weapons going to murder people in Palestine.” He has also accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Collins, a GOP moderate, has been a staunch supporter of Israel throughout her Senate tenure.
In Texas, Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, a progressive who is making the Senate contest in traditionally Republican Texas competitive, is facing off against former state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican.
Paxton, a hard-line Trump ally, strongly supports Israel, opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and has spoken out against antisemitism. Impeached by the Texas House of Representatives in 2023, he was acquitted by the Texas Senate months later.
Talarico, for his part, is a Presbyterian seminary student who recognizes Israel’s right to defend itself and condemned the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. But while Talarico supports U.S. defensive aid to Israel, he opposes sending Jerusalem offensive weapons.
In the House, Democrats need a net gain of three seats to secure a narrow majority of 218 seats in the 435-member body.
Among the competitive races is Wisconsin’s 3rd District, where Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke is attempting to win back for Democrats a historically Democratic seat that flipped in 2022 with Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s electoral victory.
Cooke has said that she does not “think that we should send more military aid to the Netanyahu government invasion,” according to Jewish Insider. She is backed by J Street, while Van Orden has the support of the rival AIPAC lobby group.
Van Orden, who attended President Donald Trump’s Stop the Steal rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, is a vocal supporter of Israel and backs military funding for the country. He traveled there following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
A number of races also feature DSA candidates who oppose any military funding for Israel, such as New York’s 7th and 13th Districts, where the Democratic candidates Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier have both accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. California’s 34th District, Colorado’s 1st, Michigan’s 13th and Pennsylvania’s 3rd also feature DSA candidates. In Michigan’s 7th District, the progressive Democratic candidate William Lawrence wants to end military aid to Israel.
And there are also Republican candidates who have given some Jewish voters pause. In Texas’ 23rd District, Democrat Katy Padilla Stout is seeking to flip the seat in a race against Brandon Herrera, a Trump-backed hard-right influencer with a history of alleged antisemitic remarks.
Herrera has previously said he would “absolutely vote against” funding for “foreign conflicts,” including aid to Israel. He has shared jokes about the Nazis online, admitted to owning a copy of Mein Kampf and said that Jews “killed” Jesus, drawing harsh opposition from Jewish organizations.
Then there are the House races with strongly identified Jewish candidates, especially in Florida’s 25th District, where voters can choose between two Jewish pro-Israel politicians, incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz and former Republican Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer.
Florida redistricted the state to favor Republicans, endangering, among others, Jewish Democrats Moskowitz and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, one of the party’s most prominent pro-Israel Democrats. Wasserman-Schultz as a result opted to run in a different, Democratic-leaning, district, winning the primary in August. The Associated Press called a win for her early on Tuesday evening.
Rep. Lois Frankel, another Florida Jewish Democrat, easily retained her district in the state’s southeast. Rep. Randy Fine, a firebrand Republican who has drawn fire for commentary seen as Islamaphobic, also won reelection.
In Virginia, Rep. Eugene Vindman, a Jewish Democrat who played a key role in Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, retained his seat in a swing seat in the exurbs of Washington, D.C.
