Former federal prosecutor and Levi Strauss heir Dan Goldman is declaring victory in the Democratic primary for New York’s 10th district. About 1,300 votes separate Goldman from Yuh-Line Niou, the Working Families Party-backed Manhattan assembly member.
On Tuesday night the United Democracy Project (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Super PAC) admitted that they intervened in the race over Niou’s position on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Niou has seemingly vacillated on whether she backs BDS, but she’s consistently voiced her support for the First Amendment and condemned attempts to criminalize such boycotts.
“UDP congratulates Dan Goldman for his victory in this hard-fought Democratic race,” tweeted the Super PAC. “We’re proud to have played a role in defeating Yuh-Line Niou—an anti-Israel candidate who endorses the BDS campaign against Israel—through our significant support of a local New York SuperPac.”
That local Super PAC was New York Progressive, which spent almost $400,000 on ads opposing Niou. Some of these ads attacked Niou for supporting “the antisemitic BDS agenda.”
Documents filed with the Federal Election Commission list Jeffrey Leb, a managing partner at Capitol Consulting and former United Jewish Appeal (UJA) lobbyist, as New York Progressive’s treasurer. Leb is also apparently the treasurer for Common Sense New Yorkers and Voters of New York, two corporate PACs that have boosted moderate candidates this election cycle. According to a June New York Focus report from Sam Mellins those groups raised $1.3 million over a five month period.
“Jeffrey Leb, the treasurer of both PACs, who had not responded to emails, calls and text messages earlier in the day, told New York Focus that the failure to upload the disclosures by the legally mandated deadlines—which in some cases had passed months ago—was an ‘inadvertent omission’,” wrote Mellins.
On Twitter 10th district constituent Maya Contreras documented her experience after receiving an anti-Niou flyer. “So this PAC ‘New York Progressive’ (LOL) just sent out this pretty terrible flyer,” she wrote. “So I looked up the PAC and called the phone number for Jeffery [Leb] on Wall St. He answered, I said, ‘This PAC was just formed. Is it on behalf of Dan Goldman?’ He paused, and hung up.”
“For the record, I’ve never met or spoken with Dan Goldman & we aren’t supporting him or any other candidate,” Leb responded. “We oppose Yuh-Line because of her extremist views.”
AIPAC launched the United Democracy Project (UDP) PAC last year and has used it to spend millions of dollars across Democratic primaries this election cycle. The group consistently insists that support for Israel is good politics for Democrats, but doesn’t mention the country in any of its ads. Recent polling shows that Israel’s reputation is falling among Democratic voters, while support for Palestinians has grown.
“AIPAC showing that it knows its brand can be toxic to Democratic primary voters: it spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to stop a progressive woman of color but refused to report any financial involvement until after polls closed then claimed credit,” tweeted IfNotNow co-founder Yonah Lieberman.
“That AIPAC hid its role in this race underscores truth that was clear in other AIPAC-targeted races in which it buried its pro-Israel agenda: these primaries were – by AIPAC’s own actions – by no stretch of the imagination referendums on voters’ views on Israel,” tweeted Foundation for Middle East Peace Lara Friedman. “Indeed, the fact that AIPAC buried its agenda in the previous races & in this one completely hid its engagement behind another org, strongly suggests AIPAC knows that if it had made these primaries referendums on Israel the results might well not have been to its liking.”
It’s a real scandal that liberal sites which focus on elections (VOX, TPM, 538) — never mind the “mainstream” — have made the decision to avoid completely any mention of the role of pro-Israel $$ involvement in these races, ignoring the victory claims of AIPAC et al.
AIPAC should be required to register as an agent of a foreign government, as President John F. Kennedy wanted to do.
Israel’s blatant election meddling drives America’s foreign policies in immoral directions diametrically opposed to America’s professed values.
I applaud Yuh-Line Niou for standing up against this corruption of our politics. I hope future Congressional candidates will continue to battle this corruption until it is decisively defeated.
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WOW!!
CNN ON ANTISEMITISM IN AMERICA – Wednesdays Wars
“CNN ON ANTISEMITISM IN AMERICA” August 24/22
By Tom Callagan.
EXCERPT:
“Last Sunday, Dana Bash of CNN, narrated a one-hour program on the rise of Anti Semitism in the USA. I watched it all. In my opinion, it was very deeply unimpressive. In other words it was pretentious & mediocre.
“The fatal flaw of the Special was that it didn’t contain an ounce of self-examination or reflection on the activities of the American Jewish Community itself & how the fellow citizens of American Jews, also known as ‘the rest of us’, view those activities.
“The fact is that through the political power of the Jewish Community in the USA, we, all of us, give more money to rich & prosperous Israel than we give to all of the Countries of Sub Saharan Africa combined, a desperately poor area from which most of the slaves began their voyage to the Western Hemisphere.
“Last Sunday, Dana Bash of CNN, narrated a one-hour program on the rise of Anti Semitism in the USA. I watched it all. In my opinion, it was very deeply unimpressive. In other words it was pretentious & mediocre.
“The fatal flaw of the Special was that it didn’t contain an ounce of self-examination or reflection on the activities of the American Jewish Community itself & how the fellow citizens of American Jews, also known as ‘the rest of us’, view those activities.
“The fact is that through the political power of the Jewish Community in the USA, we, all of us, give more money to rich & prosperous Israel than we give to all of the Countries of Sub Saharan Africa combined, a desperately poor area from which most of the slaves began their voyage to the Western Hemisphere.
“Not only does Israel get an embarrassment of riches, the political power of the American Jewish Community enables Jews to select who gets aid & who doesn’t. Jordan & Egypt get Aid as long as they ‘play nice’ with Israel. Iran stays in the doghouse until Israel says they can come out. (cont’d)
.
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“The fact that the American Jewish Community has been instrumental in getting the USA, which belongs to all of us, to go to war unnecessarily in Iraq on the pretense, as declared by Benjamin Netanyahu before a Committee of the US Congress, ‘that there was no doubt’ that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Netanyahu made that statement a year and a day after we were hit on September 11, 2001. The US went to war and suffered mightily. Israel didn’t help. They didn’t in Afghanistan either. No WMD were found…”
Has anyone asked Goldman his view of the First Amendment and BDS? curious whether he is bought and paid for by AIPAC.