I wrote a midterms campaign overview yesterday. The truth is, the "Jewish stories" in this campaign are manifold, because the stories of a wild and insurgent campaign are manifold.
So I missed a few, or even more, but I have this blog to play catchup.
I noted a category of Democratic incumbents who "shouldn’t" have their seats because they won GOP-leaning districts in Democratic leaning years, 2006 and 2008. Now the GOP and its allies are sparing no expense in getting what’s "rightfully theirs" back. My example was Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), in Orlando.
Another is Rep. Michael McMahon (D-N.Y.) who inherited Vito Fosella’s seat after the popular Staten Island pol admitted to maintaining two separate families and bowed out late in the 2008 campaign. McMahon looks like he’ll defy GOP wishing and hoping and will keep his seat, according to Nate Silver — but he’s not taking any chances.
And especially not with the Jewish vote, since a staffer embarrassed McMahon by compiling a list of donors to GOP opponent Mike Grimm and called it "Jewish money" to emphasize that it was coming from out of district. Yeshiva World estimates the Jewish population in the district, which includes a corner of Brooklyn, at as high as 15 percent.
McMahon fired the staffer right away, but as I said, he ain’t leaving nothin’ to chance. Tomorrow, David Greenfield, a New York City Councilman who also happens to be a leader in the Sephardic community in Gravesend (part of McMahon’s district) will endorse McMahon, and at the Sephardic Multi Service Center, no less.
Today, Rabbi Yaakov Spivak, writing in the Daily News, praises McMahon as an "independent Democrat," which the dean of the Ayshel Avraham Rabbinical Seminary makes clear means "the UnObama:"
He is a man who has to negotiate his way between being a Democrat supporting a president who is hostile to Israel, and at the same time being a friend of the Jewish State as well.
The congressman knows how to do his job.
Also today — coincidentally* — McMahon wrote to the U.S. attorney-general, Eric Holder, asking him to investigate allegations of judicial impropriety in the case that got Sholom Rubashkin, the boss of the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse, 27 years for fraud.
Today, Congressman Michael McMahon [D-Staten Island, Brooklyn] wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. urging him to initiate a Justice Department investigation into allegations of improper ex parte communications, as well as possible abuse of sentencing guidelines, in the prosecution of Iowa businessman Sholom Rubashkin,
“Ex parte communications are not permitted between a federal judge and the government prosecutors who bring a case to trial before that federal judge” Rep. McMahon writes in the letter. “If contacts between the judge and the government attorneys were hidden from the defendant, this would result in a significant miscarriage of justice… These allegations demand immediate investigation.”
Some spectators have also questioned the wisdom behind the 27 year sentence imposed upon Mr. Rubashkin. A number of former US Attorneys General, US Attorneys, and several senior Justice Department officials wrote a letter to Chief Judge Reade on April 26, 2010, urging her to disregard the initial sentencing recommendation of 25 years. “Amazingly, instead of taking the advice of these experts, Judge Reade actually increased the length of the sentence proposed by federal prosecutors from 25 years to 27 years” Rep. McMahon writes. “This sentence appears to be grossly disproportionate to the sentences given to other similarly situated first time, non-violent white collar criminals.”
*Yes, I know.
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