(JTA) — Republican congressman Mike Lawler has conceded to Democratic challenger Cait Conley, a former national security official, after competing fiercely for Jewish voters in the lower Hudson Valley of New York.

Lawler has been a staunchly pro-Israel member since joining Congress in 2023, and was endorsed by the Republican Jewish Coalition and the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.

Conley was endorsed by the pro-Israel group Democratic Majority for Israel, and has said she supports Israel while opposing the Benjamin Netanyahu government.

Lawler, who is Catholic, has deep ties to the district’s large Orthodox Jewish population, and touted their support recently when asked about the neck-and-neck polling.

Both Lawler and Conley have tried tying their opponent to polarizing figures in their respective parties. Lawler has asserted that Conley, a moderate, will not separate herself from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and particularly New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has a lower favorability rating outside the city. Conley denounced Mamdani’s statement on the three-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack after Lawler challenged her to do so during a debate.

Conley, meanwhile, has tied Lawler to President Donald Trump, accusing him of being a rubber stamp for Trump’s legislative priorities.

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Early returns in the Los Angeles mayoral election showed incumbent Karen Bass with a slim lead over Councilmember Nithya Raman, whose comments on Israel became a flashpoint in the race.

The first batch of results — totaling about 500,000 votes — showed Bass leading Raman, 50.8% to 49.2%.

The final outcome may not be known until Wednesday or later, a common occurrence in tight California races due to the preponderance of mail-in ballots. Nearly 90% of California voters did so by mail in the June primary.

But if the primary results are any indication, Bass’ lead may evaporate as more votes are counted.

In the June 2 open primary — a system in which the top two vote-getters from any party advance to a runoff — Raman trailed a Republican, Spencer Pratt, by eight points for second place behind Bass. She won the ensuing batches of mail-in ballots, but did not pass Pratt until June 7. She ultimately surpassed him by more than four percentage points.

Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has clashed with the organization — and frustrated many of her Jewish constituents — while trying to strike a balance on Israel. She has called the war in Gaza a genocide, but declined to adopt the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions platform — a stance that led the DSA to consider expelling her.

Bass, a mainstream Democrat who served six terms in Congress before running for mayor in 2022, entered the race as a historically unpopular incumbent, largely thanks to her response to the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. Raman endorsed Bass prior to declaring her own candidacy on the last day to enter the race, a move Bass has characterized as a personal betrayal.

The polls swung back and forth in the weeks leading up to the election. Bass, who won most labor endorsements, was leading until September, when one poll sponsored by the Los Angeles Times showed Raman ahead by 11 points with a third of voters still undecided. A follow-up poll by the Times last week showed the two in a dead heat.

Unlike many other DSA candidates up for election across the country on Tuesday, Raman, an urban policy wonk who immigrated to the U.S. from India when she was 6, never made Israel a focal point of her campaign. Instead, she focused more on housing, homelessness and budget policy.

But her membership in the DSA, an interview she granted Hasan Piker during the primary and the genocide comments dogged her anyway, especially among Jewish Angelenos.

Raman, after publicly condemning the DSA’s anti-Israel statements after Oct. 7, sponsored a resolution for a ceasefire and return of hostages in March 2024, disappointing mainstream Jewish groups who called the motion one-sided. Then, during the primary, Raman told Piker she believed the Gaza war was a genocide and that Israel was an apartheid state. She also said she would not seek the endorsement of pro-Israel Democratic party groups as she had in 2024.

Her record on Israel seemed likely to come up when Raman participated in the candidate forum for Jewish voters Sept. 29. But Raman struggled to get through answers about the DSA, Piker and especially genocide and BDS — which she called a “legitimate form of peaceful protest” — leading to loud audience groans. During Bass’ turn on stage, the mayor said she did not support BDS and did not believe the war in Gaza was a genocide.

Mail-in voters historically skew to the left, and the primary vote may offer a preview of the  margin Raman might need.

In that election, about 58% of the total votes were tallied election night, when Bass led Raman 36.5% to 21%. Raman got the biggest share of the ensuing ballot batches, beating Bass by about five percentage points.

The post In early LA mayoral results, Karen Bass holds slim lead over Nithya Raman, who sparred with DSA on Israel appeared first on The Forward.

The Democratic Socialists of America is expected to grow its influence within the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, picking up at least five seats in the House, according to unofficial election results on Tuesday night. The gains mark major progress for the organization that is credited with the rise of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a fierce critic of Israel.

Before Tuesday night, the organization had just two members in Congress: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Both are members of the Squad, the group of young, outspoken progressives formed in 2018 that challenged the party’s establishment and criticized U.S. support for Israel.

DSA members Chris Rabb, Donavan McKinney, Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez and Melat Kiros were projected to win their House seats Tuesday night, preliminary election returns show.

A larger DSA caucus could give progressive Democrats greater leverage to pressure leadership into holding votes on Israel policy, an issue that has divided the party since Oct. 7, 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza, with intensifying concern over the war with Iran. The DSA gained influence during a period when Democrats had little power, as the minority in both the House and Senate, to shape the foreign policy of the United States. Regaining control of the House, and potentially the Senate, those divisions will become much harder for party leaders to avoid.

All of the DSA members heading to Congress have described Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a genocide and support cutting off military aid to Israel — positions increasingly held by Democrats outside the DSA as well.

President Trump announced Tuesday that the U.S. will end nearly $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel by the end of the year, while still allowing Israel to buy U.S. weapons. But the national DSA goes further, leading a campaign for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel and passing a 2025 resolution explicitly opposing Zionism.

The victories follow a string of DSA wins over longtime incumbents during the Democratic primaries, buoyed by the victory of Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor last June. Two of the DSA candidates that Mamdani endorsed, Avila Chevalier and Valdez, cruised to victory in their heavily blue New York City districts.

Avila Chevalier is a former Columbia University Gaza War encampment activist who has repeatedly defended her attendance at a pro-Palestinian rally on Oct. 8, 2023.

Rabb in Philadelphia; McKinney in Detroit, Michigan; and Kiros in Boulder also won comfortably in their heavily blue districts.

Kiros drew condemnation from some Colorado Jews after declining to call the 2025 firebombing of a walk for Gaza hostages in Boulder antisemitic, instead calling it a “political attack” targeting Zionism. The attacker was heard yelling “Free Palestine” as he threw Molotov cocktails, injuring 13 people, including an 82-year-old woman who later died from her injuries.

In California, DSA candidates faced tighter races in the general election, facing off against Democratic incumbents. The nail-biter races were the result of California’s unique primary process, where the top two candidates advance to the general election regardless of party. Several key California races were still too early to call, including two House races featuring DSA candidates and the Los Angeles mayoral election featuring DSA candidate Nithya Raman.

Two other DSA mayoral candidates won Tuesday night, David Morales in Providence, Rhode Island, and Janeese Lewis George in Washington, D.C.

But the DSA did not win everywhere. In Florida, Republican incumbent Ashley Moody defeated DSA member Angie Nixon Tuesday night, early results show.

Had Nixon won, she would have become the first DSA member in the U.S. Senate. (While Sen. Bernie Sanders has long identified as a democratic socialist, he is not an official DSA member.)

But Moody was widely expected to win the race, leading Nixon by an average of 6 percentage points in polls.

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