Matthew Kassel
@matthewkassel
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Features reporter at @J_Insider . My motto: Dress British, think Yiddish. My email: matthew @jewishinsider .com
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Joined July 2009
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Some personal news: I’ll be out on paternity leave for the next couple of months. In the meantime, follow my colleagues at
@J_Insider
(subscribe to our Daily Kickoff newsletter here: ). See you in June!
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Statement from Sen. Dianne Feinstein in response to Rep. Katie Porter’s newly announced Senate bid.
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News: Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced last night that he is launching an organization called Progressives for Israel.
“I am going to call the question for Democrats,” he said. “Do you stand with Israel or do you stand against Israel, because silence is not an option.”
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New: Andy Eichar, Jeffries’ NY comms director, responds to the DSA’s “watermelon” flier, saying “the use of racially inflammatory imagery should come as no surprise given the role NYC-DSA and other gentrifiers have played in aggressively attacking Black elected officials.”
Why was
@RepJeffries
sharing the stage with far-right pastor John Hagee at yesterday’s “March for Israel”? Ask him yourself on Friday!
Join Brooklyn families for Palestine &
@DesisRisingUp
to demand Jeffries stop supporting genocide!
#CeasefireInGazaNOW
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Before his untimely death, my mom (
@doreenkassel
) memorialized Flaco on one of her hand-painted ceramic pinch pots.
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Scoop: former state Rep. Shanelle Jackson is challenging Rashida Tlaib in the
#MI12
House primary.
“I really feel like it’s now or never as it pertains to being able to sort of shut her down and calm down some of the antisemitic rhetoric,” Jackson said.
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Scoop: In newly uncovered Facebook posts, Mark Robinson, the leading Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, quoted Hitler and likened the toppling of a Confederate statue to Kristallnacht, among other incendiary remarks.
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Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who was held hostage last night with three congregants at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, TX, has released a statement through a spokesperson.
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New: Rep. Ilhan Omar’s four-day trip to Doha last November to watch the World Cup was paid for by the Qatari government, a recently filed financial disclosure shows.
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I interviewed Madison Cawthorn while he's in DC for freshman orientation. He talked about his "cry more, lib" tweet, his admiration for AOC, his efforts to convert Muslims and Jews to Christianity, and more. Lots to dwell on!
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New: Tom Suozzi will be announced as the Democratic nominee in NY-03’s special election today around 4:45, according to a source familiar with the matter.
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New from me: Blake Masters’ campaign has had a far-right Christian nationalist on its payroll for months
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“And what my friends in the national media missed about this race is that Laxalt was as bad a candidate as Blake Masters or Herschel Walker. It’s just that they didn’t let him speak too much, so you couldn’t really tell.”
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New: Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi publisher of The Daily Stormer, has endorsed Blake Masters’s Senate campaign.
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Great scoop from
@jacobkornbluh
: J Street has rescinded its endorsement of Rep. Jamaal Bowman “for ‘singling out’ Israel for blame in the war in Gaza and accusing it of genocide.”
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Ritchie Torres is poised to pick up the heavily Jewish Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale in the latest round of redistricting, replacing Jamaal Bowman. The pairing “feels like a marriage made in heaven,” Torres told me.
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Anna Kaplan, a Jewish Democrat and former state senator from Long Island who fled Iran during the Islamic Revolution, files to run against George Santos.
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Rep. Jamaal Bowman wrote some very bad poetry promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories on a now-deleted personal blog he maintained during his previous career as a middle school principal,
@WillBredderman
reports.
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News: Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis councilman who came close to defeating Ilhan Omar in the 2022 primary, is planning to announce a rematch on Sunday or Tuesday, an operative working on the launch tells me. “We’ll be in the race by this time next week,” the operative said.
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Inbox: George Latimer, a Democrat challenging Rep. Jamaal Bowman, announces that his campaign has raised nearly $1.4 million in under a month.
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Omar was not alone among congressional lawmakers who quietly accepted funding from Qatar to attend the World Cup, but critics say her visit stands out because she has frequently voiced concerns over the influence of foreign interests on American politics.
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Scoop: More than 40 rabbis and cantors in Pittsburgh have signed an open letter voicing disappointment with Rep. Summer Lee over her criticism of Israel, accusing the congresswoman of using “divisive rhetoric” they “have perceived as openly antisemitic.”
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“You cannot denounce antisemitism but waver on Israel’s right to exist and defend itself,” Cuomo said. “And it shouldn’t just be our Jewish officials but it should be non-Jewish officials who speak first and loudest.”
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Differences on Israel will likely feature in this race.
“I can’t imagine living in a world where our nation didn’t have Israel’s back,” Jackson told me. “It’s heartbreaking, to be honest with you, to have Rep. Tlaib not even wanting to explore that path.”
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NY-16 primary tea: I’m told by two knowledgeable sources that George Latimer is expected to finally reveal his plans for a challenge to Jamaal Bowman by mid-week.
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Link to our story, which she neglected to share:
I’m not going to stop telling the truth about Israel. Certainly not because of some cry-bully hit-piece from a journalist with a very loose relationship with truth himself.
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In addition to Omar, the Qatari government also paid for Reps. Eric Swalwell, André Carson, Claudia Tenney, Darin LaHood and Bryan Steil to visit Doha during the World Cup, according to financial statements I reviewed.
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News: The North Carolina Democratic Jewish Caucus’ application to become formally affiliated with the state party was rejected by the party’s executive committee “by a vote of 16 for; 17 against; and 16 abstentions,” according to an email shared with me.
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New: More than three dozen rabbis in Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s district have signed a letter expressing “frustration and anger over” the congressman’s positions on Israel and calling on him “to exercise better leadership” amid the conflict with Hamas.
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“It is time for the shabbos goy,” he said. “The shabbos goy can do the work that benefits both the Jewish community and the non-Jewish community. The shabbos goy can turn on the lights on the Sabbath because it benefits everyone. It is time to turn on the lights.”
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I interviewed
@JoshMalina
, Hollywood’s unofficial Jewish ambassador, about his new weekly podcast,
@chutzpod
, which debuts today. We also spoke about his recent viral Atlantic essay, “Cancel Mel Gibson,” among other things.
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New: Audio recording contradicts Blake Masters’ claim he “never heard of” Gab CEO Andrew Torba
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I'm concerned that the extremely flattering photo in this essay defending my friend
@jessesingal
will just distract from the piece itself
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“Most of these influencers, who speak confidently about defamation, likely have no idea just how often newspapers and magazines are sued.”
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Her office did not answer questions from The New York Times in December about the funding source after she had returned from the trip.
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New: In a statement to
@J_Insider
, Wesley Bell, a Democratic challenger to Rep. Cori Bush, responds to breaking news that she is facing a Justice Department investigation.
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New: In the wake of Hamas’ bloody rampage in Israel — and the equivocating reactions to it by the Democratic Party’s far-left flank — some of the most prominent members of the Squad are facing the biggest backlash they’ve seen in their political careers.
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How could it possibly cost $600,000 to paint over a mural?
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At least two other House members — Reps. David Valadao and Lou Correa — accepted invitations to attend the World Cup in Doha but failed to disclose the travel on their annual financial statements, their offices confirmed to me on Tuesday.
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Omar, for her part, also traveled to Pakistan last April, where she made a controversial visit to a disputed part of Kashmir that drew criticism from India. The six-day trip was funded by Pakistan’s government, according to her financial disclosure.
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AIPAC has been actively courting a slate of House candidates to oppose marquee members of the “Squad,” including Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Ilhan Omar, according to multiple sources familiar with the outreach.
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New: Tom Suozzi is in talks with Democratic leaders about running in a possible special election to replace George Santos. The former congressman would likely accept the nomination if offered, according to sources, but is unlikely to enter a primary.
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“Fully 73% of Latimer's itemized individual donations came from any parts of Westchester and the Bronx, compared to just 9% of Bowman's, according to a USA Today Network analysis of their donor lists.”
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Cuomo delivered his pre-recorded remarks last night at a Carnegie Hall event commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
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Belated media scoop from me: the NYT has updated its style guide to replace “anti-Semitism” with “antisemitism,” noting that “the hyphenated form, with the uppercase S, may inadvertently lend credence to the discredited notion of Jews as a separate race.”
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New: In recent months, AIPAC has stepped up its recruitment efforts to challenge Democratic incumbents who have clashed with the pro-Israel establishment, pushing the activist left into a defensive crouch ahead of a potentially bruising primary cycle.
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New: The Washington Post has come under fire in recent months for major factual errors and other issues in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, raising concerns among Jewish leaders, foreign policy experts and even some staffers, among other critics.
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Notable development in St. Louis: AIPAC’s political action committee has endorsed Wesley Bell, a Democratic challenger to Rep. Cori Bush, according to its online political portal.
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“Netanyahu was less a geopolitical savant who single-handedly secured his country’s standing and more a public-relations genius who took credit for the accomplishments of its people.”
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“If we cannot deliver, authoritarianism may be on the march,” Sanders told Biden in a Feb. 3 meeting in the Oval Office, according to “Peril,” the new book by Woodward and Costa.
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I interviewed Zebulon Simentov, until recently the last Jewish resident of Afghanistan, who has been living in migratory limbo since he fled the Taliban last month, finding refuge in an undisclosed neighboring country.
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I profiled
@MarkLevineNYC
, who has become one of New York’s most trusted public health resources on all matters COVID-19. He's also running for Manhattan borough president.
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This recent Tim Sheehy video targeting Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the U.S., contains some … questionable imagery.
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Adam Frisch announces that he is challenging Lauren Boebert, per campaign email.
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News: The North Carolina Democratic Jewish Caucus was finally approved as an affiliated organization of the state party in a 31-3 vote by the state executive council this evening, according to a statement.
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Additional statement from Michael Finfer, president of Congregation Beth Israel:
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I’ve reached out to a Cuomo spokesperson and will update if I get more information.
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i would have put a semicolon, rather than a period, after New Yorker.
David Remnick is no longer the editor of The New Yorker. Twitter is, writes
@BretStephensNYT
.
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New: Four pro-Israel House Dems —
@RepJoshG
,
@RepTedDeutch
,
@RepDavidTrone
and
@RepSchneider
— are endorsing Shontel Brown in the OH-11 special election.
DMFI's PAC is also airing its first TV ad today, promoting Brown in the final weeks of the primary.
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“Rep. Valadao was in Doha on this trip,” a spokesperson for the congressman told me. “There was a mistake in his financial disclosures, which we are now working to amend.”
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“How do you sit down with a very famous Holocaust artist and not say a word about your own family?”
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For the Times, I profiled Dom Salvador, the house pianist at the River Café—he's been there 41 years!—who also worked for Harry Belafonte and helped invent samba-funk in his home country of Brazil.
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In Minneapolis, Don Samuels is preparing to announce a rematch next month against Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose fierce criticism of Israel he plans to highlight in the lead-up to next year’s primary, according to a Democratic operative working on the launch.
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“Up to now, I’ve mostly avoided reading too deeply about QAnon. From a distance it seemed dumb, confusing, boring and scary all at once, and I had Wordle to do. I hoped the story would go away, like smallpox, rinderpest and Madison Cawthorn.”
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A spokesperson for Correa attributed the omission to an “inadvertent oversight” and said the “trip was mistakenly not added” to his annual financial statement. “As such, the congressman has amended his financial disclosure to include this trip.”
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In June, I interviewed Adam Frisch as he competed in the Democratic primary for Colorado’s Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. He was not widely viewed as the frontrunner.
Now, he’s poised to pull off an extraordinary upset against Rep. Lauren Boebert.
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Here's my recent profile of the guy who took this photo:
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Professional news: excited to announce that on Monday I’m starting full-time as a features reporter at
@J_Insider
, where I’ll be writing about politics, media, culture, food, business, you name it. You can reach me at matthew
@jewishinsider
.com.
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On the GOP side, another source told me that Nassau County Legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip, an Ethiopian-born Jew who served in the IDF, is “really pushing for it.”
I’m told Nassau GOP Chair Joe Cairo is likely to announce his pick shortly after the date of the election is called.
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For background, read my past stories on Robinson:
“N.C.’s GOP front-runner for governor has a history of racist and antisemitic diatribes”:
“In N.C., Walker hits Robinson for ‘antisemitic remarks’ and ‘denial of the Holocaust’”:
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In an interview, John Fetterman told me he was “eager to affirm” his “unwavering” commitment to bolstering ties between the U.S. and Israel, emphasizing that he will “lean in” on such efforts if he is elected to the Senate this November.
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Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who is expected to launch a primary challenge to Jamaal Bowman next month, has concluded a three-day solidarity trip to Israel, during which participants toured Kfar Aza and met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, among other things.
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I profiled
@ElizaOrlins
, the public defender — and former reality TV star — who is now facing her biggest challenge yet: unseating Manhattan’s powerful district attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr.
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“Biden has once again placed himself on the side of the Israeli majority, in order to undermine Netanyahu and shape the political future of the entire country. It’s one of the biggest bets of his presidency”
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Gazpacho is now being served at a fundraiser for
@StrahanJennifer
, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s GOP challenger, in Rome, GA.
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Notable: The AIPAC-affiliated United Democracy Project has begun running ads hitting Jamaal Bowman and Summer Lee for their positions on the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Here's a spot on Bowman, which a tipster in Westchester tells me he saw on Hulu last night:
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New: There’s a potentially messy open-seat House primary brewing in Portland, Ore., as Jewish leaders express concerns over Susheela Jayapal’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war.
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Statement from Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition on new revelations that suggest George Santos claims to Jewish heritage may be untrue.
We’ll have our own report on this later today.
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While Tom Suozzi is expected to be picked for the special election to replace George Santos, two sources tell me that Robert Zimmerman, who lost to Santos last cycle, is also a top contender.
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New: Over the next month, DMFI PAC is running this print and digital ad in several Jewish newspapers across California to boost Adam Schiff in his bid for Senate.
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New: I spoke with Bill de Blasio about why he no longer supports AIPAC over the group’s opposition to Nina Turner in Cleveland last month.
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As he weighs a challenge to Rep. Jamaal Bowman, whose hostile positions on Israel have faced backlash in his heavily Jewish district, George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, has indicated that he could enter the primary as soon as next month.
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A Jewish activist in Pittsburgh said that Lee has not been present at any community gatherings since the attack, including a rally organized by the local Jewish federation that was attended by several elected officials.
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The ACLU received more than 100,000 orders of its free pocket constitution.
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Rep. Jamaal Bowman raised $735,000 last quarter, per his new filing, less than his new primary challenger, George Latimer, who said earlier this week that he had pulled in nearly $1.4 million in under a month.
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I profiled Mike Yard (
@mikeyardcomedy
), the hilarious 'Nightly Show' correspondent and all-around mensch.
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New: Rep. Summer Lee is scheduled to give remarks at a fundraising banquet for a leading Muslim advocacy group on Saturday alongside several speakers who have made antisemitic and homophobic comments.
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The story includes new details on an RJC event where Herschel Walker seemed out of touch with Jewish attendees as he frequently invoked his faith in Jesus, which was off-putting to the audience, according to a local GOP leader who was present at the forum.
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“To put it very roughly, it’s like replacing Donald Trump with Liz Cheney, but if Cheney couldn’t pass anything without the assent of Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Ilhan Omar, and Mitt Romney, and if she would later get replaced with Chuck Schumer.”
My latest: If you're confused about what's going in Israel right now, you're not alone. My latest is an explainer about Israel's potential post-Netanyahu government. Six essential insights about what just happened and what it means for Israel's future:
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I explored Dan Goldman’s somewhat improbable alliance with Orthodox Jewish leadership in deep-red Borough Park, where he recently consolidated support from a key voting bloc ahead of next Tuesday’s crowded Democratic primary in NY-10.
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