City Hall News is reporting that Queens Democratic Leader and Congressman Joe Crowley is seriously considering giving the Democratic nomination for Anthony Weiner to Former City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman, who once represented the district’s ancestral seat in Congress, as the sort of elder stateswoman who could win the seat without posing a serious threat of trying to hold it after reapportionment.
Please, no!
Now, so much of the reporting about so many of the supposed prospects for this seat has been so clueless that one does not know what to make of this article.
Yesterday, the supposedly reputable WNYC ran its own article so divorced from reality on so many levels you'd never know they were a respected institution.
Does WNYC really believe that Congressman Joe Crowley is not under tremendous pressure from his House Leadership to run a strong candidate?
That is the only conclusion one could gather from this article, which also still discusses the likes of José Peralta, who isn’t even being discussed seriously anymore by the only guy who raised his name.
Does Peralta even have more than three EDs here?
But the biggest mistake in the NYC article is putting Judge Noach Dear on a list of names "being kicked around on the left."
“Kicked around by the left” maybe. But, Noach Dear is only speaking to the GOP, who‘ve actually run him for the seat before.
But back to Holtzman.
She once represented parts of the Brooklyn portion of this in Congress thirty years ago. Her old home in Flatbush is no longer within the district, and Holtzman herself lives far away in tony Brownstony Boerum Hill. She did not do notably well in the district in her 1981 race for DA, and got creamed there in her 1992 US Senate race and her 1993 race for Comptroller, in which she lost her job after being accused of corruption by Alan Hevesi.
Arguably, the last may now sort of prove a plus.
Nearly 20 years after the last time she faced voters, the old liberal Jews who elected Holtzman no longer live in this district. Some, in places like Ditmas Park, have been drawn out; most are dead or living in Florida; of the few who survive in Brooklyn, a good portion are on feeding tubes.
If this story has any credibility, then Joe Crowley clearly has no clue about the currents running through conservative outer borough Jewish communities.
Liz Holtzman is certainly worthy of respect, but in recent years, her activities on many issues have put her far to the left of the Obama administration policies that have caused the Democrats so much political vulnerability in this district.
As I noted here before, Democrats have been having a particularly difficult time in this district’s Orthodox and Russian Jewish communities, mostly because of Israel. Even a pro-Israel hardliner like Anthony Weiner lost his old Councilmanic District last year, and got only 51% in the District‘s Brooklyn portion. This is, in some ways, a part of a broader national trend that Democrats should trying to douse, rather than adding any fuel to its fire.
Holtzman would be far more vulnerable than Weiner was. Nominating her would be putting out the fire with gasoline.
Here, for instance, is an article which quotes with approval Holtzman's saying:
"Jews played a critical role in bringing the war about."
The author says she spoke of "top level" administration officials and members of Congress [Editor‘s Note: virtually all of them would have to be Democrats], and said:
“Why was the only country in the world that would welcome George Bush Israel?”
As the article's author put it:
"And so at last a prominent Jewish political figure has squarely put PART of the blame for the Iraq war where it belongs: in Zionist feeling within the Jewish community."
I happen to oppose the Iraq war, and I happen to favor a two state solution, which puts me quite a bit to the left of the center of this district’s Jewish political gravity, but it's quite clear that Holtzman has moved far to the left of people like myself, and for some reason feels the need to cozy up to the Marcy Winograd-One (non-Jewish) State crowd.
Ironically, Ariel Sharon urged Dubya against going into Iraq, correctly guessing that the end result would be to strengthen Iran
So Holtzman’s statements are not only politically inflammatory, they are also about two steps away from being blood libel (though in her defense she is only falsely blaming the Zionists for putting the blood in the matzo, rather than all Jews).
Still, I see no reason to treat Holtzman with kid gloves when I’d excoriate Charles Barron for saying the same thing.
I note it only took me 30 seconds to find this article.
Imagine what, with a bit more time, the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee could find.
I honor Liz Holtzman for her dauntless service to our City and our nation, but if she is the Democratic nominee for this seat, I submit that we are handing it to the Republicans on a silver platter.