Florida voters will decide on a series of primaries Tuesday that pit some of the state’s most prominent Jewish political figures against challengers from the ideological fringes, offering a fresh test of how antisemitic rhetoric and hard-line opposition to Israel are resonating on both the Left and the Right.
On the Democratic side, pro-Israel Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) faces DSA-backed democratic socialist Oliver Larkin, while longtime Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) is navigating a crowded primary that includes progressive activist Elijah Manley. In the Democratic Senate primary, former National Security Council official Alex Vindman is running against state Rep. Angie Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Moskowitz, Wasserman Schultz, and Vindman are all Jewish, adding another dimension to contests in which their challengers have aligned themselves with a democratic socialist movement that has increasingly embraced anti-Zionism.
Republicans are confronting the issue from the opposite ideological flank. Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), one of four Jewish Republicans in Congress, is also facing a challenge from podcaster and influencer Dan Bilzerian, whose campaign has leaned heavily on antisemitic conspiracy theories and attacks on Fine’s Jewish identity.
The dynamic has also surfaced in the gubernatorial primary. Trump-backed Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who is Black and Christian, is the overwhelming favorite in the crowded field, but former investment firm CEO James Fishback has attracted attention with a campaign featuring racist and antisemitic messaging.
The contests will provide an unusual snapshot of how much appetite primary voters in both parties have for candidates and movements once considered well outside Florida’s political mainstream.
“I don’t think anybody who worries about antisemitism can take any of this lightly,” veteran Florida Democratic strategist Steve Schale told the Washington Examiner. He argued that “good people in both parties need to call it out … within their own families.”
But Schale cautioned against reading too much into the loudest voices in low-turnout primaries.
“I think we all can probably sometimes overread, you know, noise in a primary,” Schale said. “When it boils down to it, we’re still talking about some percentage of a small percentage of a small percentage of the electorate who is, you know, who is making this noise.”
Democrats face challenges from the Left
The clearest Democratic test may come in Moskowitz’s South Florida district, where the outspoken pro-Israel Democrat faces Larkin, a DSA-backed critic of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Larkin doubled down in the closing days of the campaign by appearing alongside Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of Congress’s most vocal critics of Israel, at a Friday rally that also featured Nixon. The event became a controversy of its own after multiple Fort Lauderdale-area venues declined to host it amid backlash from members of the local Jewish community.
The episode underscored what could be particularly difficult political terrain for the DSA. Schale noted that South Florida’s primary electorate is considerably older than the voters powering democratic socialist candidates elsewhere, while the region includes a sizable Jewish population and Hispanic communities with deep skepticism toward socialism.
“It’s probably not a great test case for the DSA,” Schale said.
Florida’s closed-primary system further limits the influence of younger voters, many of whom are not registered with either major party and therefore cannot participate in partisan primaries, Schale argued.
“The DSA has not really had much success here,” he said, pointing to the movement’s limited footprint among elected officials in Florida. “There’s definitely a strain of it in both parties that … I don’t think we can ignore.”
The challenges come roughly a year after the DSA adopted its “For a Fighting Anti-Zionist DSA” resolution, which described Israel as “a racist, imperialist, settler-colonialist project.” DSA CoChair Megan Romer separately told the New Yorker that the Oct. 7 attack was “the inevitable backlash” to Israeli policy.
The ideological divide extends beyond the House races. In the Democratic Senate primary, Vindman has sharply criticized what he calls rising antisemitism within the Democratic Party’s “DSA wing.” Nixon, meanwhile, has embraced the organization and argued that recent victories by democratic socialist candidates show voters are rejecting establishment politics. Her appearance with Tlaib and Larkin on Friday put that contrast on display days before the primary.
Schale said it is difficult to determine whether support for DSA-aligned candidates is being driven by the movement’s ideology, including its positions on Israel, or by a broader frustration with longtime incumbents.
“I don’t know how much of the DSA stuff is related to Israel,” Schale said. “I don’t know how much of it’s related to just frustration about … Democrats who didn’t know when it was time to go home from Washington.”
Wasserman Schultz faces a more complicated political test. Her newly drawn district has a larger black electorate, and she faces a crowded field that includes Manley, who also attended the Tlaib rally. Schale cautioned against interpreting the result purely as an ideological referendum.
“There’s the African American politics she’s navigating down there,” Schale said. “There’s the leftist politics she’s navigating down there.”
“I think Debbie probably wins it,” he said but that a loss would not necessarily amount to “some repudiation of her politics.”
Republicans confront antisemitism on the Right
Republicans face a parallel test in the gubernatorial and congressional primaries.
Donalds is the overwhelming favorite in an 11-candidate gubernatorial field, but Fishback’s final vote share could provide a measure of the appetite for his brand of antiestablishment politics after a campaign featuring racist and antisemitic messaging.
Schale said he has heard from Republican friends whose younger family members find Fishback intriguing, raising questions about what is driving his support.
“How much of it is … the blatant antisemitism and racism that comes out of his mouth versus how much of it is, he’s running on a very antiestablishment message to a group of voters who feel like establishment politics has failed them?” Schale said. “I don’t think we know.”
The most overt antisemitism has emerged in Bilzerian’s challenge to Fine. Bilzerian has made antisemitic conspiracy theories central to his campaign and poured more than $1 million of his own money into the race. The Combat Antisemitism Movement found roughly one-third of his campaign messaging was explicitly antisemitic.
The campaign drew bipartisan condemnation after Bilzerian released an AI-generated ad attacking Fine’s Jewish identity, including calling him a “fat Jew” and portraying him as “Satanic.”
“The hateful campaign being run by Daniel Bilzerian in Florida is blatantly antisemitic and shocks the conscience,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) similarly called Bilzerian’s attacks “disgusting,” adding that “antisemitism and outward hatred of Jewish communities have no place in our politics or in America.”
Schale predicted both Moskowitz and Fine would win Tuesday, but said the results could still offer clues about whether movements on the fringes of both parties are gaining traction.
“Every election is a data point,” Schale said, while cautioning that “we all probably read way too much in any one given election.”
LAWMAKERS CONDEMN RANDY FINE’S PRIMARY OPPONENT FOR ANTISEMITIC AD IN GOP PRIMARY
The more important question, he argued, is what is driving voters toward insurgent candidates, particularly younger voters attracted to antiestablishment messages.
“I think we have to take it seriously,” Schale said. “I don’t have the answer to that. I don’t know what the answer to that is, but I think we need to. I think we all need to learn it if we’re going to figure out how to address it.”