{"id":255614,"date":"2026-08-19T06:01:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T06:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/255614\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T06:01:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T06:01:24","slug":"wasserman-schultz-defeats-anti-israel-dsa-backed-rivals-in-florida-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/255614\/","title":{"rendered":"Wasserman Schultz defeats anti-Israel DSA-backed rivals in Florida race"},"content":{"rendered":"

A veteran Southeast Florida Democrat, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz,<\/a> defeated her opponents in Tuesday\u2019s primary race that took place in unfamiliar territory, following a statewide rewrite of electoral battle lines. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The Associated Press called the race just minutes after polls closed, at 7:24 p.m., when Wasserman Schultz secured 50.5% of the votes, with 67% of votes counted. The candidate viewed as her top challenger, Elijah Manley, had amassed just 12.8% of the votes, while Dale VC Holness had gotten 21.1%.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people that we spoke to all across this district understand that I\u2019m going to fight to make sure that they can pay their rent,\u201d Wasserman Schultz said in an emotional victory speech on Tuesday. \u201cWe\u2019re going to make sure we fight those damn Republicans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wasserman Schultz, who will be seeking a 12th term in November, had long been representing Fort Lauderdale and southern Broward County. But earlier this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> urged state legislators to redraw the congressional map, in line with a Trump administration push to reshape voting boundaries in GOP-led states.<\/p>\n

Florida\u2019s answer was to consolidate Democratic districts and minimize the number of blue seats.<\/p>\n

\"AMERICANAMERICAN AND ISRAELI flags fly during a demonstration in support of Israel at the US Capitol in 2002. (credit: KEVIN LAMARQUE\/REUTERS)Wasserman-Schultz ran in Black-majority precinct<\/p>\n

The redistricting means that Wasserman Schultz\u2019s current region, the 25th District, would stretch from Miami Beach to Delray Beach and likely turn red, according to Ballotpedia.<\/p>\n

Wasserman Schultz therefore chose to run in a redrawn 20th District, a reliably blue region that includes most of Broward County\u2019s Black-majority precincts. But her move sparked considerable discomfort in a region that has sent Black Democrats to Congress since 1992, the Associated Press reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important thing I can say is that I can commit to the people of District 20 to work every day to live up to the legacy of Alcee Hastings,\u201d Wasserman Schultz said on Tuesday, referring to the Black congressman who served the 20th District from 2013 until his death in 2021.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the primary, Luis Fleischman, a professor of sociology at Palm Beach State College, had warned that Wasserman Schultz\u2019s entrance into this district \u201ccreates tensions between Wasserman Schultz and parts of the constituency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Wasserman Schultz faced four rivals, all of whom are Black, her main competition was Elijah Manley, a 27-year-old gay activist who said that he converted to Judaism but has also been a fierce critic of Israel. While Manley has described himself as a Democratic socialist, he is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.<\/p>\n

Stephen Sussman, a professor of public administration at Barry University, had said prior to the primary that Wasserman Schultz could benefit from having multiple opponents, as these candidates could split the vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality of it is that all she needs is a plurality,\u201d Sussman added, noting that Florida primaries don\u2019t require a majority winner.<\/p>\n

Though Wasserman Schultz has been serving Southeast Florida for more than two decades, both the political landscape and her views have shifted. When she took office as Florida\u2019s first Jewish<\/a> congresswoman in 2005, she represented what the Forward described as \u201ca heavily Jewish swath of Broward County.\u201d<\/p>\n

She advocated for Israeli-Palestinian peace, diverging from her hawkish predecessor, Peter Deutsch.<\/p>\n

Wasserman Schultz today lists Israel among her legislative priorities, with an emphasis on \u201cthe threat of antisemitism at home and abroad.\u201d She has stressed the Jewish state\u2019s right to defend itself while also expressing continued support for a two-state solution.<\/p>\n

Manley, her main opponent, spent considerable airtime on the campaign trail criticizing both her support of Israel and the financial backing she has received from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n

In a recent social media post, he called her \u201ca key Netanyahu ally\u201d who has accepted \u201cmore pro-Israel PAC money than anyone else in Florida.\u201d He made these claims after the House Democratic Caucus appointed her to the Foreign Affairs Committee, where she vowed to \u201cfight Trump\u2019s self-serving, America-last foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pro-Israel PACs have spent around $1.5 million on Wasserman Schultz over the course of her career, according to Track AIPAC, which uses Federal Election Commission data to document contributions from Israel-linked special interest groups. FEC filings from the current race link at least $250,000 to AIPAC.<\/p>\n

A lump sum of $250,000 came from Pro-Choice Majority Action, an affiliate of the Elect Democratic Women Action Fund, whose biggest funder is the United Democracy Project, AIPAC\u2019s<\/a> super PAC.<\/p>\n

Wasserman Schultz, meanwhile, told JTA in a statement that Israel and AIPAC haven\u2019t typically come up \u201cin the thousands of conversations\u201d she\u2019s had on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n

When constituents bring up foreign affairs, she said they tend to focus on fears that the Trump administration could \u201cforce their family and friends to be deported back to brutal homelands plagued by lawless violence and oppressive poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVoters here always ask how I\u2019ll help lower gas, grocery and healthcare costs, and stop Trump\u2019s<\/a> rampant cruelty and corruption,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A veteran Southeast Florida Democrat, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, defeated her opponents in Tuesday\u2019s primary race that took…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[467,19410,1275,1278,21259,37,14658],"class_list":["post-255614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-congress","tag-democratic-socialists-of-america","tag-democrats","tag-florida","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-israel","tag-republican"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117120656441065332","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}