Fresh off the heels of a new poll showing Sen. Bob Casey Jr’s lead over Republican challenger Dave McCormick has dropped to single digits, the incumbent Democrat may be dropping his support for a Pennsylvania Democrat accused of being anti-Israel.
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Allegheny) has removed Casey’s name from a list of endorsees on her campaign website, the news site Jewish Insider first reported.
The post, updated on March 11, said Lee is endorsed by the “Democratic Party, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Pennsylvania AFL-CIO State Labor Council, SEIU, and Planned Parenthood.”
But on March 7, JI reported that the list included Casey.
The list appeared in a so-called “red box,” which, according to the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, is a tactic campaigns use to skirt laws prohibiting cooperation between candidates and (allegedly) independent Super PACs.
“What you’re seeing is ‘redboxing,’ an illegal practice in which campaigns publish messaging and signal to supportive super PACs what material they should use in their ads,” the CLC reports.
Placing Casey’s name in the “red box” could send a message to outside groups to include his support in their ads and mailers, which, given his stature as a three-term incumbent senator, would make sense. Removing his name could be a request of Casey’s rather than a strategic move of the Lee campaign.
Casey’s name and photo are still listed on Lee’s endorsements page, however, next to progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Fellow members of the “Squad,” Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn., are also listed as endorsers.
Lee sparked outrage when she planned to appear at a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) banquet this month. CAIR has ties to Islamist terrorism, and its national leader, Nihad Awad, praised Hamas after it attacked Israel.
“I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in,” he said.
Lee has since withdrawn from the event, though she continues to defend the organization.
The White House condemned Awad’s comments as “shocking, antisemitic” weeks later.
The Anti-Defamation League called out CAIR and said Awad and other leaders “often traffic in antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric.”
McCormick called for Lee’s resignation and said that Casey should disavow any association with the freshman congresswoman.
More than 40 Jewish leaders in Western Pennsylvania sent her a letter this month asking her to “denounce antisemitism fully and frequently.”
Lee’s opponent in the Democratic primary, Bhavini Patel, has also called out her anti-Israel rhetoric. She posted on social media that Lee needed to “condemn the antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ+ fringe statements” before quipping that she didn’t expect Lee to do that.
DVJ has reached out for comment from Casey and Lee’s campaigns.
