HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania. The student protest movement disrupting college campuses, classes and graduation ceremonies over the war in Gaza is also roiling Senate elections across the country, as Democrats tread cautiously over an internal divide. and Republicans highlight their rivals’ differences.
The political impact of the protests on the White House campaign has drawn considerable attention, with opposition to President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war reverberating from Colombia to UCLA. The rapidly evolving landscape of demonstrations is also shaping crucial Senate elections.
Tent camps have sprung up at universities in many states where Democrats this election year are defending key seats to maintain the party’s narrow Senate majority. In some schools, police repressions and arrests followed.
The protests have sharpened campaign rhetoric in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Ohio and Michigan, among other places. Republican candidates in California and Florida have stepped up their criticism of the Democratic president over the US response to the war or chaotic scenes on American campuses.
Some Republicans showed up at camps, including one at George Washington University, not far from the White House. Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, who faces re-election, said on social media that he went there to show solidarity with the Jewish students. “We need to do everything we can to protect them,” he said.
Republican candidate David McCormick, during a visit to the University of Pennsylvania, said protesters at the Ivy League school did not know the “difference between right and wrong, good and evil” and were creating a hostile atmosphere for Jewish students.
McCormick denounced what he sees as a lack of leadership and moral clarity on the part of his Democratic opponent, Sen. Bob Casey, as well as Biden and school administrators, buffeted by accusations of harboring anti-Semitism.
“What is happening on campuses is clearly a test of leadership and moral courage, both for college presidents and for our leaders and for Senator Casey and President Biden,” McCormick said in an interview.
Israel and its supporters say the protests are anti-Semitic, a charge that Israel’s critics say is sometimes used to silence legitimate opposition. Although some protesters were caught on camera making anti-Semitic comments or violent threats, protest organizers, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at trying to save the lives of Palestinian civilians.
Many Democrats, from Biden onwards, have avoided saying much about the situation until recently, when universities began cracking down and comparisons were made to the anti-war protests of the 1960s.
Still, Democrats balanced their criticism of anti-Semitism and rule-breakers with the need to protect the rights to free speech and peaceful protest. Some have tried to avoid taking sides in protests that have pitted pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian Democrats against each other and divided key parts of the party’s base, including Jewish, Arab-American and younger voters.
Republicans, however, criticized what they characterized as equivocation or silence on the part of Democrats. Republicans professed solidarity with Jews against anti-Semitism while condemning the protests as illegal.
Mike Rogers, a Republican seeking a Senate seat in Michigan, said the student protesters in Columbia were “Hamas sympathizers.” In California, GOP Senate candidate Steve Garvey called them “terrorists” who practice “terrorism disguised as free speech.”
In five states, the National Republican Senate Committee, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans, is using the protests in digital ads about student loan forgiveness, saying Democrats want to pay off the loans of students “radicalized by the far left.” ” who are “threatening Jews,” “attacking the police,” and “acting like terrorists.”
McCormick and others say that universities that they believe tolerate anti-Semitism should lose federal grants and that visas should be revoked for any foreign students who incite violence or express pro-Hamas sentiments at camps.
Casey, long a staunch supporter of Israel, has criticized acts of anti-Semitism on campuses and pointed to legislation he sponsored as a way to ensure the Department of Education takes action.
“Of course, students have the right to peacefully protest, but when this crosses the lines of violence or discrimination, we have an obligation to intervene and end this conduct,” Casey said Thursday, while urging colleagues to approve your bill.
Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada, who is Jewish and faces re-election, said she was “horrified” by displays of anti-Semitism on campuses and, like Casey, called on the department to hold schools accountable.
In California, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic candidate for an open Senate seat, took aim at the Columbia rally and said “anti-Semitic and hateful rhetoric is being displayed loudly and proudly.” Accused by Garvey of being “incredibly silent” about the protests, Schiff, who is Jewish, voted for a House bill similar to Casey’s and released a statement that condemned the violence and “explicit and repeated targeting and intimidation of Jewish students.”
Republicans elsewhere asserted that Democrats’ statements were equivocal and inadequate.
Republicans criticized Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, after he told an Axios reporter last week that he was “not going to talk about the politics of this. People always have the right to speak and they should.”
His Republican opponent, Bernie Moreno, accused Brown of having “wholeheartedly supported these vile and violent anti-Semitic demonstrations.”
Later, at a press conference, Brown made broader comments. “Students want to make their voices heard, they need to do it in a non-violent way, they need to do it in a way that doesn’t spew hate, and the laws need to be enforced,” he said.
In Michigan, which has a relatively significant Muslim population, Biden’s handling of the war is expected to have a strong impact on the presidential and Senate races.
Rogers, a front-runner for the Republican Party nomination, thanked New York City police for confronting protesters and “standing up to protect Jewish students at Columbia from the visceral hatred we witnessed from Hamas supporters on their campus.” .
Republicans argued that US Representative Elissa Slotkin, the leading candidate for the Democratic Senate nomination, did not speak out strongly against the protests in Columbia, her alma mater, and that it took five days after they began to say anything.
Slotkin, who is Jewish, said in an April 22 statement — the most recent wave of demonstrations began in Columbia on April 17 — that “the use of intimidation, anti-Semitic signs or slogans, or harassment, is unacceptable.”
It was, she suggested, a complicated matter.
“I would rather be thoughtful and take more time than have a knee-jerk answer to any question,” Slotkin said in an interview.
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Associated Press reporters Adam Beam in Sacramento, California; Joey Cappalletti in Lansing, Michigan; Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey; Tassanee Vejpongsa in Philadelphia; and Stephany Matat in West Palm Beach, Florida, contributed to this report.
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