The Blogs: Lasher vs. Shinkle - The Battle for NY's 12th Congressional District | Ralph M. Stone

New York’s 12th Congressional District has been controlled by democrats for, well, forever. It is highly unlikely that will change any time soon. For the past several election cycles, the democratic incumbent Rep. Jerrold Nadler, has been challenged by a range of republican sacrificial lambs. Because NY-12 contains the heart of Manhattan, the Upper East and Upper West Sides, Midtown, and the like, the district is filled with doctors, lawyers, bankers, educators, and CEO’s, scientists, actors, writers, scholars of every stripe, an unrivalled and exceptional talent pool.

Rep. Nadler having decided to retire, his successor in Congress will almost certainly be the democratic candidate Micah Lasher. This year’s sacrificial lamb in the republican column is Caroline Shinkle, and while prior sacrifices were themselves talented and successful people, as you are wont to find in the Big Apple, Shinkle is a standout, a candidate whose virtually-guaranteed loss in November will serve to highlight the near-total irrelevance of quality in American politics.

The best candidates for such a formidable position as Congressman should possess strong analytical and critical thinking skills, the ability to ask smart questions, to write, and good people skills.

In terms of these candidates, it is practical experience versus smarts. And it is strong on Israel versus weak. Let’s have a look.

Shinkle’s Got A Better Resume.

Lasher received a bachelors in sociology from NYU and went on to intern for various party politicians, moving up to prominent Chief of Staff and legislative aide positions with leading local democrats, and ultimately winning a seat in New York’s Assembly, the lower house of its legislative body. A recent New York Times puff-piece also highlights that he is a gifted magician. (New Yorkers know not to wait around for an equal-time puff piece on Shinkle from the paper of record.)

Shinkle received a bachelors in economics from MIT, followed by a law degree at Harvard; she went on to work at the Federal Reserve in DC, the Central Bank of Israel, the European Central Bank, and another central banking institution in Switzerland, followed by a law career at one of the world’s most prestigious law firms.

It is not that Lasher’s resume doesn’t qualify him for the job, it does. And there is little doubt he is smart enough for the task and has relevant experience. Lasher’s greater knowledge of how the sausage is made contrasts with Shinkle’s far deeper understanding of how to pay for it, and how much it’s really worth. Regardless of the job you might be hiring for, you’d have a hard time explaining why you wouldn’t interview Shinkle first. And there is little reason to believe Shinkle hasn’t watched enough Schoolhouse Rock to know how the sausage is made.

Lasher positions himself as a critical member of the opposition to the DC graft that President Trump personifies. But is a backslapping operator whose only walk of life has been in the backrooms of democratic politics really the answer to business as usual?

When it comes to the issues, there are certainly differences. Lasher is left-leaning, and Shinkle to the right. The most notable differences for purposes of this blog is their support for Israel and how seriously they take antisemitism. These should be critical voting issues for the constituents in NY-12, America’s most Jewish congressional district.

Shinkle is Far Better than Lasher on Israel and Antisemitism.

Israel is now a signature issue in American politics. It shouldn’t be, but it is. What say the candidates on their websites?

- - Shinkle comfortably acknowledges that she worked in Israel and prominently states that she “[u]napologetically stand[s] with the Jewish community of New York City and with Israel.”
  - Not so for Lasher. The word “Israel” is entirely absent from Lasher’s campaign website. In other words, he’s afraid to say anything, and that is a moral shortcoming.

By all appearances, then, Lasher is a mainstream democrat who accepts his party’s increasing intolerance toward Israel, part of the growing parade of Jewish democrats who now endorse and make excuses for the likes of Israel-hating Abdul El-Sayed, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and sadly many, many others. He hopes that by being quiet nobody will notice.

Similarly, Lasher wants to be perceived as very much in the mold of his mentor Rep. Nadler. That is also telling. Nadler (who favored the JCPOA) recently voted against legislation designed to discourage American universities from boycotting Israel by blocking federal aid to those schools engaging in anti-Israel BDS. That legislation passed in spite of Nadler’s illuminating vote against. Lasher remains silent.

And antisemitism? Both candidates readily denounce antisemitic incidents, to be sure. But while Shinkle regularly highlights the issue, calling out its virality in American politics, for example recently publishing an op-ed on the subject in the Jerusalem Post, it takes a Jew being stabbed with a screwdriver outside an Upper West Side synagogue to finally get Lasher finger-wagging at Mayor Mamdani asking him to “take down the temperature.” It must have been difficult for him, as Lasher expressly counts Mayor Mamdani as “his friend.”

Like so many others in his party, Lasher has proved to be too weak and afraid to break ranks with the Squad and his party’s rising DSA element that wears their hatred of Israel as a badge of honor. His silence should be seen as a bad omen.

By contrast, one can see that the issue of antisemitism is paramount to Shinkle just by visiting her campaign’s website. One would be hard-pressed to find Lasher speak openly about the rising tide of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the democratic party; his website has a brief squib like a footnote about his efforts against “hate crimes and antisemitism.” He musters the energy to speak on the subject only in the immediate aftermath of a particularly horrific antisemitic attack and in the greater context of hate crime in general.

In summary, despite her remarkable qualifications, Shinkle’s superiority on the subjects of Israel and antisemitism, and her integrity to say what she believes, is simply not enough to meaningfully challenge the democrat in NY-12. Despite the real differences between the candidates on issues that affect all of us, especially Jews, the vast majority of whom are Zionists, this November’s election is largely about “resisting” a very unpopular president. The longstanding leftward tendency of this most Jewish district in the United States will still elect a democrat just because he is a democrat despite his transparent weakness on Israel and what it portends for American Jewry.