(Jewish Group) Meet the Jewish combat veteran and rabbi's husband trying to win a Senate seat in TN
James Mackler, a Jewish veteran who flew Black Hawk helicopters in combat in Iraq, wears his faith on his sleeve in his bid as a Democrat to win the open Senate seat in Tennessee.
Mackler, 47, an attorney who still serves in the National Guard, is a longshot, but his campaign is intriguing: He is just the latest in a proliferation of Jewish veterans transitioning to politics.
Some background: In November 2017, Tzipi Hotovely, then Israel’s deputy foreign minister, precipitated a storm of outrage when she told an interviewer that American Jews are “people that never send their children to fight for their country.”
She clearly didn’t know about the organization called Jewish War Veterans, or about Gen. David Lee Goldfein, who was then and is now the U.S. Air Force chief of staff. Hotovely apologized.
At the time of Hotovely’s claim, the 2018 congressional race was well underway. There was a Jewish veteran in Congress, New York Republican Lee Zeldin. Two veterans running as Democrats, Max Rose of New York and Elaine Luria of Virginia, would go on to win. So would Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat and CIA alumnus. Jason Kander, a veteran and a Democrat, had nearly ousted Sen. Roy Blunt in ruby red Missouri in 2016. In one of his ads, Kander dismantled and reassembled an assault rifle blindfolded. Jewish veterans had also featured in the 2018 cycle in primary races in Virginia and West Virginia.
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