ATLANTA: A hotly contested congressional race in the Chicago area between two members of Congress from the same party has descended into accusations of ethical improprieties.
Representative Sean Casten has accused Representative Marie Newman, a fellow Democratic, of ethical violations over the latter’s legal dispute with Palestinian American academic Iymen Chehade.
Casten has demanded that Newman share the details of an undisclosed legal settlement with Chehade in 2021 relating to an employment agreement signed in 2018, before she was elected to Congress.
“I first ran for Congress in 2018, in part in response to the ethical lapses of Donald Trump,” Casten said in a statement. “Public service is a trust and our entire democracy is jeopardized when voters have reason to believe that any elected officials are placing our personal self-interest above the public good. Ethics matters.” In the statement, he accused Newman of “bribery.”
Casten and Newman currently represent separate districts in Illinois, the 6th and 3rd respectively, but after recent boundary changes the latter decided to challenge the former in the Democratic primary for the redrawn 6th Congressional District.
The Board of the Office of Congressional Ethics, a nonpartisan independent agency, conducted an investigation last year into allegations that Newman promised Chehade a job in exchange for him agreeing not to run against her. The board did not explicitly accuse Newman of “bribery” at the conclusion of its investigation but in October it recommended that the House Ethics Committee look into the matter further, which it is doing.
Chehade advised the Newman campaign on issues relating to Palestinian rights and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories before she was elected. After she was elected, in 2020, he filed a lawsuit accusing her of reneging on a written agreement to hire him if she won the race.
The lawsuit was settled out of court in June last year but the details were not made public and a non-disclosure agreement is in place. Chehade began working for Newman shortly after the case was settled and continues to do so. He is also currently running as a candidate for Congress in the redrawn 3rd District.
Newman is considered a progressive Democrat and a supporter of peace and justice for Palestinians. As such she enjoys the support of the majority of Palestinian Americans in her district. The redrawn 6th District has the largest concentration of Palestinian Americans in the country.
In a statement to Arab News, Newman denied any wrongdoing and accused Casten of alleged ethical and financial improprieties, highlighting a federal investigation of his financial and business dealings.
“Voters should be aware of several recent lawsuits encompassing Rep. Casten, after being accused of an effort to enrich himself at others’ expense, as well as the current federal investigation in which Rep. Casten is accused of a federal felony for illegally coordinating his campaign and his father’s super PAC against former female primary opponent, Kelly Mazeski,” Newman said.
A super PAC is a political action committee that can raise unlimited amounts of campaign funding from corporations, unions and individuals but is not permitted to contribute to or coordinate directly with political parties or candidates.
Newman added: “Rep. Casten never answered questions about his current and active FEC (Federal Election Commission) complaint and investigation into the allegation of a federal felony where he, his campaign and his father’s super PAC illegally coordinated to oust a progressive female primary opponent, all under one roof.”
Her supporters claim that the local mainstream media has failed to properly scrutinize Casten’s alleged impropriety.
Newman supports efforts to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. She voted for congressional bills that aimed to attach improvements to the human rights of Palestinians as conditions for US foreign aid to Israel, which angered right-wing and pro-Israeli groups in the US. She also voted last year against a bill for $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, which was approved.
Casten, meanwhile, has the support of several Jewish organizations including the Democratic Majority for Israel, Jewish Democrat Council of America, and J Street.
Tarek Khalil, a Palestinian American activist from the 6th District told Arab News that Casten advocates the kind of “liberal Zionist lines” that do not bring any improvement to the lives of Palestinians who have been suffering under Israeli military occupation since 1967.
Newman, he said, “has a proven record when it comes advocating for Palestinians’ rights.”
Tammy Georgiou, a voter in the district, told the Arab News that as a woman and a progressive democrat, Casten’s history and behavior relating to his contest against his former female primary opponent made her feel “uncomfortable.”
She added: “I am a woman voter and Casten’s attacks on progressive women candidates are worrisome.”
Ethics and views on Palestinians at heart of controversial Illinois congressional battle
https://arab.news/g7vy8
Ethics and views on Palestinians at heart of controversial Illinois congressional battle
- Two Democratic candidates standing for election in the same district, which has a large Palestinian population, trade allegations about each other’s impropriety
- Sean Casten highlighted a House Ethics Committee investigation into opponent Marie Newman; she said he is facing a Federal Election Commission probe
FBI says arson suspect targeted Mississippi synagogue because it’s a Jewish house of worship
JACKSON, Mississippi: A suspect in an arson fire at a synagogue that was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan decades ago admitted to targeting the historic institution because it’s a Jewish house of worship and confessed what he had done to his father, who turned him in to authorities after observing burn marks on his son’s ankles, hands and face, the FBI said Monday.
Stephen Pittman was charged with maliciously damaging or destroying a building by means of fire or an explosive. The 19-year-old suspect confessed to lighting a fire inside the building, which he referred to as “the synagogue of Satan,” according to an FBI affidavit filed in US District Court in Mississippi on Monday.
At a first appearance hearing Monday in federal court, a public defender was appointed for Pittman, who attended via video conference call from a hospital bed. Both of his hands were visibly bandaged. He told the judge that he was a high school graduate and had three semesters of college.
Prosecutors said he could face five to 20 years in prison if convicted. When the judge read him his rights, Pittman said, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”
A crime captured on video
The fire ripped through the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson shortly after 3 a.m. on Saturday. No congregants or firefighters were injured. Security camera video released Monday by the synagogue showed a masked and hooded man using a gas can to pour liquid on the floor and a couch in the building’s lobby.
The weekend fire badly damaged the 165-year-old synagogue’s library and administrative offices. Five Torahs — the sacred scrolls with the text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — located inside the sanctuary were being assessed for smoke damage. Two Torahs inside the library, where the most severe damage was done, were destroyed. One Torah that survived the Holocaust was behind glass and was not damaged in the fire, according to the congregation.
The suspect’s father contacted the FBI and said his son had confessed to setting the building on fire. Pittman had texted his father a photo of the rear of the synagogue before the fire, with the message, “There’s a furnace in the back.” His father had pleaded with his son to return home, but “Pittman replied back by saying he was due for a homerun and ‘I did my research,’” the affidavit said.
During an interview with investigators, Pittman said he had stopped at a gas station on his way to the synagogue to purchase the gas used in the fire. He also took the license plate off his vehicle at the gas station. He used an ax to break out a window of the synagogue, poured gas inside and used a torch lighter to start the fire, the FBI affidavit said.
The FBI later recovered a burned cellphone believed to be Pittman’s and took possession of a hand torch that a congregant had found.
A congregation determined to rebuild
Yellow police tape on Monday blocked off the entrances to the synagogue building, which was surrounded by broken glass and soot. Bouquets of flowers were laid on the ground at the building’s entrance — including one with a note that said, “I’m so very sorry.”
The congregation’s president, Zach Shemper, has vowed to rebuild the synagogue and said several churches had offered their spaces for worship during the rebuilding process. Shemper attended Pittman’s court appearance Monday but didn’t comment afterward.
With just several hundred people in the community, it has never been particularly easy being Jewish in Mississippi’s capital city, but members of Beth Israel have taken special pride in keeping their traditions alive in the heart of the Deep South.
Nearly every aspect of Jewish life in Jackson could be found under Beth Israel’s roof. The midcentury modern building not only housed the congregation but also the Jewish Federation, a nonprofit provider of social services and philanthropy that is the hub of Jewish society in most US cities. The building also is home to the Institute of Southern Jewish Life, which provides resources to Jewish communities in 13 southern states. A Holocaust memorial was outdoors behind the synagogue building.
Because Jewish children throughout the South have attended summer camp for decades in Utica, Mississippi, about 30 miles southwest of Jackson, many retain a fond connection to the state and its Jewish community.
“Jackson is the capital city, and that synagogue is the capital synagogue in Mississippi,” said Rabbi Gary Zola, a historian of American Jewry who taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. “I would call it the flagship, though when we talk about places like New York and Los Angeles, it probably seems like Hicksville.”
A rabbi who stood up to the KKK
Beth Israel as a congregation was founded in 1860 and acquired its first property, where it built Mississippi’s first synagogue, after the Civil War. In 1967, the synagogue moved to its current location.
It was bombed by local KKK members not long after relocating, and then two months after that, the home of the synagogue’s leader, Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, was bombed because of his outspoken opposition to segregation and racism.
At a time when opposition to racial segregation could be dangerous in the Deep South, many Beth Israel congregants hoped the rabbi would just stay quiet, but Nussbaum was unshakable in believing he was doing the right thing by supporting civil rights, Zola said.
“He had this strong, strong sense of justice,” Zola said.
