“There are people who have been politicizing this issue — they saw it as an opportunity to get out a loud Black woman who they did not want in office in the first place,” Lee said in an interview. “We’ve not seen that just in Pittsburgh, we’ve seen it all over the country, that Israel and Palestine has been successfully used as a wedge issue by the right wing for decades and decades.”
Some voters supporting Patel noted that they already did not back Lee in 2022. And there is evidence Lee has also lost some support since the midterms. While Lee has the backing of the Allegheny County Democratic Party, Patel is emboldened by the support she has seen in the 14th Ward — which includes Squirrel Hill — pointing to her endorsement from the ward’s independent Democratic club. That group endorsed Lee in 2022.
Patel is continuing to press Lee on the war, calling on her to denounce an effort to write in “uncommitted” in the presidential primary on Tuesday — a protest vote formed, in part, in response to Biden’s handling of the conflict.
She criticized Lee for a speaking engagement with the Council of American-Islamic Relations the incumbent planned to attend earlier this year. (Lee ended up canceling the appearance after facing backlash about other speakers’ antisemitic and homophobic comments.) And while Patel said the election is not a referendum on the war, she argues that, on a range of issues, Lee is out of step with the Democratic Party.
“You’re so focused on a small minority coalition and uplifting that coalition that you forget that you’re part of a bigger picture,” Patel said of Lee. “There is a time and a place to push, no doubt. And I would do the same. But there’s a time and a place to do that, and in this election cycle, and this year, that’s not the time.”
But public sentiment within the Democratic Party may be shifting in Lee’s favor around the Israel-Hamas war.
A plurality of Democrats — 44 percent — say they are sympathetic toward both Israelis and Palestinians in the conflict, according to an early April POLITICO-Morning Consult poll, conducted before the air assault from Iran on Israel. By a 6 percentage point margin — 22 percent to 16 percent — more Democrats say they are more sympathetic toward Palestinians than Israelis.
“People want this to be, ‘Oh, The Squad are extremists,’ and that is such a terrible narrative, because the reality is … progressives are truly, truly, truly at the heart of what so much of our Democratic constituency wants and are looking for,” Lee said.
The poll also shows that younger people are more sympathetic toward Palestinians. Thirty-three percent of Gen Z voters said they’re more sympathetic toward Palestinians, while 15 percent said they’re more sympathetic toward Israelis.