Meeks on Engel chair list

Rep. Eliot Engel, the Bronx Democrat who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lost his primary to progressive Jamaal Bowman, and the scramble to replace him on the committee in the next Congress is underway. Democratic Majority for Israel, a pro-Israel group, is seeking to interview the three declared candidates: Gregory Meeks of Far Rockaway,  Brad Sherman of California, and Joaquin Castro of Texas.

Sherman is one of the closest to the mainstream pro-Israel community. However he hinted that should he be defeated, the Democratic Majority for Israel should back one of the other two candidates. He said Meeks and Castro were of the moderate stripe, not leftists of the type that the group’s affiliated political action committee has opposed in primaries. 

“My job is to convince you not that I’m an acceptable person to serve as chair, but rather that I am so much better than my opponents, that the most important thing your organization could do is to work to make me chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee,” he told the group, adding later about the others, “If they were being challenged by Justice Democrats in their own district I’d be rooting for them.” —With JTA