The Endorsement: Maryland’s Jewish Community Should Not Let It Slide

Jacob Silver Sebuir Contributor 📅 August 2, 2026

Chris Van Hollen did not just back a candidate in Michigan. He told everyone, including his own constituents, where his party is headed. Caren Leven is right to say so, out loud, before the votes are counted.

Politics rewards patience. That is precisely why it punishes those who wait too long to speak. Caren Leven understands this. In her open letter to Maryland’s Jewish community.  Leven makes a case that deserves to be read in full, not skimmed and filed away: a movement does not need a majority to reshape a party. It only needs silence from the people who should be objecting.  This is very disturbing to many Jewish American Democrats and Republicans.  This isn’t a partisan Issue.

A single event prompted Leven’s letter, but its argument runs much deeper than one race. On June 25, Maryland’s own Sen. Chris Van Hollen became the first sitting Democratic senator besides Bernie Sanders to endorse Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, breaking publicly with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who had backed Rep. Haley Stevens.¹ Van Hollen said the party needed “fighters” who would “dismantle a broken status quo,” language that reads, on its face, like ordinary primary-season populism.² It is not ordinary. It is a marker, planted by one of Maryland’s two United States senators, showing exactly which wing of his party he intends to strengthen.

Consider who Van Hollen chose to promote. El-Sayed has called the Israeli government “evil,” placing it, in his own words, in the same moral category as Hamas.³ He has called Israel’s military campaign in Gaza a genocide, has said he wants to end both offensive and defensive weapons transfers to Israel, and has campaigned alongside a streamer known for inflammatory commentary about Jews and Israel.⁴ His opponent, Rep. Stevens, has taken the opposite approach, defending continued arms sales and courting support from pro-Israel organizations.⁵ Van Hollen did not choose Stevens. He chose El-Sayed. That choice is the entire story, and Leven is not wrong to treat it that way.

Leven’s letter’s argument earns its force. Leven is not claiming that every Democrat who admires Van Hollen harbors ill will toward Jews or toward Israel.  That would be a lazy and unfair charge; a serious writer avoids it. Leven’s point is narrower.  For that reason, harder to dismiss: endorsements are not neutral acts. They are investments. When a senator with Van Hollen’s stature spends his political capital on a candidate who has staked out the most hostile posture toward Israel of any serious Senate contender this cycle, he is telling his own party, and his own constituents, what kind of politics he considers worth rewarding. 

Marylanders have watched this pattern before. More than seventy rabbis across the state once wrote their own letter to Van Hollen, warning that his rhetoric on the war was stoking division and isolating the Jewish community that he represents.⁶ He responded with the standard reassurances about supporting Israel’s right to self-defense while continuing, in practice, to align himself with the loudest critics of that same right. Leven’s letter is not a break from that history. It is a sequel of it, updated for a moment when the critics she is worried about are no longer on the fringe of the party. They are collecting endorsements from a sitting Maryland senator.

Republicans have made this argument for years, and Democrats have spent just as many years insisting it was an exaggeration, a talking point, a caricature of a big and diverse coalition. Fine. Let the coalition speak for itself. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and now Sen. Chris Van Hollen have all lined up behind the same candidate, the one who calls Israel’s government evil and wants to cut off its weapons. That is not a caricature. That is a roster, and it is Van Hollen’s name on it.

None of this means every voter who supports El-Sayed, or admires Van Hollen, is hostile to Jewish Americans. Plenty of Democrats will say, in good faith, that criticizing an Israeli government’s wartime conduct is not the same as opposing the existence of the Jewish state. That argument deserves a hearing rather than a dismissal. But good faith on the part of individual voters does not erase the plain signal sent by the party’s own leaders. Leven is asking Jewish organizations to notice that signal now. At the same time, it can still be answered, rather than waiting until it hardens into settled Democratic orthodoxy and Maryland’s own senators are fully invested in defending it.

 Accountability question Republicans have long pressed.  Leven’s letter restates it plainly: officials should answer not only for the votes they cast but for the movements they choose to fuel. Van Hollen is free to endorse whomever he likes. Marylanders are equally free to ask why their senator’s political weight landed on the candidate furthest from the pro-Israel consensus his own state has historically held, and to demand a real answer instead of a talking point.  This is developing as a disturbing pattern for Sen. VanHollen; he sided with an illegal alien alleged human trafficker; poses a threat to victims of crimes committed by illegal aliens. vi

Silence has a cost. Leven understands that cost better than most, and she is asking Maryland’s Jewish organizations to stop paying it in installments. The Michigan primary will settle itself on August 4. What Van Hollen’s endorsement reveals about the direction of his party will not settle nearly so quickly, and Maryland deserves leaders willing to say so before, not after, that direction becomes permanent.

ENDNOTES

1. “AP Exclusive: Sen. Van Hollen backs El-Sayed for Michigan Senate in break from Democratic leadership,” The Washington Post, June 25, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/25/michigan-democrats-senate-elsayed-van-hollen/0a0a24d8-7086-11f1-8730-e7fd0e2a6404_story.html

2. “Abdul El-Sayed nabs endorsement from Chris Van Hollen in Michigan Senate race,” The Hill, June 25, 2026. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5940973-chris-van-hollen-bernie-sanders-abdul-el-sayed-endorsement/

3. “Abdul El-Sayed Calls Israeli Government ‘Evil’ in Interview,” Detroit Jewish News, April 20, 2026. https://www.thejewishnews.com/news/abdul-el-sayed-calls-israeli-government-evil-in-interview/article_f518aed6-2def-40f3-a9f4-2231a79b9b4b.html

4. “Abdul El-Sayed is courting Jewish voters, without moderating his views on Israel,” The Forward, June 15, 2026. https://forward.com/news/831230/abdul-el-sayed-michigan-jewish-israel-senate-haley-stevens-mallory-mcmorrow/

5. “El-Sayed defies Democratic Party’s establishment on Gaza in Senate race,” Detroit Metro Times, February 27, 2026. https://www.metrotimes.com/news/politics-elections/el-sayed-defies-democratic-partys-establishment-on-gaza-in-senate-race/

6. “Group of Maryland Rabbis Call on Senator Van Hollen to Shift Anti-Israel Rhetoric on Gaza War,” Combat Antisemitism Movement, March 12, 2024. https://combatantisemitism.org/government-and-policy/group-of-maryland-rabbis-call-on-senator-van-hollen-to-shift-anti-israel-rhetoric-on-gaza-war/

Jacob Silver writes on Maryland politics and governance for Direct Line News.

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