Who's Afraid of the NoVa Jews

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington has put out a voter's guide for Virginia's upcoming 2023 state legislative primaries (concentrating on races in Northern Virginia). There's nothing too remarkable in it -- the candidates give pretty generic boilerplates about how they'll work hard for the people of Virginia etc. etc., and then link to their websites. Basic stuff. 

But I did notice something interesting.

The guide appears to have solicited statements from candidates in all contested primaries (they did not ask candidates who were running unopposed in the primary). In the Democratic races, all but two candidates dutifully replied with statements to the JCRC.* By contrast, in the Republican races, none of the candidates participated in the Jewish community voter guide.

Now, to be sure, Northern Virginia has shifted decisively blueward in recent years. So unsurprisingly there are a lot more active Democratic races than Republican contests. Republicans only had active primaries in three races -- SD-29, SD-30, and HD-21 -- compared to 14 contested primaries amongst the Democrats. But, at least judging by a quick perusal of their campaign websites, the Republican candidates in these races seem to be actively running and not complete-nobodies. They could have responded to the voter guide. They just chose not to -- apparently deciding that Virginia's Jewish community was not a constituency that was worth their time to appeal to.

* The Democratic no-shows were Saddam Salim (SD-37) and Sreedhar Nagireddi (HD-26). In both of these seats, there was another Democrat running who did participate (Chip Petersen and Kannan Srinivasan, respectively). Hell, even Ibraheem Samirah (running for Senate in the SD-32 after being ousted from his House of Delegates post last cycle) participated, and he has an ugly history with the DC-area Jewish community that includes calling for the expulsion of Jewish groups from progressive organizing coalitions (he didn't, unfortunately, address those comments in his statement). Samirah also has a primary opponent, current House Delegate Suhas Subramanyam.