Establishment candidates get Dem Senate nods in Md., Pa.

Ron Kampeas

Alan Gross with his wife Judy watch television onboard a government plane headed back to the US as the news breaks of his release, while U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, second from left, looks on, Dec. 17, 2014. (Wikimedia Commons)

Alan Gross with his wife Judy watch television onboard a government plane headed back to the US as the news breaks of his release, while U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, second from left, looks on, Dec. 17, 2014. (Wikimedia Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Democratic establishment candidates bested progressive challengers in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and a Jewish state senator won the Democratic primary in Washington’s Maryland suburbs.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., won the party’s nomination for Maryland Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who is retiring, defeating Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md.

Van Hollen is close to the pro-Israel establishment, and Edwards has been a sharp critic of some Israeli policies.

Van Hollen, the popular chairman of his party’s congressional reelection committee from 2007-2011, also played a role in 2014 in freeing from a Cuban prison Alan Gross, a state department subcontractor who had been jailed for five years hooking up the island’s Jewish community to the Internet.

State Sen. Jamie Raskin, who is Jewish, bested eight other candidates to win the Democratic nomination to contest Van Hollen’s seat. The district, comprising much of Montgomery County in suburban Washington, is solidly Democratic, and Raskin, backed by an array of progressive groups, is seen as a shoo-in for the next Congress.

Katie McGinty, a chief of staff for Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, beat Joe Sestak a former congressman, in the race to face incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

McGinty was picked by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., likely to become the next leader of his party in the Senate. Democrats are still furious with Sestak for beating late Sen. Arlen Specter in a 2010 primary. Specter, one of the few Jewish Republicans in Congress, switched parties the year previous to help pass President Barack Obama’s health reforms, and Democrats hoped to reqard him with reelection.

Sestak went on to lose to Toomey, who used against Sestak his signing onto a letter criticizing Israel for its actions during the 2009 Gaza war.

Josh Shapiro won the Democratic nomination to be Pennsylvania’s attorney general, an office that has been plagued by charges of corruption in recent years. Shapiro, the chairman of the board of commissioners of Montgomery County, a suburban Philadelphia area, acted as an Obama surrogate to Jewish voters during the 2012 election, when he was a state representative.

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