Sarah Mittelman, a Jewish nurse practitioner in Vancouver, Wash., was so distressed by what she saw in the Democratic Party after Oct. 7 that she is now running for the Washington state House as a Republican.
After the Hamas-led attacks, Mittelman, who told JNS that she was a Democrat “for a long time, my whole life” and who was chair of the Clark County Democratic Women, found that “things started kind of switching around.”
“Someone made pretty rough statements, called me a ‘genocider’ for just being part of the Jewish community,” she told JNS.
Mittelman, who has built her life with her husband and two sons around Jewish values and traditions, was told that she couldn’t decry antisemitism in her own union. She raised concerns with Democratic leaders but increasingly felt unwelcome, she told JNS.
“Some of the name-calling was, ‘You’re a Republican.’ ‘You have Republican talking points,’” she said.
Mittelman, who is running for the Washington state House in the first position in the 49th legislative district, completed her candidate training with the Democrats but after talking with Republican leaders about her views, she decided that her values “align more with the Republican platform.”
“I made the leap,” she told JNS. “There’s a lot more free discussion that occurs on that side and a lot more engagement.”
“I can have a discussion. I won’t be disparaged,” she said. “I was taught that Republicans are sitting in the background just waiting to pounce on somebody and take away your rights, and I haven’t seen that.”
It’s also been “refreshing” that she hasn’t heard the kind of name calling she experienced on the other side of the aisle.
“I’m kind of glad that I did it, because look at the new Democratic platform for Washington state,” she said, of the party’s recently adopted platform that blames Israel, in part, for rising Jew-hatred.
Mittelman is slated to face off on Aug. 4 against Kim Harless and Mike Pond, both Democrats, in the primary.
The district is the only blue one in Clark County, according to Mittelman, who told JNS that she will have to swing “something like 6,000 votes to win in the general.”
No public polling data has been presented. Harless has raised almost $35,000 since she registered to run on Feb. 3. Pond has raised almost $31,500 since Jan. 15 and Mittelman nearly $17,000 since April 26, according to the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission data.
A member of her local Chabad, Mittleman grew up Catholic. She and her husband Andy, who is also a nurse, “like our Shabbat time,” but the campaign trail makes staying home on Friday nights challenging, she told JNS.
She works for a community mental health organization called Lifeline Connections as part of a program that helps homeless people recover from addiction.
Mittelman works as a nurse to provide medicated-assisted treatment. “A lot of people want to come and sit and talk, and we work on things together,” she said.
“We’re living in this time where humans are changing so quickly and drastically that the simple act of being kind to each other is being forgotten,” she told JNS. “I just don’t understand what’s happened to us as people anymore.”
