Jewish Republican Morgan Ortagus expected to face antisemitism on the campaign trail in Tennessee, but wasn’t prepared for what she encountered. Now she wonders why so many members of her party are staying silent
Morgan Ortagus, left, with Ivanka Trump in Washington, in 2019. A Tennessee state senator said only fellow Jews Ivanka and Jared Kushner would mind that Ortagus was disqualified from a ballot.Credit: Patrick Semansky / AP
WASHINGTON – Jewish Republican Morgan Ortagus says she expected to encounter antisemitism while running in a congressional primary in Tennessee. She just didn’t think it would be quite so blatant.
The Donald Trump-endorsed Ortagus, 39, found herself targeted by a fellow Republican who supported efforts to remove her from the ballot over a technicality concerning her length of residence in the southern state.
In her most thorough remarks on the matter to date, she says she was shocked by last month’s antisemitic attack against her, but refuses to let such setbacks derail her political aspirations.
“I knew that I would face antisemitism – you can face that anywhere,” she says. “What I didn’t realize is that someone like [State Sen. Frank] Niceley could be so blatant about it.”
Niceley, who is backing former State House Speaker Beth Harwell in the August 4 GOP primary for the state’s 5th Congressional District, said he didn’t think Trump would care one way or the other if Ortagus was removed from the ballot. “I think Jared Kushner – he’s Jewish, she’s Jewish – I think Jared will be upset. Ivanka [Trump] will be upset. I don’t think Trump cares,” he told NBC News in remarks that garnered national attention.
Niceley had already found himself in the spotlight after calling on the homeless to emulate Hitler, since the Nazi Germany leader “went on to lead a life that got him in the history books” after temporarily residing on the streets.
Ortagus says she “expected some sort of subtle whisper campaign on the campaign trail, but [Niceley] said it on record and reiterated it. It was not something he was ashamed of,” she adds, noting that Harwell failed to condemn Niceley’s remarks.
Peculiar path to Judaism
Ortagus served as State Department spokesperson under then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the last administration, following a successful career in a variety of national security positions. But it was while serving in U.S. foreign policy that her journey to Judaism began, in what she calls a “very peculiar way.”
The Florida native grew up in an evangelical household, but things changed when she was stationed in Baghdad as a public affairs officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2007. Ortagus was dating a Jewish boyfriend back in Washington and, when she saw signs advertising Friday night Shabbat services in the Green Zone, decided to go along. A while later, she had the rare distinction of attending a Hanukkah ceremony at one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces.
Her boyfriend, Jonathan Weinberger, would eventually become her husband, and she started conversion classes at the Washington JCC while attending services at the conservative Adas Israel Congregation. After Baghdad, work took her to the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh (under the Obama administration), where she would take weekly conversion lessons over Skype with her partner and Rabbi Batya Steinlauf. “It was certainly not a typical conversion process,” she laughs.
Upon completing her conversion, Ortagus married Weinberger in 2013, in a ceremony officiated by late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – a fact that is public knowledge yet still managed to outrage many of her political opponents in Tennessee.
“She was our neighbor for a very long time before she passed away. My husband was on the co-op board of our building for a while, and they became friendly. She was a very sweet and kind woman, and we were lucky to have her marry us,” she recounts.
Ortagus, whose first daughter Adina was born two days after the 2020 presidential election, moved to Nashville to start a health care investment fund with former Trump aide Adam Boehler. She credits the city’s vibrant Jewish community as part of the attraction.
“We thought this would be a great place for [Adina], and to start a company and relax after the last few years,” she says. “Starting a company isn’t relaxing by any means – but everything after the Trump administration is a little less crazy.”
Local Republican figures reached out to her, encouraging her to run for the seat being vacated by Democratic incumbent Rep. Jim Cooper. He is retiring over his belief that the seat is too difficult to hold following Tennessee’s redistricting.
“I’ve always shied away from doing it, for all the reasons that most women do. I wasn’t going to approach President Trump about it, but he decided to pre-endorse me before I got into the race – which was very kind of him,” Ortagus says.
She was only in the race for two months, however, before the state party disqualified her. Ortagus was formally removed from the ballot due to party bylaws stating that candidates must have voted in at least three of the past four statewide primaries.
Rigging the ballot?
Beyond Ginsburg’s officiating and her lack of Tennessee roots, Ortagus’ Republican critics were quick to flag her historic comments criticizing Trump while supporting Jeb Bush in the 2016 Republican presidential primary as supposedly disqualifying.
She is likely to stay off the ballot as her campaign does not have a formal avenue of appeal, but she remains suspicious of her removal in the first place.
“They believe they’ve operated by party rules. It’s an open primary state – the process was obviously corrupted by people who wanted to rig the ballot,” she says. “You can disagree with me, but it’s laughable to think I’m not a Republican unqualified to be on the ballot.”
Reflecting on Niceley’s comments, Ortagus says she has “been in politics and TV for so long, it takes a lot to bother me. You don’t go to 50 countries with Mike Pompeo and deal with all the stuff I deal with and get worked up easily. That’s the NFL – you have to take the hit.” She concedes, though, that she “did not expect to face such overt antisemitism.”
As a woman on television, she says, she is often faced with both extremes where she is either sexualized or told she is ugly This is something she is mostly able to ignore, she says, but Niceley’s remarks hit hard.
“I’m not a crier, but it brought me to tears,” Ortagus admits. “I thought, Holy hell, this is what my daughter’s going to face,” she says, adding that she had never experienced antisemitism since converting as an adult. “It hit me that someone may do this to her one day,” she continues. “I realized that I’m not going to be able to protect her from antisemitism in her life, and I need to teach her how to be strong and stand up for herself.”
No one in the Republican Party’s congressional delegation condemned Niceley’s remarks, save Sen. Marsha Blackburn. “I’ve always been quick to call out antisemitism when the other party does it. We cannot pick and choose – we have to call it out whenever it happens,” Ortagus says. “I’m certainly grateful Sen. Blackburn did. I do not understand why no one else did.”
She attributes the institutional silence to the party’s attitude concerning Niceley. “I think they see him as a sort of crazy old man that says crazy stuff all the time – like the uncle you ignore. But you can’t ignore this; ignoring it is tolerating it.”
Ortagus is keen to stress, though, that she does not believe Tennessee’s Republican Party has a wider antisemitism issue. “Niceley is an antisemite. If he doesn’t realize it, he should go to therapy. He should resign and his comments should not be tolerated,” she says. But “the people I’ve met here who have supported me have repeatedly told me how embarrassed they are. I don’t take Niceley to represent Tennessee Republicans; I think my supporters are quite horrified.”
Following the harsh reaction to his comments, Niceley said he had “nothing but respect for the Jewish people and the State of Israel.” He added that “attempting to construe my offhand comments about the Trump family as antisemitism is unfair and inaccurate.”
Ortagus, meanwhile, will continue to campaign for national security-focused conservatives around the country.
“I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve been very lucky and blessed to hold some really amazing jobs. I’m excited to still be in the military and intelligence communities,” she says. “I’m not going away, and I’m certainly not letting some antisemitic state senator scare me out of politics.”
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