The PAC of the pro-Palestinian lobbying group J Street has announced its endorsement of Sean Eldridge, a 2014 House candidate who bought a $2 million house in Shokan, N.Y., this year in order to become eligible to run for Congress.
Eldridge is the husband of the inventor of the Facebook "like" button Chris Hughes, who recently bought the New Republic magazine.
The New Republic was a staunch critic of J Street under its previous management. Its editor-in-chief Martin Peretz, wrote in late 2009 that J Street "was already seen in the public mind as a bunch of nut cases and very much anti-Israel in the very substantive sense."
Eldridge, who counts George Soros as a donor to his exploratory committee, recently said, "It sounds corny but I was raised Jewish and my mother always loved the phrase, 'tikun olam,' which is, 'make the world a better place.'"
Peretz criticized the use of that phrase to promote J Street, writing, "If you suspect you see a charlatan in a Jew, wait for him to utter the words, 'tikun olam.' 'Repair of the world.' Big idea, revolutionary, utopian, progressive. ... Imagine how many silly sermons and speeches have been given with this deliberately falsified phrase as their text."
J Street PAC is asking its members to donate $9 to Eldridge.