The story by The New York Times was actually published back in September. The point of it was to highlight a tiny handful of Michigan Jews who were signing a letter of support for Abdul El-Sayed.
The story itself was pretty absurd. There are 10 million people living in Michigan and 7.4 million of them are registered voters. Michigan has a pretty small population of Jewish residents. They make up less than 1.5 percent of the electorate or about 130,000 people. Even so, an open letter signed by fewer than 500 people (at the time it was 475) seems pretty negligible.
A group of Jewish voters in Michigan is urging support for Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the state’s Democratic nominee for Senate, in an open letter that acknowledges concerns among some Jewish voters about his candidacy and his criticism of Israel.
The letter, signed by more than 500 people who identify as Jewish leaders or voters in the state, says that the election of Dr. El-Sayed, a staunch critic of Israel, is “clearly the better choice for Jews” compared with his Republican opponent, former Representative Mike Rogers.
“Some of us are enthusiastic supporters of El-Sayed,” the letter, published on Wednesday, reads. “Some of us have reservations: There are disagreements with El-Sayed on important issues, including aspects of his approach to Israel and the language used by some of his allies. These concerns remain serious for many of us, and we will vote for El-Sayed.”
Anyway, this old story got a new lease on life today when Mediaite reported on it.
The New York Times is being dragged for an uncritical Sept. 17 report on a letter of support for Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed (D) from a long list of purported Jewish people and leaders, which has been signed by over 1,000 people.
The list was unvetted, included the giggle-inducing name “Jack Mehoff” and featured Jewish leaders from fringe groups, according to critics — who pointed out anyone could sign the online form provided by Michigan Jews for Democracy.
Jack has since been removed from the list of Jewish supporters, but the Free Beacon reporter who first caught this got a screengrab of it.
The New York Times will openly and without shame publish a list of “Jews for Abdul” which includes the name “Jack Mehoff” and then completely ignore that this fatally compromises the whole story and just power through it Don’t even see a correction anywhere to this piece — incredible
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) November 3, 2026
Seymour Butts and Ben Dover were not available for comment.
It turns out that anyone can sign this list. You just have to offer a zip code and claim you vote in Michigan. Other than that, you can claim to be a Jewish leader even if you’re not Jewish.
In this list of “Jewish leaders” there are five rabbis. One “is the first rabbi to lead a Unitarian Universalist Congregation.” None lead mainstream congregations. One leads a tiny Reconstructionist group that meets in a church. Another is part-time, leading a small congregation in part-time services every other week. The other two have no congregations. There is also a Reverend Lauren Zinn, who was ordained by an interfaith program and doesn’t purport to be any sort of Jewish clergy. And like half the people who signed don’t even provide their last names, so you have no idea if they are Jews are even real. This is what I call news by press release, where some fringe group issues a press release and gullible or willful media outlets print it like it’s real news.
— David Bernstein (@ProfDBernstein) November 3, 2026
None lead mainstream congregations.
One leads a tiny Reconstructionist group that meets in a church.
Another is part-time, leading a small congregation in part-time services every other week.
The other two have no congregations.
There is also a Reverend Lauren Zinn, who was ordained by an interfaith program and doesn’t purport to be any sort of Jewish clergy.
And like half the people who signed don’t even provide their last names, so you have no idea if they are Jews are even real.
This is what I call news by press release, where some fringe group issues a press release and gullible or willful media outlets print it like it’s real news.
AG Hamilton says he knows that one of the people listed as a signatory is deceased.
Yesterday the NYT published a list of what was alleged to be over 500 Michigan “Jewish leaders” supporting El-Sayed. The point of doing so was to paint a narrative that he has strong Jewish support in MI. But did the NYT do any vetting to the list? A quick skim and you notice it includes names like “Jack Mehoff”. I happen to know that one of the names is someone deceased. A majority of the signatories don’t even use their full names, just a last initial, so it’s impossible to confirm these are even real people or Jewish. Why would they publish a story about a completely unreliable list with random names on a google sheet? Because the point was the narrative.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) November 3, 2026
So, a generally great job by the Times reporting on a very dubious list that was of questionable news value in the first place.
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