Senate

Eager to win back control of Albany, New York’s Republicans engaged in a spirited battle over the top of their party’s ticket Wednesday at their convention in Manhattan, with supporters of Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, a Democrat, struggling to get him on the ballot.

Although Levy, who had the backing of GOP state chairman Ed Cox, had enough support to get on the ballot had he been a Republican, 28 percent, he failed to muster enough support in a second roll call to allow him on the ballot before switched parties.

 Rand Paul, the Tea Party insurgent who was the upset victor in last week’s Kentucky Republican Senate primary, could be the biggest headache yet for a Republican Party that hopes to capitalize on the populist surge without getting tainted by the angry movement’s extremists.

Once upon a time, assimilated Jews would, well, assimilate, leaving Judaism to the Jews. Similarly, Jewish liberals — prizing universalism over parochialism — pretty much left Zionism to the professional Zionists.

Branding themselves “the new Democrats,” leaders of the state’s largest party kicked off their 2010 campaign Tuesday at the Rye Hilton in Westchester, hoping to move past four years of scandal and turmoil and maintain control of Albany.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- In a sign of closer White House-congressional coordination on Iran, Congress is delaying an Iran sanctions bill several weeks to give the Obama administration time to shepherd new sanctions through the U.N. Security Council.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee blessed the delay, in part because an array of parallel measures are under consideration that would stiffen existing sanctions aimed at getting the Iranian regime to stand down from its suspected nuclear weapons program.

 The argument that anti-Semitism still stifles Jewish achievement in modern America will be a little harder to make if President Barack Obama’s second Supreme Court nomination passes muster with the Senate.

Political and Jewish leaders stood in the shadow of the United Nations Monday to denounce the presence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a UN conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

“Iran’s presence at this conference is a sham,” bristled Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

She then called for Senate hearings to investigate all companies that do business with Iran, thus helping it as it develops nuclear weapons to “enable terrorism.”