This week, Ron Huldai formally entered national politics when he announced he was forming his own party. During his somewhat angry speech, he did not announce that he would be running for prime minister. Huldai treated the current race as if it were a passing event. If everything goes as planned, that announcement will come. But in such a dynamic campaign its hard at this stage to guess whether or not everything will, in fact, go well.
Last week, the main events were mostly on the Right, and this week, focus shifted to the opposing camp. Although most of what happened in the past few days was predictable, there were plenty who were still surprised.
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Take Huldai's move. The official announcement came this week, but there have been hints about it for months. Polls from before his announcement showed the mayor that he could win seven to nine seats. That isn't enough to declare his intention of becoming prime minister without becoming a laughingstock. Bringing in Avi Nissankoren and the precise speech that was aimed at center-Left voters who are desperately looking for a new political home should have given him a boost. His first goal is to overtake Yair Lapid. The left-wing camp can have only one leader. Whoever gets the most seats could win it all, whether the mergers come before or after the election.
Huldai, incidentally, still hasn't reached a decision. He isn't ruling out a joint ticket but also not rushing to decide. Sometimes the whole is less than the sum of its parts, and sometimes the opposite is true. This election could be decided by a single seat, so all possibilities should be evaluated carefully.
The fact that he hasn't resigned as mayor of Tel Aviv harms Huldai's ability to convince people that he's serious. If he believed he'd win, he'd resign. If he keeps the option of returning to city hall open, what does that say about how he sees his chances? And what does that tell his potential voters?
The two people hurt by Huldai's recent political maneuvers are Benny Gantz and Gideon Sa'ar. Gantz was deeply hurt when Nissankoren defected. Only two weeks ago, he was still fighting for him, and was ready to hold elections to prevent Nissankoren's job from being attacked. Gantz could be the biggest schlimazel in politics. The writing about Nissankoren's abandonment was on the wall, in huge letters. The moment three MKs went against Gantz and voted against a compromise that would prevent another election, it was clear that the justice minister was behind it. In the corridors of the Blue and White offices and in newspaper analyses, the possibility of Nissankoren leaving the party was being discussed, but Gantz refused to see it. When what everyone expected to happen, happened, he was shocked.
Many members of Blue and White, or former members who left in the last few days, blame Gantz's inner circle for his rise and fall. They say those close associates hid the truth from him and pressured him to join the Netanyahu government and fought to get him to compromise and give in repeatedly in an attempt to stave off another election. That group, they say, did not correctly assess how frustrated the party members were, or the fact that there was no majority for the compromise that came too late. They hid from him Nissankoren, Ashkenazi, and few other Blue and White MKs' intention of leaving from him. And worst of all, people say, these close associates are the ones who are still hiding facts from him, b causing him to announce that he is staying with Blue and White as if nothing happened.
They think that Gantz isn't ready to give up or run on a joint ticket. He is hurt and convinced, deeply and unrealistically, that he was right all along. Only after he sees a few polls that show him not making it past a minimum threshold, current and former party members say, will Gantz realize that he cannot run and must either step down or join forces with another party. And that won't be easy. Any party he would seek to join already includes a few refugees from Blue and White who got there first, and he would have to be on equal footing with people who stabbed him in the back – he, Gantz, who was a step away from the Prime Minister's Office, or at least that's how he saw himself.
It's no wonder that this week saw some of his people turn to Gideon Sa'ar and even Naftali Bennett to see if one of them would take Blue and White under their wing. There might not be any great human resources there, but there is money. Blue and White is worth about 20 million shekels ($6.2 million) in campaign funding – a nice dowry, to say the least.
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