Jeremy Gimpel and Ari Abramowitz passed the 3000 mark today in their membership drive to gain realistic seats in the Bayit Yehudi party list for Knesset.
Ari and Jeremy are American Olim, best known for their pro-Israel show ‘Tuesday Night Live‘ and their pro-Israel videos. They’re running as a team, though only one expects to get in.
These 3000 new party members give Ari and Jeremy the largest individual bloc of voters, outside of the voter blocs that the candidates who are running for head of the party are claiming to have.
While it’s not clear if these 3000 voters will be enough to win them a seat in the Knesset, it may be enough to put them in the position of kingmaker in the Bayit Yehudi primaries.
The other candidates who are running for head of the Bayit Yehudi party are each claiming voter blocs in the tens of thousands. The only problem is that when you add all their numbers up, the total numbers begin to sound unrealistic.One candidate for party chairman seems to be claiming he signed up over 14,000 members in the space of a week.
More likely, there is a tremendous amount of membership overlap between the blocs that each candidate is claiming exclusively as his own.
If that’s the case, then Ari and Jeremy may be in a better position that they realize.
(Update) According to unofficial numbers released this morning, 40,000 people signed up in total, 21,000 of them via the internet. But the totals listed by the candidates add up to over 70,000. That leaves a bit of a discrepency.
On September 20th, the official Bayit Yehudi voter list will be released. On November 6, voting for the Bayit Yehudi chairman will be held, and on November 13, voting will be held for the Knesset list.