J Street founder Kohl running for Congress | Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle

J Street founder Kohl running for Congress

WASHINGTON – A founder of J Street and a scion of a famed Wisconsin family is running for Congress as a Democrat in a district seen as solidly Republican.

Dan Kohl helped to start J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East lobby.

Dan Kohl

 

Kohl is a lawyer who has worked as an executive on the Milwaukee Bucks, the NBA team his uncle Herb Kohl bought in 1985 to keep it from moving out of the city. The elder Kohl, who was a U.S. Senator from 1989 to 2013 and an heir to the Kohl’s department store chain, sold the team in 2014.

Dan has also been on the National Board of Governors of the American Jewish Committee, on the board of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and a chairman of the Milwaukee Jewish Day School.

The district’s incumbent, Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., defeated a more moderate Republican in the 2014 primary. The district map has Fond Du Lac at the center, stretching from Portage to Lake Michigan and dipping a toehold into Milwaukee’s North Shore area.