Politics & Power Quote by Gary Ackerman

There’s a practiced casualness to Gary Ackerman’s line: a demographic fact delivered with the shruggy cadence of small talk. “Not a lot but there’s a bunch of us” is numerically imprecise on purpose, a politician’s way of acknowledging representation without inviting a spreadsheet. It’s also a subtle preemptive strike against two competing narratives that tend to shadow Jewish public officials: the insinuation of disproportionate influence (“too many”) and the reality of underrepresentation relative to visibility in civic life (“not enough”). By landing on the middle register - “some,” “not a lot,” “a bunch” - Ackerman threads the needle, sounding neither defensive nor triumphalist.

The intent reads as reassurance, aimed outward and inward at once. Outward: Jewish identity in Congress isn’t an anomaly; it’s present, normalized, part of the institutional fabric. Inward: there is a recognizable caucus, a community that can confer legitimacy and solidarity, especially when Jewish issues are being debated in a climate where questions of loyalty, dual allegiance, or “special interests” can surface fast.

The subtext is the oldest tightrope in American minority politics: visibility without provocation. The line performs belonging while managing risk. It acknowledges difference (“Jewish members”) but quickly softens it into the ordinary language of counting friends at a party. That’s not evasiveness; it’s a survival tactic shaped by a long history of coded suspicion and the perennial need to appear simultaneously particular and unremarkably American.