by joe eskenazi & brad greenberg
special to j.
It was Hillary Clinton in a landslide — at least, in the lobby of the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco last week.
Out of a dozen people questioned in a straw poll, there was one Republican and one Libertarian. The rest were Democrats, and of those the senator from New York received resounding support, albeit sometimes for tactical reasons.
“I don’t think [Barack] Obama can win the November election,” said Stefanie Kohn, 36, who added that she hasn’t yet made up her mind, but is “seriously leaning towards” Clinton.
“Israel is a very big factor for me,” said 34-year-old Amanda Vassigh. “[Clinton] is a realist, and she understands the United States has to stand with Israel.”
Still, it could be a free-for-all Tuesday, Feb. 5 for Democrats and Republicans when 22 states — with about two-thirds of the American Jewish population — hold their primaries and caucuses.
This much excitement hasn’t surrounded a presidential primary season in 40 years, not since Bobby Kennedy was in the race. And for the first time in at least as long, California’s early primary will matter for both parties.
In the latest California Field Poll, conducted in mid-January (prior to John Edwards’ and Rudy Giuliani’s departures from the scene), Clinton was leading the Democratic field, followed by Obama and Edwards. John McCain had taken a slim lead in the Republican pack, ahead of Mitt Romney, Giuliani and Mike Huckabee. No statewide poll has been conducted on the Jewish vote.
Quite a few Jews have been writing checks, working phones or spreading their candidate’s gospel in an effort to court the deciding votes.
“All of us believe this is an absolutely critical election,” said Michael Berenbaum, an adjunct professor of theology at American Jewish University in Bel-Air, and formerly a project director for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“We are voting as if our lives and futures depend upon it,” Berenbaum added. “Not because we fear someone is going to come out and kill us, but because we fear that if we don’t get this right, our children and their children will not enjoy the privileges this generation has enjoyed as Americans — the economic opportunity, the prosperity, the education, all of those elements that have characterized our existence and our flourishing.
Added John Rothmann, a Democratic activist and talk radio host on KGO 810 AM, “Who is president of the United States matters. If there’s one thing we learned in 2000, it’s not Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The personality of the person who sits in the Oval Office is critical to the lives of every American.”
The results of Super Tuesday could well be shaped by the groundwork that campaigns have laid in building their Jewish outreach operations. On both sides of the aisle, Democratic and Republican, organizers have been working to win over the Jewish community.
Last fall Clinton’s campaign created Chai for Hillary, a network of young Jewish professionals in cities across the country. In October, the group drew some 250 guests to an event in Washington, D.C., with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.).
The theme was chai, the number 18, thought to be lucky in Judaism. The event was held at the 18th Street Lounge with an admission price of $18, and guests were asked to spend 18 hours volunteering for the campaign and reaching out to 18 friends.
Recruiting younger Jews may prove crucial as Clinton attempts to fend off Obama, whose campaign has shown a powerful appeal to younger voters.
It’s a campaign brimming with momentum too, coming off Obama’s easy victory Jan. 26 in the South Carolina primary and the endorsement from veteran Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy on Jan. 28.
Obama has beaten Clinton among voters younger than 29 in every state thus far and has won more college newspaper endorsements than any other candidate, according to the Web site Politico.com.
Still, as the campaigns move to the country’s largest Jewish cities, Clinton appears to be reaping the benefits from her efforts to line up Jewish supporters.
Among Jewish voters, Obama has had a somewhat rockier experience, particularly since an email smear campaign falsely asserting that Obama is a Muslim and took his oath of office on a Koran made the rounds among Jewish leaders.
On Jan. 28, Obama spent nearly 30 minutes on a conference call with the Jewish media stressing his support for Israel and urging them to counter the Muslim smear.
Without an expansive Jewish network like Clinton’s, Obama’s Jewish outreach effort has used alternative tactics. The campaign’s Jewish liaisons have sold more than 400 Obama-kahs, a leather yarmulke emblazoned with an Obama ‘08 logo.
The campaign also has built a sophisticated online networking application that, like Facebook, allows users to create profiles, share photos and start online groups. About a dozen Jewish Obama groups have been created.
Sam Lauter, a San Francisco political consultant and Jewish Democrat, downplayed the effect Edwards’ departure would have on local Jewish voting patterns.
“Anecdotally, I have not heard a lot of talk about supporting Edwards from people in our community. I don’t think this will affect the Jewish world very much,” he said.
“I don’t think he polled a lot in our community. I don’t think he polled a lot in any community or else he wouldn’t be dropping out.”
Lauter, an Obama supporter, predicted most of Edwards’ voters would drift to Obama, “who appeals to people seeking something a little different, more than Senator Clinton does.” However, Lauter emphasized that he doesn’t think Edwards’ absence will affect either remaining candidate very much.
Throughout the Bay Area and across the state, many voters are even asking the larger question: Republican or Democrat?
There used to only be one real answer for many Jews. They believed in three velts (Yiddish for “world”): die velt (this world), yene velt (the next world) and Roosevelt. And since the New Deal, American Jews have identified so strongly with the Democratic Party that supporting its policies, particularly its domestic agenda, has sometimes been seen as part of being Jewish.
“Like most Brooklyn Jews, I was raised a Democrat, voted Democrat for years and years, and believed, absolutely, that Republicans were evil,” screenwriter Robert Avrech wrote a few years ago for JewishPress.com in an article titled “Help! I’m a Hollywood Republican.”
“That’s what we were taught from birth, right? Democrats are for the poor and the oppressed, and Republicans are for rich people and big corporations. Who questioned such sophisticated political analysis?”
An increasing number of Jews seem to be. Though the proportion voting for a Republican presidential candidate has never been as high as it was in 1956 for President Eisenhower (40 percent, according to “Jews in American Politics”), the percentage has increased each presidential election since 1992 — going from 11 percent to 16 percent to 19 percent — to 24 percent of Jews voting to re-elect President Bush in 2004.
“Whether it is the economy or the environment or education or health care, we think we are bringing new and fresh ideas to the conversation,” Larry Greenfield, state director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said at a debate in Southern California. “There is a broadening of the Jewish conversation as some of your kids and grandkids come home from college and say, ‘Mom, Dad, I’m a Republican.’”
Greenfield has been traveling up and down the state — including several trips to the Bay Area — trying to convince voters that Republicans really are good for the Jews. He’s won some converts over the past few years, growing his membership from about 1,500 to 8,000. And the key selling point, the policy issue he repeats over and over, is that Republicans just do national defense better. That means, he argues, we will be safer and Israel will be safer with a Republican in the White House.
“There are obviously some lifelong Democrats who are not going to shift,” he said in a recent interview. “But I hear all the time that they could vote for a Republican.”
Said Marilyn Kritzer, one of those lifelong Democrats and the organizer of the debate at which Greenfield spoke, “McCain is the only Republican I could vote for.”
Certainly there has been enthusiasm in the Jewish community for McCain, a hawk on defense who has a long record of stiff support for Israel. He earned the endorsement of Sen. Joe Lieberman, a centrist with foreign policy views similar to his own. And quite a bit of fantasizing was indulged in December at the Orthodox Union’s West Coast Torah Convention when talk show host Michael Medved entertained the possibility of a McCain-Lieberman ticket. (Lieberman later shot down that idea.)
Other Republican Jews have gotten behind Romney, whom the RJC took on a tour of Israel last year.
“Most Republicans care about shared values, and he has very strong values,” Charlie Spies, CFO and general counsel for Romney for President, said of the Mormon candidate. “Whether you are an Orthodox Jew, conservative Catholic or evangelical, we have much more in common than divides us.”
But the person being spoken of most effusively by California’s Republican Jewish leadership — though not officially because they don’t endorse until after the primaries — had been Giuliani, who fell precipitously in the polls prior to his flameout in the Florida primary (which Giuliani had referred to as “my firewall”).
Giuliani’s San Francisco campaign chair, Howard Epstein, predicts most Jews (and Rudy supporters) will heed Giuliani’s call and support McCain — albeit reluctantly.
“I’m a party activist myself, but a lot of people in the party’s activist base privately don’t like John McCain. We’ll see, but with Rudy’s support, I think [Giuliani’s] word will mean something.
Epstein, president of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Northern California chapter and a vice chairman of the S.F. GOP, felt that Romney may be “too conservative” to appeal to local Jews (at least based on what Romney is “saying now”).
Either way, the next days and weeks promise to be tense, pivotal and historic.
“What’s fascinating for this election is, I don’t remember ever seeing such a selection of candidates, in both parties, who really generate such enthusiasm and support,” said Lauter.
“Who heard of the California primary mattering? … A lot of people said, ‘It’ll be decided by then.’ Well, it’s not over yet. And I have to say, it’s a lot of fun.”
Sue Fishkoff and Ben Harris of JTA contributed to this story. Brad Greenberg writes for the L.A. Jewish Journal. Joe Eskenazi is a j. staff writer.
The primary issue: Dissecting the election for Jewish voters
cover caricatures | copley news service/steve breen
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