by ron kampeas
jta
Ask about Barack Obama’s natural voting blocs, and you might hear about the black constituency, or the YouTube and Facebook crowd, or the Oprah junkies swooning over his candidacy.
What you might not hear is that the Illinois senator has made the offices of Jewish leaders an early stop at every stage in his political career.
In his first run for the Illinois Senate in 1996, he sought the backing of Alan Solow, a top Chicago lawyer. Eight years later, when he ran for the U.S. Senate, one of his first meetings was with Robert Schrayer, a top Jewish philanthropist in Chicago.
When he launched his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in late 2006, he named as his fundraising chief Alan Solomont, the Boston Jewish philanthropist who helped shepherd Sen. John Kerry to the Democratic candidacy in 2004.
And he chose a March 2007 AIPAC gathering as the venue for his presidential candidacy’s first foreign policy speech.
“Some of my earliest and most ardent supporters came from the Jewish community in Chicago,” Obama said in 2004, after his keynote speech galvanized the Democratic convention in Boston.
Three years later, addressing the National Jewish Democratic Council’s candidate’s forum, he made the same point when he was asked about his ties with Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in Chicago, an issue that has become a hot topic in the Jewish community.
“My support within in the Jewish community has been much more significant than my support within the Muslim community,” Obama said at the forum, adding that “I welcome and seek the support of the Muslim and Arab communities.”
In recent weeks Obama has been the target of several smear emails circulated in the Jewish community. Those emails — soundly criticized by Jewish organizational leaders and politicians — have attempted to spread rumors about Obama’s upbringing and faith.
“I never practiced Islam. I was raised by my secular mother. I have been a member of the Christian religion and an active member of a church,” he said in a Jan. 28 conference call with Jewish media.
His Jewish followers are fervent, distributing “Obama ’08” yarmulkes early in his campaign. His rock star status and the relationships he has built in the community have helped avoid murmurings about his otherwise notable divergences from pro-Israel orthodoxies.
In his AIPAC speech, for example, Obama favored diplomacy as a means of confronting Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.
“While we should take no option, including military action, off the table, sustained and aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions should be our primary means to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons,” he said.
AIPAC does not oppose diplomacy in engaging Iran, but dislikes it as an emphasis, believing that talks could buy the Iranian regime time for bomb-making. But his words did not stop the Chicago hotel ballroom packed with 800 AIPAC members from cheering on Obama.
A few weeks later, Obama drew more rubberneckers than any other candidate attending AIPAC’s policy forum in Washington, drawing onlookers from Sen. Hillary Clinton, although she
outpolls Obama among Jewish voters.
No one winced when he said that Palestinian needs must be considered in working out a peace deal — hardly a standard
AIPAC pep talk.
It’s uncertain, though, if the fanfare will be enough to supplant Clinton’s early hold on Jewish voters. In a November 2007 American Jewish Committee poll, Obama’s rating was at 38 percent, while Clinton’s was 53 percent. No Jewish poll has been taken since.
Obama tempers his deviations from pro-Israel orthodoxy by going the extra mile in areas where he agrees with groups such as AIPAC.
He has led the effort in the Senate to pass legislation that would assist U.S. states that choose to divest from Iran. His top Middle East adviser is Dennis Ross, who had the job during the Clinton administration.
And in recent speeches, Obama tweaked his pro-Israel rhetoric.
“I think everyone knows what the basic outlines of an agreement would look like,” he said in a speech redistributed by his campaign. “It would mean that the Palestinians would have to reinterpret the notion of right of return in a way that would preserve Israel as a Jewish state. It might involve compensation and other concessions from the Israelis, but ultimately Israel is not going to give up its state.”