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Jewish vote: 78 percent for Obama
 | | American Jews strongly favored Barack Obama in the Nov. 4 vote, helping bring him to a sweeping victory. |
By Ron Kampeas
WASHINGTON (JTA)—For some Jewish voters, the strangeness of Barack Obama was like a recurring dream: unsettling and then settling in, and then, suddenly, revelatory.
Ari Wallach described breaking through to elderly Jews in Florida who had resisted voting for the son of the man from Kenya, the tall black man with the middle name “Hussein.”
“It wasn’t only his policy on Israel and Iran, on health care,” said Wallach, whose Jewsvote.org led the “Great Shlep,” an effort to prod young adults to get their Jewish grandparents in Florida to vote for Obama. “His biography feels so Jewish, it feels like an Ellis Island archetype. People felt more comfortable when I talked about where he came from, it resonated so deeply—surprisingly among older Jews.”
For months, polls showed Obama languishing at about 60 percent of the Jewish vote, a critical chunk short of the 75 percent or so Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) garnered in 2004. But exit polls from last Tuesday’s election showed Obama matching those results, garnering about 78 percent of the Jewish vote against 22 percent for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), his Republican rival.
Wallach credited the campaign’s late-campaign blitz of Jewish communities, joined by groups like his own, for converting the candidate from stranger to standard bearer for a Jewish ethos.
“It resonated much more than I thought it was going through in these parts of the Jewish community,” he said. [more] |
Roundup: Three new Jews, but no rabbi
 | | Alan Grayson defeated Republican incumbent Ric Keller in Orlando’s Congressional District 8. |
By Eric Fingerhut
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. House of Representatives is getting three new Jewish members, but election night’s Democratic tide was not strong enough to sink several favorites of Jewish GOPers or to send Congress its first rabbi, Jewish Latina or Chinese Jew.
The 111th U.S. Congress is slated to have 13 Jewish senators and 32 members of the House of Representatives, with the three first-time victories of Democrats Jared Polis of Colorado, John Adler of New Jersey and Alan Grayson of Florida.
But one of the most hotly contested Senate races, pitting two Jewish candidates against each other in Minnesota, may not be decided for days as the Heritage goes to press.
Republican incumbent Norm Coleman led Democratic challenger Al Franken by fewer than 700 votes in the Senate race in Minnesota. The slim margin of less than one-half of 1 percent triggered an automatic recount in the race, in which independent Dean Barkley received 15 percent of the vote. Exit polling data showed Barkley pulling votes equally from the Democrat and Republican.
The recount comes after the two candidates spent more than $30 million, mostly attacking each other. Coleman using Franken’s background as a writer and performer for “Saturday Night Live” against him by highlighting jokes that were insensitive to women, while Franken charged that his GOP opponent was too close to big-money “special interests.” [more] |
Attack dog, policy wonk, committed Jew
 | | Barack Obama’s pick for White House chief of staff has strong ties to Israel and the Jewish community. |
By Ron Kampeas
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Political insight, killer in a fight, Yiddishkeit—it’s an inseparable package when it comes to Rahm Emanuel, say those who know President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to be the next White House chief of staff. Since his days as a fund-raiser and then a “political adviser”—read: enforcer—for President Clinton, Emanuel has earned notoriety as a no-holds-barred politico. Accept the good with the bad because it’s of a piece, said Steve Rabinowitz, who worked with Emanuel in the Clinton White House. “He can be a ‘mamzer,’ but he’s our mamzer,” said Rabinowitz, using the Yiddish term for “bastard,” speaking both as a Democrat and a Jew. “Sometimes that’s what you need. “The apocrypha is legendary, if somewhat hard to pin down: Jabbing a knife into a table screaming “Dead!” as colleagues shout out the names of political enemies, sending a dead fish to a rival, screaming at friends and enemies alike for no good reason.Even his allies acknowledge that Emanuel, 48, can be on edge at times.
“He’s not running for Miss Congeniality, ever,” said U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has known Emanuel since they worked at Illinois Public Action, a public interest group, in the early 1980s. “He is relentless, he doesn’t give up, but in a strategic way. He’s good at figuring out other people’s self interest and negotiating in a way that comes out in his favor.”
Emanuel, an Illinois congressman who boasts strong ties to his local Jewish community and the Jewish state, also can be seen as embodying Obama’s stated commitment to Israeli security and diplomacy: During the first Iraq war, Emanuel flew to Israel as a volunteer to help maintain military vehicles. Two years later he was an aide to Clinton, helping to push along the newly launched Oslo process. [more] |
Lone Jewish Republican moves up in U.S. House
 | | Eric Cantor |
By Eric Fingerhut
(JTA)—The only Jewish GOPer in the U.S. House of Representatives is poised to become its second-highest ranking Republican. Rep. Eric Cantor (R.-Va.) is likely to ascend to the minority whip position in the House, after another GOP lawmaker, Roy Blunt of Missouri, stepped down from the post on Nov. 6. Cantor, 45, has served as chief deputy whip for the last six years, and he has been considered a rising star in the Republican Party pretty much since his election to the House in 2000.
As someone who could appeal to two key constituencies—Jews and conservatives—Cantor’s name was even floated this summer as a possible vice-presidential pick for John McCain, although it does not appear that he was seriously considered for the position. He also played a key role in negotiations over an economic bailout bill earlier this fall, offering conservative alternatives to the package originally proposed by the Bush administration.
Representing a district that includes parts of Richmond and its suburbs as well as rural areas to the north, Cantor’s political philosophy is one of a traditional Republican conservative on both economic and social issues. Newsweek described the “Cantor Brand” last week as an emphasis on “fiscal discipline, lowering taxes and government accountability.” He also is pro-gun, anti-abortion and has backed Bush administration secrecy policies.
This has led Jewish Democrats to argue that while he may be Jewish, his views are “out of step” with the mainstream of the community—at least on domestic matters. [more] |
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