The Republican Jewish establishment is watching the surge of political outsiders — like Donald Trump and Ben Carson — in the presidential primaries with dismay.
“It’s like we have a conference call every morning, and we ask, ‘What can we do to screw ourselves up today?’” said Fred Zeidman, a longtime fundraiser for Republican presidential candidates.
Zeidman’s exasperation pervades the Jewish Republican world: A party that has, in recent years, established a cozy relationship with Jewish conservatives seems to be careening, at least since the presidential race began.
Trump, the billionaire reality show star, has lobbed rhetorical bombs at Hispanics, women and GOP rivals, and promised to deport 11 million illegal immigrants. Ben Carson, the retired world-famous neurosurgeon, said last weekend that a Muslim can’t be president.
The two men are jostling for the lead in polls, with former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in third. All three have never held elected office; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, along with other establishment candidates, lags behind the outsiders.
“This election is proving that nobody really knows anything, including me,” said Seth Mandel, the op-ed editor of the New York Post.
It’s a disorienting experience for longtime Republican Jewish donors and activists who have made inroads into the party’s establishment over the last two decades, and who have been at the forefront of advocacy for tolerance and pluralism within the party.
“The tone of what they’re saying [is] we get painted as a party of intolerance,” said Zeidman, who practices law in the Houston area and backs Bush’s candidacy.
The anti-immigrant rhetoric especially infuriates Zeidman, a past chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
“I think half the people doing roadwork in 100-degree heat are not legal — and they are working their tuchus off,” he said, referring to highway workers.
Mandel said online that white supremacist backing for Trump — who has suggested immigrants from Mexico are predominantly criminals — has been unsettling. “That will always make Jews uncomfortable; that’s why there’s so much pushback” among some Jewish conservatives against the Trump candidacy.
Yet last month’s American Jewish Committee poll of American Jews showed Trump leading among GOP candidates, garnering 10.2 percent of Jewish support, to come in third behind Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, with 39.7 percent, and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, with 17.8 percent. Among self-declared Republicans in the poll, Trump led, garnering 28 percent of their support. Bush came in second with 19 percent.
The feeling among some Jewish Republicans is chagrin, qualified by a belief that the party will right itself by the time primaries start early next year.
Mel Sembler, a Florida real estate magnate and a past financial chairman of the party, who backs Bush, said polls now showing outsiders in the lead mattered less than funds raised by candidates — and his candidate has raised over $100 million.
“What you have now is a popularity contest on TV and people pressing buttons. It’s all theater,” he said. “What’s important in the long run from my standpoint is who’s got the finances to sustain himself. Jeb Bush has raised $114 million and has $97 million in the bank. We’re here for the long haul.”
Trump, a billionaire, has said he is able to match such spending, but has yet to invest deeply in his own campaign.
Tevi Troy, a deputy health secretary in President George W. Bush’s administration who is not yet backing a candidate, said one plus that’s emerging from the debates is that the entire range of candidates — insiders and outsiders alike — are pro-Israel and have embraced the party’s skepticism of the Iran nuclear deal.
Contrast that with previous Republican primary seasons, when disruptive outsiders were cool on Israel — notably in the 1990s, when Pat Buchanan ran twice, Troy said.
“Fortunately, the outsiders this time, just about all are exceedingly pro-Israel, and that’s a good thing,” he said.
Mark McNulty, the spokesman for the Republican Jewish Coalition, said candidates and Jewish Republicans will have an opportunity to learn more about one another in December, when the coalition hosts its presidential forum in Washington.
The coalition’s board is a who’s who of the party’s most generous givers — most famously Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate.
Adelson has yet to come out for a candidate: The conventional wisdom is he is waiting to avoid a repeat of 2012, when he bankrolled long-shot Newt Gingrich, which ended up weakening eventual nominee Mitt Romney. But one of Adelson’s top allies, Mort Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, recently expressed concern over Trump’s behavior and lead in the polls.
“Trump is making many of us very nervous,” Klein told Talking Points Memo after Trump derided neurosurgeon Carson’s skills as a physician. “He doesn’t have the temperament to be president.”
A senior GOP consultant with ties to the Jewish community said the outsiders are getting good press because of anti-incumbent anger that hasn’t abated since the 2010 Tea Party-led Republican sweep of Congress.
“When you get an outsider who has none of that experience, none of that training, they will say a lot more extreme and unguarded things and that produces raw, red-meat statements that appeal to extremes at the primary base,” said the consultant, “and that’s who is paying attention this early in the game.”