new york | Call it the tale of two Mellmans.
Mark Mellman, one of John Kerry’s top four advisers, launched a talk with Jewish Democrats in Boston last month with a drasha, or short sermon, on the meaning of Tisha B’Av, the Jewish fast day that happened to fall during the party convention.
Then, with nary a comment from the crowd, Mellman glided into the case for the Massachusetts senator.
Contrast that with the introduction Sunday, Aug. 29, for Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman at a similar Jewish event.
“One of us, Ken Mehlman — let me repeat that, one of us, Ken Mehlman — is running the Bush-Cheney campaign,” said Morris Offit, a Republican and the president of UJA-Federation of New York, barely containing his grin as he emphasized Mehlman’s Jewishness.
The contrast could not be starker between the run-of-the-mill references to Yiddishkeit in Boston and the frissons of glee in New York at the mere mention of a Jewish name. It illustrates how far Jews have come in the Republican Party since the 1970s — yet how far they have to go to equal Jewish Democrats in number and influence.
For every gratified reference to the packed rooms Jews have filled at the Republican National Convention, for all the invariable “we couldn’t fill a phone booth 20 years ago” jokes, there has been an acknowledgment that the status of Republican Jews in the party and the Jewish community is not anywhere near that of Jewish Democrats.
The elephant in every Jewish ballroom at the convention is last month’s survey showing that Jewish preferences for Democrats have hardly budged since 2000, when George Bush scored less than 20 percent in exit polls. The poll was commissioned by Democrats, and no one here was buying into it entirely. But they still were setting expectations lower than a few months ago, when they believed Bush’s unprecedented closeness to Israel and his efforts against terrorism would win the Republicans levels of Jewish support seen only at the start of the Reagan era.
“Getting 30 percent of the Jewish vote would be an accomplishment,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz said at an American Jewish Committee panel Monday, Aug. 30. Reagan won close to 40 percent of the Jewish vote in the 1980 election.
The stakes are high this year in an election so close that it could come down to a few thousand votes in swing states — particularly in states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, where the Jewish vote could make the difference.
Speaking of coastal Florida towns with large Jewish populations, William Daroff of the Republican Jewish Coalition said, “If we turn one half of one percent of that vote, that’s enough.”
The problem, Republicans say, is the gulf between the GOP and the Jewish community on social issues.
“On issue after issue, on the economy and foreign policy, you are seeing more and more alignment between the Jewish community and the Republican Party — with the huge caveat of a social agenda,” Luntz said. “Until this point the Republican Party has been unable to communicate an acceptable social policy.”
The gap was in strong evidence at the Jewish event that traditionally launches conventions, in which the American Israel Public Affairs Committee reviews the candidate’s and party’s record on Israel and the United Jewish Communities federation umbrella organization reviews the domestic record.
AIPAC President Bernice Manocherian was unstinting in her praise of Bush’s record, but UJC Chairman Robert Goldberg had to reach hard for praise.
He lauded two Jewish Republicans, Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), for casting “pivotal” votes to block Medicaid cuts that would have undercut assistance to the Jewish elderly — essentially thanking them for crossing party lines and defying their president.
It won’t help Republicans that this year’s platform slams abortion repeatedly — referring to late-term procedures as “brutal,” “inhumane” and “violent” — that it describes expanded stem cell research as “the destruction of human embryos” or that it supports a federal amendment banning gay marriage.
Instead, Republicans repeatedly stressed Bush’s record on Israel and against terrorism, so much so that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani — GOP stars and moderates who could have served as salves to the Jewish community on domestic issues — instead advised Jewish audiences to simply forget about the social agenda for now.