Bush Appeals to Jews and Muslims; The president's offensive in the war on terror and his careful Mideast policy win converts from a Democratic voting bloc - even as he resists playing the ethnic card

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 8, 2003 | by John Berlau

Byline: John Berlau, INSIGHT

When Norm Coleman was growing up as a Jewish kid in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s, it seemed to him that Republicans were from another country. "We were born Democrats," Coleman recalls to Insight. "It's not a joke; I never met a Republican or a Lutheran until I went to college."

Elected mayor of St. Paul, Minn., as a Democrat in the 1990s, Coleman switched parties in his first term. He went on to win a second term as a Republican, and in 2002 captured a U.S. Senate seat for the GOP. Now he is urging other Jews to follow his lead in the hope that they could play a key role in a re-election victory for George W. Bush in 2004.

"I'm traveling around and will do more as the presidential campaign heats up to reach out and tell my own story," says Coleman. "My own path being brought up a Democrat, being first elected as a Democrat, ultimately switching to the Republican Party and being re-elected in a city that is about 70 percent Democrat I think is a path that many folks within the Jewish community can relate to."

And just-released numbers from the 2002 elections show that many Jewish voters are following political paths similar to Coleman's. After Jews as a group defied political trends in the 1990s to vote even more Democratic than before, the Republican share of the Jewish vote nearly doubled. The 2002 results of exit polls from the Voter News Service (VNS), delayed because of technical problems, show the GOP congressional candidates picking up 35 percent of the Jewish vote last year. By sharp contrast, from 1992 to 2000 just 21 to 26 percent of Jews pulled the lever for Republicans in congressional races. And the 2002 share was nearly double the 19 percent of Jewish voters that presidential candidate Bush received in 2000.

The reason for this surge, by many accounts, is Bush himself. Campaigning strongly, he took a huge political gamble and made the 2002 election a referendum on his policies. And in foreign policy, at least, Jews found a lot to like in the president's strong support of Israel and general handling of the war on terrorism. Where George H.W. Bush alarmed Jews by pressuring Israel to make unreciprocated concessions to the Palestinians (even though, ironically, he ended up pressuring Israel not nearly as much as Bill Clinton, whom Jews strongly supported), the younger Bush has surprised Israel's supporters by standing by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's efforts to defend the country against organized Palestinian terrorism and refusing to deal with Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat because of his continuing involvement in orchestrating the terrorism.

Yehudit Barsky, director of the American Jewish Committee's Division on Middle East and International Terrorism, tells Insight that Jews were skeptical about the elder Bush. She cites reports that James Baker, secretary of state in the father's administration, said in a White House meeting, "F--- the Jews. They don't vote for us anyway." Then, notes Barsky, when Baker handled the Bush campaign's effort during the Florida aftermath in 2000, it reinforced Jewish skepticism about the son.

But George W.'s strong stance against all terrorism and support of Israel's efforts to defend herself has caused many Jewish voters to take a second look at him, Barsky says. "It turns out, of course, that this George Bush is a different personality from his father," she says.

In fact George W. Bush is standing the conventional wisdom about Jews and the GOP on its head. In the 1990s there were Republican political strategists who, while not putting it as starkly as Baker reportedly did, nonetheless argued that Jews could be written off politically because, as the saying goes, they "work like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans."

But observers now see that Democrats, such as front-running presidential candidate Howard Dean, are giving the GOP a chance to make huge inroads among Jews and even force a realignment by calling for the United States to be more "evenhanded" toward the Palestinian Authority ("How can you be evenhanded with terrorists?" Coleman asks), and referring to suicide bombers from the terrorist group Hamas as "soldiers."

In the 1990s, meanwhile, Republicans were being told they would have better prospects to win the growing Muslim vote than to attract Jews if they made nice with Arab countries. But it has turned out that American Muslims are too diverse and complex to vote as a bloc, say demographic analysts, and estimates of their numbers were wildly inflated by pro-Arab lobbyists in Washington. Nonetheless, with White House officials now telling supporters that they expect the 2004 election to be as close as that of 2000, every swing constituency counts. Chief White House strategist Karl Rove has made efforts to court both Jewish and Muslim voters, and Bush has celebrated Jewish and Muslim holidays in ceremonies at the White House.

Numbering 5.2 million as of 2000, American Jews represent 1.9 percent of the U.S. population. But their voting rates are higher than other groups, and in key electoral swing states they could provide the margin of difference for a presidential candidate in a close election. "Because of the great division in this country, any improvement on the margins could have an impact," Coleman says. "By itself, it's not going to switch an election but, as with any range of constituent groups, if you can increase your margins in races that are close races, you've got a chance to make a difference."