Interesting to read I think
Campaign Finance - Bush's Jewish Bloc
Peter H. Stone
Every couple of weeks since last fall, three elite fundraisers for President Bush have been making a pilgrimage from their homes across the country to the Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va. Sheldon Kamins of Maryland, Michael Lebovitz of Tennessee, and Fred Zeidman of Texas have been meeting at the headquarters to plot strategy, talk fundraising tactics, and check in with Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman. Like some 150 other "Rangers," the three men have each raised more than $200,000 for the president's re-election campaign. But the three are also on a mission that sets them apart from many other Rangers.
Kamins, Lebovitz, and Zeidman are wealthy, influential Jews who have been working the phones and hitting up other well-heeled Jews for donations to Bush's '04 campaign. So far, they've cobbled together an impressive fundraising network of dozens of people who have been successful in real estate, finance, and other businesses in California, Florida, Missouri, and New York, among other places.
The mission goes beyond the mere raising of money. The Bush campaign is gearing up for a significant voter-outreach effort in the Jewish community -- a project that Lebovitz will help spearhead -- to try to persuade large numbers of American Jews to abandon their Democratic loyalties and cast their votes on Election Day for a president who has been an unwavering supporter of Israel.
"This has been the greatest president that the state of Israel has ever had," says Zeidman, a Houston venture capitalist whom Bush tapped to chair the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. "The campaign is making every effort to facilitate our effort in the Jewish community."
The work has been in full swing since last year. On October 24, for example, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, Vice President Cheney hosted a kosher luncheon that drew some 450 guests and raised about $650,000. Sander Gerber, who is Jewish and was the only business executive to address the gathering at the Waldorf, is a 36-year-old Wall Street investment banker whose political odyssey symbolizes the Bush campaign's successful and aggressive outreach to disparate parts of the Jewish community. On Election Night 2000, Gerber was among the Democratic faithful at Al Gore's campaign headquarters in Nashville, Tenn. Three years later, he has undergone a complete political conversion and is now a Bush Ranger.
More recently, Bush was the headliner at a December 5 fundraiser in Baltimore that netted close to $1 million for his campaign, including a sizable chunk from Jewish donors. Kamins, a real estate developer, was a key organizer for the event. And on January 14, Cheney jetted to Los Angeles for a couple of money-raising events, one of them a kosher meal at the home of Brad Cohen, a real estate developer from Bel Air. The event raised around $500,000.
To Gerber, the Bush campaign's success in tapping Jews from both parties centers mostly on one thing: the president's Middle East policy. Increasingly, donors and voters, Gerber says, "recognize that the president's vision of the Middle East, beginning with Iraq, is the only solution for global stabilization."
The Bush campaign plans to amplify that message to many other Jewish donors and voters before November 2, in the expectation that the president will make deep inroads into what's long been an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency. In 2000, Bush received an estimated 19 percent of the Jewish vote -- well below the record 39 percent that Ronald Reagan got in 1980. But many fundraisers and campaign officials are bullish about 2004 and are eyeing such crucial battleground states as Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, all of which have significant Jewish populations.
"I think there's an opportunity, based on the president's leadership, to significantly expand our level of support" in the Jewish community, Mehlman told National Journal. "Good policies are good politics."
Little wonder that Mehlman, who is Jewish, and other top campaign officials have been using the more intimate setting of small meetings to woo Jewish donors and leaders. On several occasions, such as a November gathering in Baltimore, Mehlman and other campaign officials have skillfully used "pre-sells" -- the hosting of potential Jewish contributors in the weeks running up to a big fundraising event that features Bush.
Similarly, to spur more donations, Kamins, Lebovitz, and Zeidman have been turning to friends and to board members of such key Jewish organizations as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Republican Jewish Coalition. Bush's staunch support of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the president's aggressive approach to the war on terrorism, and the administration's pre-emptive war in Iraq are cited as policies that appeal to many Jews.
"You're never going to get the [Franklin] Roosevelt Jew, but you may get the moderates," says Ned Siegel of Florida, who has raised more than $500,000 for Bush-Cheney '04. "Iraq was an eye-opener from a Jewish perspective. It's taken a potential danger to Israel off the table." Siegel says that the campaign is looking forward to "going into the Jewish community to explain [bush's] policies and views."
Adds Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress: "The Bush campaign is making a big, big play for the Jewish vote. They're clearly reaching out. I think there's a solid base of support for Bush among traditionally Democratic Jewish donors." Rosen, who has long been a Democrat, gave $100,000 in soft money to the Republican National Committee in 2002 to show his appreciation for the administration's Middle East policies.
But other Democrats and some outside analysts doubt that Bush will do much better at the polls than he did in 2000, and they insist that the Bush campaign is mostly focused on squeezing a historically Democratic funding source.
"I think the real story is the stubborn attachment of the Jewish voter to the Democrats," says Ira Forman, the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, a grassroots group that also includes many well-known donors to the Democratic Party. To Forman, the Bush campaign strategy is mainly "an elite strategy and a money strategy. I think this is more about cutting off Democratic funding." Still, Forman adds, Bush "should do better than in 2000 -- but that's hardly surprising, given the paltry showing in that year."
Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, says that any money that goes to the Bush campaign from Jewish Americans is a "twofer," because "it's not just money being put into the Republicans' war chest, it's also money being taken out of the Democrats' war chest."
However, when it comes to voting, Sabato said, "you can change the American electorate marginally from election to election." If Bush can increase his vote in the Jewish community by 10 percent, says Sabato, "he's done well. Jewish Americans are liberal on almost all social issues and most social-welfare issues. That pushes them toward the Democratic Party. At the same time, they're now being cross-pressured by Bush's very pro-Israel foreign policy. That's peeling away a certain number of usually Democratic votes and funding."
Shifting Perceptions?
Historically, Jewish voters cast about 4 percent of the ballots in a presidential election. But their financial clout is much heftier. According to Democratic fundraising sources, Jewish donors kicked in as much as 50 percent of the money that the Democratic National Committee received from individual donors in the 1998 and 2000 election cycles. Numbers like that have clearly been on the mind of GOP strategists, including Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser.
A major campaign goal for Rove and other Republican strategists is to try to shift the perception that many Jews have of Bush. After all, Gore had very good links to Jewish leaders, and he further cemented his ties by selecting Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., an Orthodox Jew, to be his running mate in 2000. By contrast, Bush that year was an unknown quantity to many American Jews, and Bush's father, whose ties with the Jewish community were tenuous at best, got only 11 percent of the Jewish vote in 1992, when he lost to Bill Clinton. (See chart, next page.)
But since taking office -- and especially since September 11 -- the younger Bush has endeared himself to many politically conservative and some moderate Jews. Many Jewish leaders, including some Democrats, have been gratified by Bush's refusal to meet with PLO leader Yasser Arafat. They are also pleased with his repeated focus on ending Palestinian terrorism as the price for a lasting peace settlement and an independent Palestinian state. Further, some of the leading champions of the administration's Iraq war policy are high-profile Jewish neoconservatives such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory panel.
"President Bush has stood up against most countries of the world in support of Israel and is deserving of the support of the Jewish community," says former U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Joe Gildenhorn, a member of the executive committee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Gildenhorn played a leading fundraising role last June at the Bush campaign's kickoff event in Washington, which brought in close to $4 million.
To be sure, some liberal Jewish groups have faulted the Bush administration for not pursuing the peace process more forcefully. "Although President Bush has quite rightly taken the Palestinians to task for their security failures, he's given the Israelis a free pass on their obligations," says Lewis Roth, the assistant executive director of Americans for Peace Now, which supports the peace movement in Israel. Roth points to a recent American Jewish Committee poll on Jewish attitudes that found that 54 percent of the 1,000 people interviewed opposed the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, while only 41 percent supported the administration's anti-terrorism policies.
Still, some Middle East experts aren't surprised that the Bush campaign's outreach for funds and backing from Jews seems to be going well. Jewish backers of Bush "like the fact that he's not criticized Sharon and that he's identified our fight against terrorism with Sharon's fight," says Edward Walker Jr., president of the Middle East Institute and a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt. "How could you be more in favor of Israel than the president has been?"
Wooing Heavy Hitters
The president's embrace of Sharon and solidarity with the Israeli government is helping to fuel the Bush campaign's aggressive courtship of wealthy Jewish executives, community leaders, and voters.
Zeidman says that the campaign has been unstinting in its efforts, noting the effectiveness of "pre-sells" with potential Jewish donors. These intimate get-togethers with top campaign officials such as Mehlman or finance chiefs Mercer Reynolds and Jack Oliver "give our leaders an opportunity to discuss issues of particular importance to the Jewish community," says Zeidman. Mehlman adds that the outreach to Jewish donors is similar to the small meetings held with other constituencies, such as evangelicals or physicians. "This is a campaign that tries, in whatever it does, to be very methodical," Mehlman says.
A similar approach seems to have paid off with the Republican Jewish Coalition's board, of which Zeidman is a member. The coalition boasts 5,000 members nationwide, and its 40-member board is packed with wealthy business executives and politicos who have chaired several major fundraisers for the Bush campaign. The coalition's board includes at least six Bush Rangers. According to fundraising sources, Sam Fox, the chairman of the RJC, and coalition board members Ned Siegel of Florida and Elliott Broidy of Los Angeles have each raised close to $500,000 for Bush-Cheney '04.
Lebovitz and Zeidman also sit on the executive committee of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. Although AIPAC has lots of Democrats on its 300-member executive committee, Zeidman believes that the group has quietly "encouraged a lot of members to show their support for the president." Indeed, several AIPAC executive committee or board members -- including Robert H. Asher of Chicago, former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, R-Minn., Edward C. Levy Jr. of Michigan, and Mayer Mitchell of Alabama, plus Gerber and Lebovitz -- have each raised more than $100,000 for Bush.
"I believe this president will attract more Jewish votes than any previous Republican candidate because of his strong stance on Israel," says Asher, a former AIPAC president. Rosen of the American Jewish Congress adds: "The Jewish vote could have a significant impact because of the concentration of the Jewish community in certain key states."
Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is Jewish and a "Pioneer" fundraiser (having brought in more than $100,000 for Bush), says that Jewish votes for Bush "could be the difference" in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Moreover, he says, the administration's pro-Israel policies could yield a side benefit with another key GOP voting bloc: "I think the evangelical supporters of the president are delighted by his strong support of Israel."
To garner additional Jewish votes, the campaign is wooing Rosen and other heavy hitters. "I think there will be some effort to get prominent Jewish leaders to endorse Bush," predicts a source close to the campaign. The campaign is also expected to turn for help to such allies as Jay Lefkowitz, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, who until late last year was a top domestic policy adviser in the White House. Lefkowitz argues that Jewish voters "in their 20s, 30s, and 40s tend to be more economically conservative, less tied to trade unions, and, unlike their parents, don't have a personal connection to the eras of [John] Kennedy and [Franklin] Roosevelt."
Sources say that other prominent Jews the campaign may tap include Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. All three are involved with the Republican Jewish Coalition. "My goal is to be as helpful as I can be and as helpful as the campaign would like me to be," Fleischer says. On January 9, Bush scored a potentially key endorsement when former New York Mayor Ed Koch came out for the president in an op-ed piece in Forward, a Jewish newspaper.
Ratcheting up the support for Bush in the Jewish community and other voting blocs has long been a key part of Rove's road map to a second-term victory. "Rove intends to win overall by gaining a few percent at the margins of most major electoral groups," argues Sabato, citing Jews, evangelicals, and Catholics as key voting blocs that could make a difference in several swing states.
On the other hand, Bush's decidedly pro-Israel policies and his approach to the war on terrorism are sure to hurt him among Arab-Americans. In 2000, Bush won about 45 percent of the Arab-American vote, but falling support among this constituency could hurt him in Florida, Michigan, and elsewhere. "I don't think the president will make as much hay among Jewish voters as he'll lose support among Arab-Americans," says Jim Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute.
Democrats Take Notice
Regardless of how Bush is faring among Arab-Americans, pro-Bush Jews are aggressively pushing forward. "Within the Jewish community, we look at the opportunity in 2004 as probably the greatest opportunity" since the Reagan era, says Bruce Prince, who was one of several co-chairs for the Waldorf-Astoria luncheon in October. "Practically speaking, this president has put his money where his mouth is when it comes to Israel." Adds Rosen: "Because of the president's record on Israel, it will be hard for the Democratic candidate just to set out general principles."
Some Democrats say that to prevent Jewish allies from defecting, the Democratic nominee will have to be very specific on Israel and on issues such as negotiating with Arafat. Other Democrats contend that the nominee will be able to counter the Bush administration's pro-Israel positions with his own stances on Israel and terrorism, plus his more-liberal track records on domestic issues such as women's rights and civil liberties.
"There are a whole bunch of administration policies which most American Jews react negatively to," says Steve Grossman, a top adviser to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. Grossman, a former AIPAC president and former DNC chairman, points to a new poll from the American Jewish Committee showing that even with nine Democrats vying for the nomination, Bush gets 31 percent of the Jewish vote in a matchup with Dean. "That's the baseline from which [the Democrats] go up, not down," Grossman says.
The Dean campaign, however, isn't taking any chances. On January 12 and 13, in New York City, Grossman held a series of meetings with Jewish leaders in which he sought to reassure them that as president, Dean would be a very strong ally of Israel. Dean caused concern among some Jews with his comments last year about the need for the United States to be more "evenhanded" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Similarly, Forman of the National Jewish Democratic Council predicts that while the Bush campaign may return to the level of the 1970s and '80s in Jewish support for a GOP presidential nominee, "that's hardly a revolutionary shift."
Still, 31 percent support for Bush may be just good enough to make a difference in the right states, and that is what the president's Rangers, Pioneers, and other fundraisers are shooting for in 2004.
In late December, dozens of Jewish fundraisers and community leaders came to town for the annual Hanukkah party at the White House. Inside the crowded room was Zeidman, who had brought along one of his sons for a picture with the president. Such get-togethers, and other events with Rove and Mehlman, according to Zeidman, boost the morale of Bush's Jewish supporters and should give others in the community increased confidence in the administration. "It was a beautiful event," Zeidman says.
