Posted on 11/08/2002 3:59:37 PM PST by 11th_VA
Republicans this week saw their hopes lifted for a political realignment among Jewish voters, following the emergence of two new faces onto the national stage.
In the battle for the late Paul Wellstone's Senate seat in Minnesota, Norm Coleman defeated former vice president Walter Mondale. In Hawaii, Linda Lingle won in the gubernatorial race, becoming the state's first GOP governor in 40 years and America's first Jewish Republican woman governor.
Polls continued to show Jewish voters leaning heavily Democratic. And two strong Democratic victories, by senator-elect Frank Lautenberg in New Jersey and governor-elect Ed Rendell in Pennsylvania, seemed to balance the Jewish Republican victories.
Nonetheless, the GOP victories in Hawaii and Minnesota come at a time when Jewish Republicans insist their ranks are growing — largely, they say, due to the Bush administration's strong support for Israel.
"Coupled with [Virgina Republican] Eric Cantor in the House, you have three young, articulate, dynamic spokespeople who will be able to travel around the country and talk about the message of the Republican Party in ways that will resonate with the Jewish community," said Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Along with Cantor and Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, Brooks added, Coleman and Lingle "will be able to put a user-friendly face on a Republican Party that is eager and committed to attracting a larger share of support from the Jewish community."
Recent polls do little to bolster the Republicans' hopes. In one exit poll of Jewish voters in New Jersey this week, conducted for the New Jersey Jewish News by Zogby International, Democrat Frank Lautenberg took 79.7% of Jewish votes to his GOP rival Douglas Forrester's 19%. Jewish support for the Democrat actually increased by 15 percentage points since Lautenberg's last outing in 1994, when he took 65% of the Jewish vote, the Jewish News reported.
Both Coleman and Lingle positioned themselves as moderate Republicans, while battling to shed the tag of "outsider" in states known for their homegrown leaders.
Coleman, originally from Brooklyn, is a former Democratic mayor of St. Paul; Lingle, a former Californian, is a onetime union organizer.
Coleman, now the Senate's second Jewish Republican, is poised to assume a prominent role as one of the Bush administration's handpicked moderate GOP candidates.
White House senior advisor Karl Rove tapped Coleman to run against Wellstone, as well as Rep. Jim Talent, who defeated Senator Jean Carnahan in Missouri's razor-thin Senate race.
A self-described Clinton Democrat until the mid-1990s, Coleman ran as a Republican for governor in 1998, when he lost to Reform Party candidate and former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura. Coleman served as Minnesota state campaign chairman for the Bush presidential campaign in 2000.
In one interview last year, Coleman claimed that it was on Yom Kippur in 1996 that he began to question his identity as a Democrat.
Lingle, 49, the former mayor of Maui, came agonizingly close to the governorship four years ago when she faced off against the current governor, Benjamin Cayetano. Since then, however, Democrats have been plagued by a number of local scandals and a sagging economy.
Earlier this year two members of Honolulu's city council were convicted of misusing campaign funds, the former council chairman was suspended from the bar for lying about a hit-and-run accident and a state senator was found guilty of tax evasion. The mayor of Honolulu is currently under a grand jury investigation for fund-raising violations and was forced to withdraw from the governor's race.
Lingle presented herself as a welcome change, a kind of Republican-lite. Her campaign presented her as "socially liberal" — she supports abortion rights and calls for new government infrastructure.
When she first came to Hawaii from California in 1975, Lingle was working for the Teamsters union.
Lingle raised nearly twice as much money as her opponent, Lieutenant Governor Mazie Hirono, despite the fact that Hirono won the endorsement of her former boss, the Teamsters.
Despite their party's poor national showing Tuesday, several Jewish Democrats emerged as strong winners.
Lautenberg, an old-time liberal, is returning to the Senate after handily defeating Forrester. A past chairman of the United Jewish Appeal who previously served three terms as a New Jersey senator, Lautenberg was drafted by party officials after the incumbent, Senator Robert Torricelli, dropped out under a cloud of ethics charges.
But if Lautenberg's win represents a nostalgic ode to the past, then Democrat Ed Rendell's victory in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race points to the future. The first Jewish mayor of Philadelphia and a past chair of the Democratic National Committee, Rendell was given little chance last year of even winning the Democratic primary in a state with wide swaths of conservative voters.
Assuming both he and Bush are reelected, Rendell would be well-positioned for a presidential run in 2008.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer was reelected in a lopsided victory. Following Democrat H. Carl McCall's double-digit loss to Republican Governor George Pataki in the New York gubernatorial race, Spitzer appears to be the Democratic front-runner in the 2006 governor's race. And, with Tuesday's resignation of embattled Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt, Spitzer has solidified his position as the highest-profile prosecutor taking on the issue of corporate malfeasance.
Meanwhile, a Jewish pol from Texas, Democratic Rep. Martin Frost, is reportedly jockeying to become House minority leader, amid reports that Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri plans to step down from the post.
— With reporting by Max Gross
Uphill fight for Southern California's Jewish GOP Candidates. See www.forward.com for details.
Encouraging trend ...
Dangerous person actually her views are objectively evil you might be able to wear down her beliefs but you can't reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into in the 1st place.
I don't think Bill really ever made any decisions he was just charismatic "good ol boy" window dressing Hillary and perhaps a few others told Clinton what to do.
You must have heard of RINO Arlen Specter, LOL
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