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Political tidbits: Palin greets Meridor, checking out the face of Obama’s Fla. campaign (UPDATED)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 27, 2008

• Sarah Palin meets with Israel Ambassador to the U.S. Sallai Meridor and tells him she looks “forward to ... working with your Jewish agency,” according to the Associated Press. (Is that some kind of reference to his old position as head of JAFI?) UPDATE: Here’s Palin’s full quote, and she was talking about Meridor’s time at the Jewish Agency for Israel: “I look forward to hearing about your work with the Jewish Agency and all the plans that we have. We’ll be working together.”
• Menachem Rosensaft charges the McCain-Palin campaign has resurrected McCarthyism, in the Huffington Post.
• A Jewish Republican state legislator in Ohio is attacked by his opponent for his military service in Iraq. Bob Belovich is charging that Josh Mandel “abandoned voters,” according to Joel Mowbray at Townhall.com.
• A phone banker for Obama tells the Huffington Post that she first tells Jewish voters that she understands their concerns about “voting for someone who is black” – and then finds Sarah Palin “is a great help in persuading” them to back Obama.
  
• The Sarasota Herald-Tribune profiles “Florida’s face for the Obama campaign,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz –and quotes her former professor predicting she’ll be the first Jewish president.
• Friends of Israel should vote for Barack Obama, writes Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) in the Jerusalem Post.
  
• The Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick writes that the prospect of an Obama-Tzipi Livni partnership is “enough to keep men and women of good faith up at night.”
• Delray Beach deli Poppie’s is the setting for today’s interviews of South Florida Jewish voters – who, just as the polls indicate, seem to be swinging towards Obama, according to the Toronto Star.
• Remember Cynthia McKinney, the congresswoman from Georgia whose father blames the “J-E-W-S” for her defeat in 2002? She’s running for president on the Green Party ticket, and is still talking about conspiracies, according to the Washington Post. She also got the endorsement of Roseanne Barr.
• Bradley Burston, in Haaretz, wants Sarah Palin to speak to liberals like they were “real Americans” too.
  
• The Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader talks to some Palin supporters from Oklahoma who think the vice presidential nominee is the “Deborah and Esther of our day” chosen “to defeat the modern enemy – Obama.”
• Jim Besser in The Jewish Week explores the reasons for the rise in Obama’s Jewish numbers.
  
• Rep. Robert Wexler tells the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne that McCain’s choice of Palin was an “unqualified negative” for the Republican in South Florida.
  
• There’s always a lot of criticism about the substance of American political campaigns, but YNet’s Yair Lapid is jealous while watching McCain and Obama – because Israeli political campaign are much less serious.
  
• Former Ehud Barak adviser Daniel Levy discusses what the 25th anniversary of the Hezbollah bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut can tell us about the presidential candidates.
• The Washington Post looks at who is behind the distribution of 28 million copies of the anti-radical Islam film “Obsession.”



John McCain is favored by a 12-point margin over Obama by Israelis, according to YNet.

• The New York Times endorses the “blind rabbi,” Dennis Shulman.

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Political tidbits: Obama effigy found in Ohio, McCain townhall reaction

By Eric Fingerhut · October 20, 2008

• A man hangs an Obama effigy in his front yard – with a Star of David on the top of his head – and freely admits he doesn’t want a black man as president. The Huffington Post has the video from a local TV station in Ohio.
• John McCain isn’t going to bring up Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but won’t ask the Republican Jewish Coalition to stop putting him in their ads, according to Newsweek.
  
• McCain turned down an opportunity from Rabbi Shlomo Riskin yesterday to talk about Wright at a Jewish “tele-town hall meeting.”
• M.J. Rosenberg rips Riskin for spending years living in Israel and yet presuming to advise U.S. presidential candidates on strategy, at TPM Cafe.
• Jim Besser of The Jewish Week felt the McCain meeting seemed too staged.
• Menachem Rosensaft on McCain’s “pals” like Phil Gramm and Randy Scheunemann, in the Huffington Post.
• Here’s the National Jewish Democratic Council’s newest print ad, making the case that Obama-Biden will protect Israel and achieve energy independence.
  
• And here’s the Republican Jewish Coalition’s new television ad, using Hillary Clinton to criticize Obama for saying he’d meet with the leaders of rogue states.
  
• Every church and synagogue in the United States is going to receive the anti-radical Islam film Obsession, according to Marketwatch. It’s coming enclosed with a new right-wing, anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion publication called The Judeo-Christian View, which is backed by a couple Orthodox rabbis and charges that Obama’s support of partial-birth abortion is akin biblically to child sacrifice.
• Daniel Pipes plays the Muslim card, claiming that Obama wouldn’t get a security clearance if he becomes president.
  
• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) tells CBS’s “Face The Nation” that Sarah Palin has “really disturbed” the Jewish community in Florida, according to UPI.
  
• Richard Heideman and Steve Grossman face off as surrogates for McCain and Obama in Boston, reports the Boston Globe.
  
• Adam Brickley, one of Sarah Palin’s earliest fans in the lower 48, has gone from being an evangelical Christian to a “messianic Jew,” notes the New Yorker in a Palin profile.
  
• Our daily look at the Florida Jewish vote today comes from the Chicago Tribune.
• The Jewish Press endorses John McCain.
  
• “Family Guy” briefly compared McCain and Palin to Nazis last night, according to Hollywood Today.
  
• Sarah Silverman talks to Katie Couric.

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Political tidbits: Obama campaign won’t debate RJC, low turnout for the Schlep

By Eric Fingerhut · October 16, 2008

• The Obama campaign has decided its representatives won’t debate Republican Jewish Coalition officials, because they’re tired of the RJC’s negative ads, according to the L.A. Jewish Journal.
• CNN has the story of a “great schlepper” who ended up not only convincing his South Florida grandparents to support Barack Obama, but also spoke to more than 100 of their neighbors.
• Meanwhile, the London Daily Telegraph says only 200 people actually schelpped, and many found their grandparents were already supporting Obama.
  
• And some of Obama’s senior staffers are schlepping to Florida for the next few weeks – a signal the campaign thinks it can win the state, according to a Miami television station.
  
• The Jerusalem Post reports that Jesse Jackson says his comments on “Zionists” controlling American foreign policy were distorted – and that the Obama campaign has distanced itself from those remarks.
• Jewish historian Jonathan Sarna talks about the election and the Jewish vote with JUF News.
• The L.A. Jewish Journal interviews Obama’s California strategist, Mitchell Schwartz.
  
• The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg blogs that the angry crowds at McCain-Palin rallies remind him of those demonstrating against Yitzhak Rabin in the months before he was assassinated.
• Michael Oren, in Forbes, said it was “astonishing” to discover that the presidential candidates “differ significantly on virtually every issue” related to Israel, except for their “common commitment to Israel and the search for peace.”
• Newsweek’s Howard Fineman has decided the many polls of Jewish voters are wrong. How? He surveyed his high-school friends from Pittsburgh, gets a 9-1 margin for Obama and declares that non-Orthodox Jews are going to vote in much bigger numbers for the Democrat than everyone thinks.
• Campaigning for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton tells a Philadelphia JCC crowd that the economic crisis is heartbreaking, reports the AP.
• Bloomberg on the campaigns seeking American voters in Israel.
  
• Max Blumenthal and David Niewert at Salon claim Sarah Palin has ties to some radical right-wingers.
• M.J. Rosenberg wonders what Sarah Palin meant when she campaigned to be “Wasilla’s first Christian mayor” – since the incumbent was a Lutheran but his last name was Stein.
• Charley Levine, in the Jerusalem Post, would like to see a McCain-Biden ticket.
• Campaiging for John McCain, Joe Lieberman tells Ohio voters that he might even vote for Obama one day – but not this year, according to the AP. And he tells the Forward that he’s “at peace” with his decision to become an independent and back the GOP presidential candidate.
  
• More on the battle for Florida Jewish voters, from the Chicago Tribune.
• Ben Shapiro, on Townhall.com, challenges Alan Dershowitz to a debate over Dershowitz’s claim that both candidates are equal supporters of Israel.

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Political tidbits: Schlep talk, Coleman pulls negative ads

By Eric Fingerhut · October 13, 2008

• Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) says Yom Kippur convinced him to withdraw all his negative ads in his race against Al Franken.
  
• The New York Times looks at Andy Martin, the “man behind the whispers about Obama” who has a trail of anti-Jewish comments in his past.
  
• Newsweek says Sarah Palin is costing John McCain Jewish votes.
• “The People of the Button”: New York Rabbi Peter Schweitzer on the history of presidential campaign buttons in Hebrew, in the New York Times.
• Alan Dershowitz states that all the major party presidential and VP candidates are enthusiastic backers of Israel, so supporters of the Jewish state should base their voting decision instead on “more general considerarations” of who would be best for America and the world. The Green Party, though, is another story, he writes in the New York Daily News.
  
• British newspapers love “The Great Schlep”: The Times of London talks to Jews visiting their families in Florida. So does The Guardian.
  
• Haviv Rettig in the Jerusalem Post argues that the Jewish Council for Education and Research videos (those featuring Sarah Silverman and retired Israeli generals) are actually hurting Obama in the Jewish community – because they’re not taking Jewish concerns seriously.
• Jonathan Rosenblum tells bubbe and zaide to ignore the grandchildren, in the Jerusalem Post.
• The latest on this weekend’s courting the Ohio Jewish vote, from the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
• What right-wing extremist groups has Todd Palin been “palling around” with? Menachem Rosensaft wants to know, in the Huffington Post.
  
• Liberals always threaten to move to Canada if a Republican wins the presidency? Where should conservatives threaten to go if Obama wins? Chris Wilson in Slate suggests Israel as one possibility.
• The Forward’s Brett Lieberman wonders if the Jewish community in Virginia could end up playing a crucial role in the election.
• Arab American Institute leader James Zogby criticizes McCain – and the Republican Jewish Coalition – for using “Arab” as a pejorative term.
• Rep. Robert Wexler is still a “heavy favorite” for re-election, but he has some “aggressive” opponents this year, writes the Palm Beach Post.
• Sarah Silverman talks to Keith Olbermann about “The Great Schlep,” but the best part of the interview is probably when Silverman tells Sarah Palin how she should have answered Katie Couric’s question about the newspapers and magazines she reads.

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Swing states target of Jewish outreach this weekend

By Eric Fingerhut · October 10, 2008

With less than a month to go before Election Day, Barack Obama’s campaign is sponsoring Jewish outreach events in three important swing states this weekend – and that doesn’t even include “The Great Schlep.”

At noon at a Philadelphia Jewish community center, Pa. Gov. Ed Rendell (D) and U.S. Reps. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) are among the speakers at an event billed as a discussion on “Senator Barack Obama, Israel and the 2008 election.” The event follows on the heels of a parade of Jewish surrogates who fanned out to speak all day last Sunday, including former New York Mayor Ed Koch, U.S. Reps. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and Sander Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.)

At 4 p.m. this afternoon in Delray Beach, Fla., the campaign will be providing “Jewish outreach training” at its S. Florida headquarters. While “The Great Schlep” is an independent effort and the Obama campaign is not permitted to coordinate with its sponsor, the Jewish Council for Education and Research, South Florida campaign spokesman Bobby Gravitz said that “we are hoping folks who are travelling this weekend” and in town by this afternoon would be interested in attending. He said Florida Jewish outreach director Halie Soifer would be discussing Obama’s positions on the Middle East, and also conduct a question and answer session.

And on Sunday at 5 p.m., Obama foreign policy adviser Dennis Ross, U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Carl Levin, again, will be part of what the campaign is calling one of its largest Jewish outreach events of the year in Cleveland.

Recent polls have Obama competitive, and in some cases leading, McCain in all three states – which George W. Bush won in 2000 and 2004. And all three are considered to have Jewish populations large enough to possibly make a difference in an extremely close race.

But not all the Obama activity is in swing states. Koch, U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) and former U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer will hold a town hall meeting to discuss “Why Obama is best for Israel and America” in Paramus, N.J., a state that is widely considered to be a safe blue state this year.

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Last weekend Pa., this weekend Ohio

By Eric Fingerhut · October 7, 2008

After a big day of Jewish outreach featuring everyone from Ed Koch to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to actress Blythe Danner in Pennsylvania last Sunday, the Barack Obama campaign has a major Jewish outreach event scheduled for this Sunday in Cleveland. The 5 p.m. event at Landerhaven is scheduled to include Dennis Ross, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Levin again, among others. For a schedule of what went down in the Keystone State last Sunday, click here:

11:00am - Congressman Anthony Weiner and Former Congressman and New York City Mayor Ed Koch at Shaare Shamayim in NE Philadelphia (9768 Verree Road Philadelphia, PA)

2:00 pm - Ed Koch at Martin’s Run in Delaware County(11 Martins Run, Media, PA)

2:15 pm - Congressman Anthony Weiner at the Kaiserman JCC (45 Haverford Road, Wynnewood, PA)

4:15 pm - Ed Koch at Brith Sholom (3939 Conshohoken Ave, Philadelphia PA)

4:15 pm - Senator Carl Levin and Congressman Sander Levin at the home of Barbara and Mickey Black (The Barclay Apt 3B, 237 S 18th St, Philadelphia, PA)

5:00 pm - Congressman Anthony Weiner at the home of Steve & Louie Asher (301 N. Latches Lane, Merion Station PA)

5:00 pm - Actress Blythe Danner at the Home of Amy Brenner (254 Biddulph Road Radnor, PA)

7:00 pm - Senator Carl Levin and Congressman Sander Levin at Congregration Shir Ami in Bucks County (101 Richboro Road Newton, PA)

7:00 pm - Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz and Deputy Speaker of the PA House of Representatives Josh Shapiro at The Berman Family Residence (1508 Grasshopper Lane, Gwynedd Valley, PA)

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Political tidbits: Silverman talks about the “schlep,” new ads and more

By Eric Fingerhut · October 7, 2008

• Sarah Silverman talks to the New York Times about her video for “The Great Schlep.”
  
• The National Jewish Democratic Council’s new advertisement deals with energy independence, while the Republican Jewish Coalition’s latest is about Obama’s statement that he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “without preconditions.”
• Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff reveals that Barack Obama’s campaign returned $33,000 to two brothers in the Gaza Strip who had bought t-shirts in bulk from the campaign’s online store. They listed their addresss as “Ga.,” which the campaign thought was Georgia.
• Time’s Joe Klein asks “where’s the outrage” from conservative Jews over Sarah Palin’s church and Sean Hannity citing a “Jew-hater” as a source.
• The Cleveland Plain-Dealer explores whether Republicans can make inroads in the Jewish vote in Ohio.
• Joe Lieberman tells Chabad of Boca Raton, and the Palm Beach Post, that it’s OK to attack Obama’s associations, but that doesn’t mean McCain is trying to avoid issues.
• Lieberman introduces Palin at a big fundraiser in Palm Beach.
• Matt Littman, at the Huffington Post, wonders how many Jews Sarah Palin has met.
  
• Those pro-Obama videos from Israelis give a false impression of his support in the Jewish state, according to Shmuel Rosner in Commentary.

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NJDC has their own ads

By Eric Fingerhut · September 11, 2008

Not long after the Republican Jewish Coalition unveiled the first two advertisements from its fall campaign, the National Jewish Democratic Council has released its first newspaper ad of the general election season. Running this week in the Cleveland Jewish News, the ad’s tagline is “CHANGE with Barack Obama, More of the SAME with John McCain,” and highlights four issues: Israel, Iran, energy independence and reproductive freedom using quotes from Obama himself, journalists and others.

NJDC executive director Ira Forman said this is the first of a number of ads the organization is preparing to run over the next eight weeks in Jewish newspapers around the country. He added, though, that that the group has a number of other plans – which he would not yet reveal – to highlight important issues in the election. Ads, according to Forman, “are not our top priority.”

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Does this means she votes 3 times? Or 4?

By Ron Kampeas · August 27, 2008

Spotted in the Ohio delegation on the floor of the Democratic Party convention in Denver: A woman bearing a handwritten sign, “This Asian American bisexual Jewish woman is for Barack Obama.”

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Remembering Tubbs Jones

By Eric Fingerhut · August 21, 2008

The National Jewish Democratic Council is calling Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) “an outstanding advocate for Cleveland and issues important to the Jewish community” who “will be deeply missed.”

Tubbs Jones, whose district in eastern Cleveland and the city’s suburbs was heavily Jewish, died Wednesday of a brain aneurysm at the age of 58. She was the first African American woman to represent Ohio in Congress.

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