The Fight for the Jewish Vote

Like many Jews in south Florida, Todd and Jamie Ehrenreich are registered Democrats who have faithfully cast ballots for their party's presidential nominees as long as they can remember. But this year, they'd decided to back Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate. "We are over the $250,000 tax bracket, and we didn't want to lose our money," Jamie says. "We wanted to benefit from our own American dream."

Then McCain selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate—and "lost us in one fell swoop," says Jamie, who lives with her husband and two kids in Miami. She finds so much about Palin objectionable that she almost doesn't know where to begin. There's the abortion issue, for one. Palin "wouldn't want anyone to have an abortion even for rape or incest," says Jamie. "Who is she to judge by telling me how to live my life and overturning the things women have worked so hard for?" Equally disconcerting is Palin's seeming shallowness on some of the most pressing matters facing the country. "She doesn't know what she is talking about and makes it up as she goes along," says Jamie. "The fact that she had to be coached for two weeks [to prepare for the vice presidential debate] tells me she doesn't know anything. She just talks in circles."

The Ehrenreichs' reaction is hardly isolated. Many Florida Jews who had previously been open to McCain appear to share the couple's aversion to Palin, according to political scientists, polling data and anecdotal reporting. "She stands for all the wrong things in the eyes of the Jewish community," says Kenneth Wald, a professor at the University of Florida. Among the examples he cites: Palin seems to disdain intellectualism, she's a vociferous opponent of gun control and she attended a fundamentalist church that hosted Jews for Jesus, which seeks to convert Jews to Christianity. (Palin apparently sat through a speech by a leader of the group in which he said terrorist attacks on Israel were punishment for Israelis' failure to accept Jesus as the Messiah.) An American Jewish Committee poll taken in the weeks after Palin was picked found that 54 percent of respondents disapproved of her selection, compared to 37 percent who approved. And that was before the onslaught of withering criticism of her interviews with CBS's Katie Couric.

Such rejection of Palin could prove decisive on November 4. The Sunshine State has emerged once again as a key battleground, and "in a close election, Florida Jews could tip the scales," says State Rep. Adam Hasner, co-chair of McCain's Jewish steering committee there. Though Jews account for only 5 percent of Florida voters, they turn out reliably on election day. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, captured about 78 percent of the Jewish vote nationally—roughly in line with recent historical trends (Ronald Reagan's 39 percent in 1980 marked the high point for Republicans). But this year's Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, has appeared to lag among Jews. The AJC poll showed only 57 percent of Jews nationwide supporting Obama, with 30 percent backing McCain and 13 percent undecided. "There's no question that Obama came into this election with probably less going for him than most Democratic nominees," says Wald. But the Palin pick "probably blunted any gains the Republicans had made."

Obama's underperformance among Jews has numerous explanations. He was an unfamiliar figure to many as a result of his short U.S. Senate career. His Muslim-sounding middle name, Hussein, unsettled some Jews. And his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has in the past praised Louis Farrakhan, who has made a host of anti-Semitic statements over the years. In Florida, most Jews backed Sen. Hillary Clinton during the primaries (though neither candidate competed there due to a dispute over the pushed-up voting date) and were sorely disappointed when she lost. Moreover, Obama has been the subject of a malicious—and mendacious—Internet smear campaign that has sought to stoke Jewish fears about his loyalty to Israel and supposed support for Palestinian causes. All of this "created an air of uncertainty," says Steven Windmueller, a professor at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. "It was that level of doubt that has weakened his base of support that would normally be for the Democratic ticket."

McCain has sought to capitalize on those suspicions. For instance, he has hammered Obama relentlessly for saying he'd be willing to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called Israel a "stinking corpse." And McCain has touted himself as a foreign-policy hawk and a longstanding friend of Israel. He has also benefited from the backing of Sen. Joe Lieberman, an "independent Democrat" and the first Jewish vice presidential candidate, who has been barnstorming Florida and other states on McCain's behalf. Lieberman "is a rock star," says Florida State Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, the other co-chair of McCain's Jewish steering committee in the state. "I call him the Jewish Elvis Presley." Frank Luntz, a GOP pollster, says that McCain was polling higher than 30 percent among Jews in early September. If those numbers have since dropped, he would attribute the decline to the economic downturn, not to Palin. "Everyone keeps wanting to link it to Palin," he says. "No one cares about Palin. They care about the collapse in the stock market."