Allied with Democrats for decades, Jewish voters coveted by Republicans
The decades-long allegiance of Jewish voters to the Democratic Party is under unprecedented stress, threatened by a combination of changing demographics and the concerted Republican effort to depict President Barack Obama as unfriendly to Israel.
Nowhere are the stakes higher than South Florida, home to 490,000 Jews who make up a voting bloc powerful enough to influence national elections. Though a small percentage of the overall population, Jews vote at a higher rate than virtually every other slice of the electorate.
More than three-quarters of Jewish voters went for Obama in 2008. If Republicans are even moderately successful in eroding that support and Democrats can’t stanch the leakage, it could help push the state’s 29 electoral votes - more than 10 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency - away from Obama and into the Republican column this year.
Leading local Republicans say capturing a bigger chunk than ever of the Florida’s Jewish vote is within their reach. “Obama’s lost a lot of the Jewish support,” said Jeff Rubinoff, president of the Davie-Cooper City Republican Club. “A lot more people are starting to come over. They’re beginning to recognize Obama’s anti-Israel stance.”
Watch dueling videos about Obama and Israel from Democrats and Republicans.
Read an interview with former U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler
Even some Democrats concede that support for the president has softened among the state’s Jews, perhaps to a critical degree. “Florida is up for grabs right now. The Jewish population is not overly enthused by Obama,” said Andre Fladell, a longtime Jewish Democratic activist in Delray Beach. “If that vote becomes unenthusiastic, the election goes the other way.”
Kleig lights will shine on the parties’ competing efforts to court American Jewish voters starting Sunday in Washington when Obama speaks to the big-pro Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears at AIPAC on Monday.
On Tuesday, the mic at AIPAC goes to rival Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.
Also scheduled this week: a White House sit-down between Obama and Netanyahu, which will be diced and sliced by both political parties as a barometer of the state of U.S.-Israeli relations under Obama.