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The Jewish Crew that Helped Pave the Wayto John McCain’s Nomination

Minneapolis–St. Paul 2008: The Republican National Convention

By ANTHONY WEISS

If pre-convention polls are to be believed, John McCain enters the convention
poised to pull in a greater percentage of the Jewish vote than any Republican
candidate in the past two decades. There are many possible explanations —
his long record on Israel, his image as an independent political moderate,
lingering concerns about Barack Obama — but one factor is certainly the ties
that his campaign has cultivated with important Jewish Republicans and
moderates alike.

The Forward takes a look at the Republicans who have helped McCain make
it to the spotlight in Minneapolis, and who hope to take him beyond.

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Mark Broxmeyer
The Israel Hawk

As Mark Broxmeyer roams through the convention, his face may not be well
known, but Jewish Republicans bigwigs will recognize his voice. Not only has
Broxmeyer been one of the McCain campaign’s leading Jewish fundraisers,
but he also has been, to this point, the closest thing to a Jewish liaison, which
means that he has been the one on weekly phone calls to local leaders, trying
to organize events, keep people updated and encourage high spirits.

It’s a new role for Broxmeyer. The real estate developer from New York’s Long
Island originally went into politics to protect his real estate interests and
mostly stuck to the local level, though he has helped fundraise for Republican
candidates both successful (George W. Bush) and not (Steve Forbes).

In Washington circles, Broxmeyer has been better known as the national
chairman of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a hawkish Israel
advocacy group that focuses on American national security and American-
Israeli ties. In fact, JINSA has numerous ties to the McCain campaign: National
Jewish outreach co-chair Fred Zeidman is a board member, and fellow co-chair
Eric Cantor is on Jinsa’s board of advisers. McCain was also honored with an
award by JINSA in 2006, with Joe Lieberman as the night’s warm-up act.

JINSA was founded in 1976 by Jewish communal leaders who wanted to forge
stronger connections with the defense establishment, and it evolved into a
center for neo-conservative thinkers, including several linked to the current
administration, such as Richard Perle, who serves on JINSA’s board of advisers.

Broxmeyer emphasized that his work with JINSA is separate from his role with
the campaign. But he did say that he signed on with McCain out of a sense
that the candidate shares his priorities.

“To me, he’s an American hero,” Broxmeyer told the Forward. “He’s always
been like-minded on national security, which is where I’m coming from.”

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Joe Lieberman
The Democratic Apostate

What can one say about Joe Lieberman that hasn’t already been said? Eight
years ago, he was a Jewish hero — the first Jew on a major party presidential
ticket and, like most American Jews, a solid Democrat. But in Minneapolis,
Lieberman will have a prime time slot on opening night at the Republican
convention, a reward he’s earned through months of stumping for John
McCain.

There may be, in fact, nobody more responsible for McCain’s impending
nomination than Lieberman. It was Lieberman’s surprise endorsement
of McCain last December, along with a slew of support from New England
newspapers, that jump-started McCain’s moribund campaign and helped
vault him to victory in the New Hampshire primary.

Since he endorsed McCain in December, Lieberman has also become the
campaign’s leading surrogate to the Jewish community. That role has had its
own perils: Lieberman is now, according to a recent poll, far less popular
among American Jews than Barack Obama, though the accuracy of the poll
is challenged by Lieberman aides.

Lieberman has never been a conventional Democrat. He was first elected to
the Senate in 1988 by running to the right of incumbent Republican Lowell
Weicker. Only two years into his first term, The New York Times wrote
of him, “He votes Democratic, sounds Republican and puts a plague on
both political houses.”

He supported not only the second Iraq War under President Bush, but also
the first Iraq War under the first president Bush, which was initially even
more unpopular with Democrats. Kenneth Wald, a professor of political
science at the University of Florida and the director of the university’s
Center for Jewish Studies, said that the mantle Lieberman wore in 2000, as a Jewish political hero, never quite fit him.

“He became one of those symbols that people read into it whatever they
like, a bit like Obama this year,” Wald said. “But they, in a sense, looked
past whatever information there was about him being more conservative
than the rest of the community.”

Lieberman’s friendship with McCain was also nothing new. The two men
have served in the Senate for 20 years and have been traveling together to
the Munich Conference on Security Policy for the past 10 years.

They started co-sponsoring climate change legislation in 2002, and in 2007,
their bill, since rewritten, gained a new co-sponsor: Senator Barack Obama.
Aides close to McCain and Lieberman say that the two have a personal
friendship. They’ve even shared the same spokesman, Marshall Wittmann.

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Marshall Wittmann
Maverick Wordsmith

Joe Lieberman may be in unfamiliar territory at the Republican Convention,
but for his press secretary, Marshall Wittmann, the unfamiliar is where he
is most at home.

Wittmann has made a career out of predictably unpredictable lurches across
the political spectrum in Washington. A former self-confessed Trotskyite,
radical Zionist and labor organizer, Wittmann served in the elder George
Bush’s administration, then went to work in the mid-1990s for the Christian
Coalition of America, despite being Jewish. His family, Wittmann has
reported, was not pleased.

He has worked in think tanks on both sides of the aisle: He became a
spokesman for John McCain in 2002, then quit in 2004 to endorse John Kerry
and work for the center-left Democratic Leadership Council. After Lieberman
won his Senate race as an independent in 2006, Wittmann signed on to be
Lieberman’s press secretary — a move that shook Congressional Democrats
wary of a potential mole in their caucus.

Wittmann, who was previously one of Washington’s most quoted pundits,
declined to comment for this story, but he must be particularly pleased
that two of his political heroes, McCain and Lieberman, have come together
for the latest presidential run.

Wittmann has served as a spokesman for both, and it is a sign of his affection
for both that Wittmann has made the ultimate sacrifice for them in taking
the job: He stopped being quoted by name. One can only wonder what he
would have said about his bosses’ most unlikely pairing.

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Fred Zeidman
The Ex-Bush Backer

Amid the speeches, the cocktail hours and the dinner meetings at the
Republican convention in Minneapolis, Fred Zeidman, national co-chair
of Jewish outreach for the McCain campaign, will be searching out other
Jewish Republicans with a message: that they are not alone.

“One of things we really try and do at conventions is find Jews that have not
been affiliated before, to let them know that not only can we get a minyan now,
but there’s a lot of us out there, and that they’re not in hostile territory being
Republican Jews,” Zeidman told the Forward.

Zeidman has already been through some fairly lonely times in this campaign.
When he endorsed John McCain in January 2007, it was taken as yet another
sign that McCain was trying to position himself as the inevitable Republican
nominee. Zeidman was exactly the sort of prominent party fundraiser McCain
needed, and an establishment figure in Republican Jewish politics.

“Fred’s top-tier in Republican Jewish circles,” said Jeff Ballabon, a Republican
consultant who worked with Zeidman on Jewish outreach for George W. Bush’s
2004 campaign.

But by mid-2007, the McCain campaign ran out of money and had to fire much
of its staff — including Zeidman’s son, Jay, who had been hired in late 2006.
Despite this, the elder Zeidman says his loyalty never wavered.

“In Texas — it’s not a famous Yiddish saying — they teach you to dance with
the one that brung you,” Zeidman said. “I had made a decision that John
McCain was the one I was going to back, and until John McCain dropped out
of the race, I would continue to back him.”

Zeidman has not always been so staunch a McCain backer. In the 2000
Republican primaries, he backed George W. Bush over McCain. Zeidman,
who grew up in a small Texas town, met Bush in the early 1970s when both
were young and single in Houston. Zeidman backed Bush in his first run for
governor of Texas and in every race since.

But Zeidman says that McCain impressed him so much during the 2000
campaign that he made it his business to know McCain and to eventually
become a supporter.

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Eric Cantor
The Rising Star?

Eric Cantor is, by all accounts, a staunch Republican, but he also has landed
a starring role in the Democratic convention city of Denver.

Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the House, has spent the week of the
Democratic convention in Denver taking shots at the Democrats on behalf
of McCain — the sign of a trusted accomplice.

In a curious twist, though, Cantor was not named one of the speakers at the
Republican convention in Minneapolis. In lieu of hard information at press
time, this likely means one of two things — Cantor is either being snubbed
or promoted.

Cantor, 45, is frequently cited as a rising young star in the Republican Party
leadership, and he has played a particularly prominent role in this year’s
campaign. His name has popped up time and again in the interminable
speculation over who will be McCain’s vice president, fueled by news
reports that the McCain campaign requested papers from Cantor for vetting.
If Cantor is named to the second spot on the ticket, his speaking role at the
convention will be determined later.

More concretely, Cantor was named a co-chair of national Jewish outreach
for the campaign and has been one of McCain’s prominent surrogates. It’s the
highest profile that Cantor has had in national politics, and many took it as
sign that his time had finally come.

August 28, 2008
The Jewish Daily Forward

http://www.forward.com/articles/14105/

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