The Great Divide: Jewish voters navigate partisan shifts ahead of the polls
Many voters this year, disenchanted with their party's candidates, are crossing party lines.
Rona Kaufman is a lifelong Democrat and considers herself to be “very liberal.”
But this year, the Duquesne University law professor will be voting for Republican candidates.
The reason? Israel.
“I’ve never voted for a Republican,” Kaufman said. “I took my kids with me when I voted for Hillary. I supported Kerry. I’ve supported every Democrat, certainly at the presidential level, and also just in general.”
She believed the Democratic Party was more aligned with her values on social issues than the Republican Party, she said. She’s a feminist who cares about minority rights, the environment and eradicating poverty.
Kaufman, whose parents grew up in Israel and whose daughter serves in the Israel Defense Forces, also thought the Democratic Party was aligned with her foreign policy concerns. Now, she’s not so sure.
“I took for granted the fact that both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party were Zionists, supportive of Israel, recognizing the significance of having Israel, the only democratic country in the Middle East, as our ally,” she said.
But now she is “having difficulty voting Democrat.”
Kaufman is one of many Jewish voters who are struggling with the choice of candidates this year and are considering voting across party lines. Some Democrats who are worried about Israel and antisemitism are considering voting for Republican candidates, and some Republicans disenchanted with Trumpism are thinking about voting for Democrats.
‘Infiltration’ of the Democratic Party
Kaufman sees the Democratic Party as leaning away from its historically staunch support of the Jewish state, and attributes that movement to the inclusion of candidates associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, which explicitly declares itself to be anti-Zionist. Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, some chapters of the DSA glorified the Palestinian “resistance” and other U.S.-designated terror organizations backed by Iran.
“I think that what happened is that the Democratic Socialists of America — people who have either been members or who feel that that fringe party represents their views — have been running as Democrats in elections, from local politics, where we see someone like (Allegheny County Executive) Sara Innamorato, to congressional races, where we see Summer Lee, to presidential races, where we saw Bernie Sanders, who’s not a member of the DSA but who represents himself as a Democratic socialist,” Kaufman said.
Innamorato is a former member of the DSA, but denounced the group after Oct. 7, 2023. Lee also was affiliated with the group, which supported her 2018 campaign for state representative. Innamorato and Lee, along with Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, issued a joint statement on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 incursion into Israel, seeming to blame the Jewish state for the terrorist attack.
“I don’t think that the DSA represents the values of a significant number of Americans, but somehow they have infiltrated the Democratic Party, and the Democratic mainstream party has not prevented them from infiltrating the party,” Kaufman said, adding that the DSA is not only anti-Zionist, but also anti-capitalist.
“I’m not anti-capitalist, so that’s a different problem with them,” she continued. “But my major problem with them is that they’re anti-Zionists, that they want to see the state of Israel eradicated. And I don’t have any room in my personal politics for that perspective.”
The Democratic Party, Kaufman said, is being swayed by the DSA and “other radical leftist elements.” Those elements, she stressed, “are not liberal.”
“They don’t believe in individual rights,” she said. “Even though I think that they think that they’re pro-woman, the values that they’re aligned with are not pro-woman. Eradication of the state of Israel is anti-woman. It’s also anti-minority. Jews are the minority in the Middle East. And to be anti-Zionist is anti-minority.”
Backing Trump
Kaufman said she is finding herself in a “weird situation” this election cycle.
“I think that you have a scenario now where, unfortunately, you have a candidate like (Kamala) Harris, who appears to be torn and appears to really have difficulty making it clear that there is nothing about the anti-Zionist movement that is acceptable to the Democratic Party,” Kaufman said. “I don’t know what she really believes in her heart, but she has not made that clear enough for me. For me, there’s no moral ambiguity here. It’s really clear.”
Kaufman will be voting for Donald Trump for president.
While there are many things about Trump that Kaufman doesn’t like, his administration’s policies toward Israel were good, she said.
“The Abraham Accords were excellent,” Kaufman said, “and they were important, and they continue to be important. And we saw the significance of those relationships when Iran attacked Israel, and the ways in which the countries in the region allied with Israel and the United States and the United Kingdom. That is so stabilizing for the region, to have those alliances that were created by the Abraham Accords. And that happened in Trump’s administration.”
She does not believe that democracy would be threatened by a Trump presidency.
“I just don’t believe that four more years of Trump is going to destroy American democracy,” Kaufman said. “When I think of Jan. 6, and how horrific that was, and when I think of the violence on college campuses and how horrific it is, it seems to me that neither Democrats nor Republicans have a very good handle on this new trend in the U.S., which is toward actual violence as a form of political protest. This is something that both parties need to very clearly object to, and all of our elected officials — local, national — need to be on the same page that violence is not an acceptable form of protest. But I don’t see it as just a weakness on the right.”
Still, she hasn’t given up the Democratic Part forever.
“I really hope my party will wake up soon and hope to be part of that effort after the election,” Kaufman said. “Jewish security at home and abroad should not be a political issue.”
The ‘cult’ of the Republican party
Robbie Kramm, a 24-year-old labor union employee and native Jewish Pittsburgher, registered as a Republican when he turned 18. He aligned with the Republicans, he said, because he was dismayed by the left-wing antisemitism proliferating on college campuses and is “ideologically conservative.”
Although 2020 was the first presidential election in which Kramm was eligible to vote, he did not cast a ballot.
That was the year that “Trump started losing me,” he said. “And I saw all the Democrats rallying around Biden, and I could tell that they didn’t mean it, and it was just annoying me. So I didn’t really want to vote for either of them.”
But Kramm has already cast his mail-in ballot for Democrats Harris and Sen. Bob Casey, and for Republican James Hayes, who is seeking to unseat Lee in the 14th congressional district.
Kramm didn’t vote for Lee, he said, “mainly because of what she has said about Israel. I feel like she ignores what the Jewish people want. And when we tell her, ‘This is offensive to us, it’s antisemitic,’ she doesn’t care.”
While Israel is an important issue to Kramm, “as long as you’re not saying it doesn’t deserve to exist and all that stuff, I’ll give somebody leeway.”
When it comes to Israel, Harris is “supportive enough,” Kramm said. He pointed to Lee being excluded from the Harris rally in Pittsburgh earlier this month that featured former President Barack Obama, as “a good gesture for [Harris’] support.”
Trump’s support for the Jewish state is “ironclad,” Kramm said, but “to me, it doesn’t really seem like he cares much about Jews in the U.S. It seems like he cares more about Israelis than us, and that’s something that went against him.”
“The main thing with Trump is that he has a kind of a cult of personality, and you can use it for good or you can use it for bad,” Kramm continued. “And I don’t feel like he’s using it for good.”
Howard Erlichman is a registered Republican, but for the last several years, the former Port Authority supervisor voted primarily for Democrats. He will do the same on Tuesday.
A lifelong Jewish Pittsburgher, the 67-year-old will be casting his ballot for Harris.
“She actually aligns more with my views now than the Republicans,” Erlichman said.
“The Republican ticket is — to me — it’s a cult. It’s just Donald Trump and whatever he wants. The principles of the party are gone.”
Harris is pro-union, he said, and also pro-business, both of which are important to Erlichman, who used to operate a business in Squirrel Hill. He also appreciates Harris’ pro-choice stance.
Erlichman sees Trump as an “existential threat” and a “symptom of fascism and hatred” emanating from the Republican Party.
“I will not vote for a Republican unless I know that they refute Donald Trump,” said the Wilkins Township resident.
While many Republican candidates profess their support of Israel, Erlichman questions their motives.
“I think a lot of them just pay a lip service,” he said. “More than anything, I think their motives— I don’t think they are anti-Israel — but I think their motives are Christian nationalist motives. I’m sure all of them don’t feel that way. But Trump, he just has no moral compass.”
For Kramm, voting decisions should come down to pragmatism rather than party loyalty.
“I feel this applies to all Americans, but for us Jews specifically,” he said. “We have to be pragmatic. We cannot align with just one party. Because, I mean, obviously in the Republican Party, I would agree more with the not-Trump camp, but the Trumpism has really been growing in these past years, and it’s starting to lose me. And in the Democratic Party, I would agree more with the moderate camp than the farther-left Democrats and the Democratic Socialists that are also growing.” PJC
Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
comments