Jewish Vote

JEWISH VOTERS ARE typically aligned with the more progressive, or liberal, of the major parties. The first Jewish U.S. Representative, Lewis Levin, was elected from Pennsylvania in 1844, as a member of the nativ-ist American Party. The next year, David Levy Yulee was appointed to the U.S. Senate by the Florida legislature (senators were not directly elected until 1916), although he was not a practicing Jew at this time in his life. Jews were primarily a Republican electorate from that party's first major victory in 1860 under Abraham Lincoln until the Progressive Era, when many Jews followed Theodore Roosevelt (who had appointed the first Jewish cabinet secretary, Oscar Straus) into his moribund third party run in 1912.

After Theodore Roosevelt, Jews tended to follow Democrats, including Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wilson appointed the first Jewish Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis, and supported the Balfour Declaration, which led to the establishment of Israel. In 1914, Democrat Moses Alexander in Idaho became the first elected Jewish governor. During this period, many Jews also flirted with the far left. Nearly as many Jews supported Socialist Eugene Debs in 1920, as Republican Warren G. Harding; twice as many as supported the Democratic candidate. However, this favor for socialists, both among Jews and other Americans, was short-lived. Although a few cities elected socialist mayors and other officials in the years after World War I, by the mid-1920s, the movement was relegated to the fringes, where it has remained ever since. In the 1930s, Roosevelt transformed the Democratic Party into the more liberal of the two parties, and this attracted most of the Jews in the country. Herbert Lehman succeeded Roosevelt as governor of New York and, in 1948, became the first popularly elected Jewish senator. By the 1970s, more than half of American Jews identified as Democrats, and most of the rest were Independent. There were only a small number of Jewish Republicans in this era.

A small weakening of Democratic hegemony among Jews occurred with the election of 1980, in which for the first time, a large contingent of Jewish activists joined with the Republicans. This was the beginning of neo-conservatism. However, the vast majority of the Jewish community remained loyal to the Democrats, and by the time the Republicans took control of both houses of Congress, in 1995, there were only a few Jews in the Republican caucuses. This has remained so. Although Republicans occasionally try to break through, it is difficult for them to make serious inroads in Jewish communities, even when running Jewish candidates.

The first major-party presidential candidate with Jewish ancestry was Republican Barry Goldwater, in [Page 340]1964, although he was a Christian. The first true Jewish major-party presidential candidate was Joseph Lieberman, who ran for vice president as a Democrat in 2000. Lieberman led a major mobilization effort among American Jews. There were Al Gore-Lieberman buttons and bumper stickers in Hebrew. Significantly, Lieberman took his campaign to Israel, becoming the first person on a presidential ticket to ever campaign outside the United States. In the 2000 presidential election, Jewish voters overwhelmingly supported the Gore-Lieberman ticket, 79 percent to 19 percent for Republican George W. Bush and Dick Chaney.

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