Southern New England Jewish LedgerBy Dmitriy Shapiro/JNS.org/Washington Jewish Week
Rep. Eric Cantor
Following the recent stunning primary defeat of Rep. Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives and the House majority leader, both non-partisan Jewish groups and those on each side of the political aisle say they are losing a strong ally for their issues.
“I’ve had the privilege to know and work with Eric Cantor since his first days running for the House of Representatives,” said Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy at the Orthodox Union. “He is a friend and [has] been a critical partner for the advocacy work of the Orthodox Jewish community on issues ranging from Israel’s security and the security of Jewish institutions in the United States, to religious liberty to educational reform, and [the] opportunity to defend the needs of the nonprofit sector.”
On the foreign policy front, the representative for Virginia’s 7th congressional district is known for his unwavering support for Israel and hardline stance when it comes to the Iranian nuclear issue. Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, called Cantor “an important pro-Israel voice in the House and a leader on security issues, including Iran sanctions.”
Cantor lost the primary to Tea Party challenger Dave Brat by 11 percent. He has held the congressional seat for 14 years – first as minority whip and then as majority leader, a position from which he plans to step down on July 31.
William Daroff, senior vice president of public policy and director of the Washington office of the Jewish Federations of North America, said Cantor’s leadership was impactful on many issues of importance to the Jewish community, including Israel, charitable tax deductions, and Holocaust survivor issues.
But Jack Moline, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, said that despite Cantor’s high-ranking position in the House, his exit would not hurt Jewish interests.
“There’s no question that Cantor was extremely strong in supporting Israel, but I don’t think there is a problem with that in the Republican Party. I don’t think his absence is going to make a difference in terms of Republican support for Israel,” said Moline.
“On the question of our foreign policy outside of Israel, including Iran, there are other people in both the House and the Senate, Republicans and Democrats, whose positions mirror those that Mr. Cantor took,” he added.
Cantor’s loss came as a surprise to everyone – Cantor included. He had spent $4,867,298 on the race, while Brat spent just $122,792. Some analysts say Cantor was defeated because of the perception that he had lost touch with his district.
“It seems to me that it was a combination of the politics around immigration as well as some people suggesting that he was very busy with his leadership role and wasn’t tending to his home district as much as he needed to,” Diament said.
Others questioned whether or not Cantor’s religion played a role in his defeat.
Quoted in the New York Times, David Wasserman, a House political analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, suggested that Cantor, who dreamed of becoming the first Jewish speaker of the House, was culturally out of step with a redrawn district that was more rural, more gun-oriented and more conservative.
“Part of this plays into his religion,” Mr. Wasserman said. “You can’t ignore the elephant in the room.”
The Times followed up on that train of thought with another article saying that, according to analysts, Brat boasts a divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and often invokes God in his speeches. That, say the analysts, “appeals to Christian conservatives in a way that Mr. Cantor simply cannot.”
Forward columnist JJ Goldberg agreed.
“What the GOP’s redistricting mavens forgot to factor in … is that the prairie fire that’s turned so much of middle America red is as much about Christianity as anything else.
“It’s not that [the Christian right] doesn’t like Jews. I’d bet that 90% of the 36,000 zealots who turned out to vote for David Brat on Tuesday (vs. 29,000 for Cantor) don’t have an anti-Semitic bone in their body. It’s just that they love Jesus. They want more religious values guiding and governing our public life. And by religious values they mean Christian values. That’s David Brat’s main calling card.”
Mark Silk, director of the Leonard Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, looked at the Jewish factor embedded in Cantor’s defeat from a different angle.
“Yes, Eric Cantor’s loss was a Jewish thing, but not in the sense that the primary voters in Virginia’s Seventh District voted against him because he’s Jewish. There’s no evidence of that”, he told the Ledger. “It’s a Jewish thing because it’s the latest cause of heartburn for Jewish Republicans, who for a generation have been trying in vain to get their co-religionists to embrace the GOP.”
Judie Jacobson contributed to this report.
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From Martin Shapiro; Huffington Post writer.
HOW DID ERIC CANTER LOSE HIS SEAT? Listen…I’ll tell you!
Believe me he didn’t lose it by himself, not even close! He didn’t lose it by anything he did… or did not do. Not by not being back in his district enough… not attending the ham and bean suppers at the Volunteer Fire Houses… not because of immigration… or being too conservative or not being conservative enough! Nope, none of these can explain his loss. Some say, “the low turnout…” They don’t know what they’re talking about! I’ll show you the turnout was 47% higher in this primary than in 2012!.
I’ll tell you why he lost in just a short, five word sentence:
WE lost it for him!
Who are WE, you ask? We are the RJC, AIPAC, UJC, Hadassah and all 50 members of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.
Elected in 2000 for the first time, Cantor served seven (7) terms in the House, loved and handily elected and reelected by his district constituents. Majority whip from 2009-2011, he rose to Majority Leader on January 3, 2011. That date began his rocket rise and insured his fatal decline. He was elected by his House colleagues to be the highest-ranking Jewish member of Congress in its history – and the only non-Christian Republican in either house. From that pinnacle, his decline was certain.
The WE above, loved him too much, extoled him too much, called on him too much and EXPOSED him to his district constituency too much! His constituents didn’t think of him as a Jew! He was their Representative. Then we made him the Republican Representative of the Jewish people and Israel supporters of America! That’s what beat him!
That’s what beat Lieberman too for the Democratic nomination for Senator in 2006. (He ultimately ran as an Independent and won anyway with less than a majority in a five way race. But he didn’t try it again in ’12 because he would have been trounced. In Joe’s case, he ran for Vice-President with Al Gore at the top of the ticket in 2000, the first Jew to seek that high office and he had the audacity to run for Senator from Connecticut on the same ticket, hedging his bet. I guess he didn’t have much confidence in winning the big job. Many of his constituents didn’t like his safety net approach and afterward, with all the sensational publicity about him as the possible VP, the WE adopted him as the Jewish Senator of America. From then on Connecticut only saw him on television.
But we (and me too), the Jews and Israel supporters of America swept into the hall of Congress and kidnapped Eric Cantor for our own. We made him our Republican, our Jewish congressman from wherever we lived. We snatched him from the 7th of Virginia and exposed and adopted him as ours without their or his permission and, maybe, without Eric realizing what was happening to him?
The 7th of Virginia has about 734,000 citizens. Maybe 2% are Jewish, maybe 14,700, maybe a few more or maybe less. Now these are people, NOT necessarily of voting age! In the general election of Nov. 2012, Cantor beat his Democratic opponent, (Wayne Powell) 223,000 to 158,000 (58% to 41%), a total of 382,000 votes cast. To run against Powell, Cantor had to beat back Floyd Bayne in a primary, 37,369 votes vs 7,695 (79.4% vs. 20.6%), total votes 47,064.
So let’s look at last week. 65,008 votes were cast in the primary. 47% MORE total votes than in the 2012 primary! It is important to remind you here that Virginia has an OPEN primary system. You do not have to be a registered anything to vote in any primary in that state. Dems could vote in the GOP primary. And the Dems had already selected their candidate.
Cantor lost to Brat 36,120 to 28,902. Cantor’s votes dropped from 37,369 in ’12 to 28,902 now, as the total votes increased from 47,064 to 65,008. See what I mean?
Analysis:
1. Maybe more Democrats came out to vote against the nationally popular Cantor to boost their challenger (who will remain nameless for this writing).
2. If 3,510 of Brat’s votes were switched to Cantor, Cantor would have won 32,512 to 32,510. Narrow to say the least, enough to require a recount and certain to cause as much publicity as the loss. Gejdenson won by such narrow margins a few times.
3. The district has enough Jewish voters (Dem or GOP) to have made a win. Where were they?
4. Given the overwhelming national Jewish adoption and publicity foisted on Cantor for the last three years by the WE, we probably woke up just enough anti-Israel and/or anti-Jewish voters that could easily have caused the loss.
5. Or maybe just the voter’s that became disaffected by his sudden fame and reduced attention to the district, could have thumbed their vote against him.
Conclusion:
Somewhere above lays the answer. Being Jewish and living in Connecticut, my belief is Cantor could have won with more support in 3. Or that he lost because of the sentiment in 4 and/or 5.
Have I made my case?