Jewish givers favor Clinton

By Ron Kampeas

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WASHINGTON (JTA)—Obama vs. Clinton is the horse race among Democrats, as the voice of change and the voice of experience pass each other week to week in fund raising and in polls.

Among Jewish Democrats, however, it's no race, insiders in the fund-raising community say: While U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has generated considerable excitement, the years Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has spent focusing on Israel and other issues of concern to the nation's largest Jewish community puts her firmly in front.

"It's experience," said Lonnie Kaplan, a major pro-Israel fund-raiser. "It's clear to me that she's the best candidate the Democrats have. On domestic issues they're all the same, but on foreign policy she has such experience and knowledge and the willingness to act."

Numbers have yet to be properly crunched, but insiders tracking donations say Clinton leads among Jewish donors, especially among those whose emphasis is purely pro-Israel.

Clinton also leads among Jewish funders who have a range of commitments in addition to Israel, said Steve Rabinowitz, a top Democratic consultant in Washington.

"The overwhelming amount of the establishment money is with Hillary," Rabinowitz said, in part because her husband, former President Clinton, is such a well-known quantity. "Hillary is in a special situation—her longstanding relationship with the community, her husband's relationship with the community, her husband's fund-raising prowess."

But Obama is making significant inroads, and Rabinowitz says he may pose a significant challenge to Clinton among the Jewish grassroots.

"The phenomenon that is Obama has certainly penetrated the Jewish community," he said. "Among small givers, first-time givers, rank-and-file supporters, there's tremendous interest in Obama."

Major Jewish donors also are backing former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and the "second tier" of candidates, including Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, because of their loyalty to Israel and Jewish issues over the years. Richardson had a solid pro-Israel record during the 1980s and early 1990s when he was a congressman.

Obama has encountered difficulties with establishment givers because of his approach to the Middle East. He says frankly that Israel also must contribute to reviving the stalled peace process with the Palestinians.

Peace cannot be achieved "at the price of compromising Israel's security, and the United States government and an Obama presidency cannot ask Israel to take risks with respect to its security," he said in April at an NJDC forum for presidential candidates. "But it can ask Israel to say that it is still possible for us to allow more than just this status quo of fear, terror, division."

That should not turn off Jewish support, says Alan Solomont, a Boston venture capitalist and philanthropist who is Obama's principal fund-raiser.

"We've heard for some years that George Bush was the greatest friend that Israel ever had," Solomont said. "Let's not forget that some people were sold that phony bill of goods. He has made an outrageous mess of the situation in the Middle East that is clearly dangerous to the United States and to Israel."

Obama's promise of change trumps Clinton's experience, Solomont said.

"People are looking for someone with new ideas who will challenge the status quo," he said. "That's why he's attractive to the Jewish community elsewhere. This isn't to diminish Hillary Clinton's competence or leadership in any way, but there's no one who hasn't seen Barack Obama and not felt moved and energized and good that this guy's running for president."

Yet it is Clinton's determined cultivation of the Jewish community that pushes her ahead, and not just because she represents the nation's largest Jewish community in New York.

Clinton has spent her six years in the U.S. Senate reaching out to Jewish groups on nearly every domestic and foreign issue that the community embraces. She was a leader in getting homeland security funds to Jewish institutions and has taken the lead in demanding changes in Palestinian textbooks that would reflect the reality of Israel's existence.

She makes a point of speaking to national Jewish groups that hold conferences in Washington before delegates ascend to the Hill to lobby.

Clinton's relative hawkishness doesn't hurt her with Jewish donors the way it has afflicted her appeal to the Democratic Party's left. No one says it outright, but her readiness in 2002 to back President Bush on the Iraq war stands her in good stead with pro-Israel givers who want an American leader who would back a military strike against Iran if nothing else succeeds in dissuading it from pursuing nuclear weapons—the "willingness to act" to which Kaplan alluded.