Local Jewish activists
cover the spectrum
The 2004 national election appears likely to be one of the most impassioned and hotly contested this country has ever seen. And as always, Jewish activists are in the thick of it.
The Chronicle has interviewed four Jews who are or were locally involved in the political parties with presidential candidates on Wisconsin’s ballot. The only significant group for which we couldn’t find a local Jewish activist was the Ralph Nader/Peter Camejo independent candidacy.
Because The Chronicle is a non-profit organization that doesn’t endorse candidates and doesn’t want to give that appearance, we are listings these activists in alphabetical order by their last names.
Cary Rothman, Republican
Kenosha-native Rothman is a Milwaukee pharmacist and the president of the not-yet-official Milwaukee chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition. As some Jewish Republicans have argued nationally, Rothman says Jews should consider voting Republican because of the war on terrorism.
“The big thing … is security of Israel and this country,” he said. “We cannot have a man as commander-in-chief [who] does not understand the war on terror, that we have to go after these people before they get us. … We cannot have somebody as weak on security as [Sen. John] Kerry as president.”
But unlike many other Jews, Rothman is also “a fiscal and social conservative,” he said. He described himself as “pro-life,” favoring outlawing of non-medical abortions save for cases of rape and incest.
Moreover, “I believe in less government; too much government takes away our rights,” he said. “Our freedoms are taken when the government takes our money away and when we’re over-regulated. The big tenets of the Democratic Party are regulation, unions, trial lawyers and taxes.”
And he seems to be willing to go along with other Bush/Republican programs and positions that have troubled other Jews. For example, he defended Bush’s “faith-based initiative” program, which gives government funds to certain religious groups doing human service work in communities.
While some Jews consider this a violation of church-state separation, Rothman said the program “is not giving preference to any religious group.” Moreover, “it is more effective to give to those groups because they’re right there with the people” in contrast to government programs, he said.
Shane Steinfeld, Libertarian
Steinfeld was born and raised in Jacksonville, Fla., and will soon be entering law school at the University of Florida in Gainesville. But he spent six years in Milwaukee, during which he was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an activist for the Libertarian Party, eventually becoming chair of the Milwaukee chapter.
Steinfeld feels that there is strong connection between his Jewish upbringing and his political convictions. He remembered that when he was a child at a Conservative synagogue, he was looking at a translation-plus-commentary on the Bible and noticed that not all the commentators agreed.
“When I asked the rabbi, ‘Who’s right?’ he told me, ‘That’s for you to decide,’ because Judaism is open to lots of different points of view,” Steinfeld said. “It’s that kind of tolerance for difference of ideas that is at the heart of Libertarianism.”
As Steinfeld wrote for the Web site of Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, “Libertarians … believe in ‘Self-Ownership’: You own yourself, and no one else on earth has a higher claim to your body or your labor than you do. So long as people act in a way that doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s freedom, Libertarians believe that they should be free to do what they please.”
That means that Libertarians want private choices and initiatives instead of government programs, even for such things as aid to Israel. “The Jewish community should be free in every way to support Israel,” Steinfeld said, but “we don’t want to force people who don’t want to support what Israel is doing to support it.”
Steinfeld believes that Libertarian candidates will “take votes from both” main parties, and that such votes “will tell the main parties that they need to start realizing that people own themselves. Even if we don’t win, that will have impact next time.”
Jerry Wallace, Democrat
Milwaukee-native and semi-retired businessman Wallace has been active in the Democratic Party for more than 50 years. He said he is presently working “six hours a day, five days a week” for the Kerry/Edwards campaign in various volunteer capacities, including “Jewish outreach.”
Wallace also believes his Jewish background helped impel him toward that work.
“I think my Jewish upbringing taught me that government is not for the rich and powerful, but for the weakest and poorest among us,” he said. “That is the Jewish tradition as well as the Democratic Party tradition.”
Therefore, “I’ve found for my entire life that the values of the Democratic Party echoed my values,” he said. Moreover, all the Democratic presidents that he has seen “understood what human rights and civil rights were all about” and “wanted to make the same kind of America I want to make.”
Wallace denounced the Bush administration as “on the wrong side of health care, the cost of drugs for seniors, the environment,” he said. Moreover, after the Bush foreign policy and war in Iraq, “I see no evidence that we’re safer from terrorism.”
He dismissed Jewish Republican claims about the Bush administration having been Israel’s best friend. “Israel has prospered under Democratic and Republican administrations,” Wallace said. “There is virtually no opposition in Congress to aid funds for Israel, military or economic.”
He contended that Kerry has “a 20-year record” of votes in favor of Israel during his Senate career. Besides, “I just hate to see the Jewish community be a one-issue community like the pro-life or National Rifle Association.”
Wallace is very troubled about the influence of the “Christian right” in the GOP. He cited as an example a plank in the 2004 platform of the Texas GOP that calls the United States “a Christian nation,” and Bush “doesn’t say one word to contradict” that.
Ruth Weill, Green
Milwaukee native Weill is communications associate and volunteer coordinator for the Wisconsin branch of SHARE, “a not-for-profit organization that builds and strengthens the community through volunteer service and helping people save money on food,” according to its Web site.
She is also a delegate to the national coordinating committee of the U.S. Green Party and on the party’s coordinating council for Wisconsin.
She came to this, she said, through “dissatisfaction with the two-party system. I didn’t feel [either main party] represented my values.”
The Greens “advocate for government to be run by the people and not by corporations” and “advocate for human rights and social justice. And they truly want to protect the environment; it’s not just empty rhetoric.”
“We believe in equal rights for everyone,” Weill said. “We feel that all people deserve a comfortable existence in this world. We are against all types of prejudice, including anti-Semitism and sexism. We are a voice for the people, not for corporate interests.”
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader ran in 2000 as Green Party presidential candidate; and “his campaign brought me to the Greens,” Weill said. This time, Nader is running as an independent and David Cobb is the Green presidential candidate; but Weill is sticking with the party. “I feel Cobb has the Green Party’s interests at heart; he wants to grow the party beyond the election,” she said.
The Green Party’s platform includes planks on the Middle East that call for the “right of return” of all Palestinian refugees to Israel and seek to encourage consideration of a “one bi-national” Jewish-Arab state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Weill, who chairs the Middle East committee of Peace Action Wisconsin, said that “not all Greens” necessarily agree with this platform plank and she herself doesn’t “have any firm opinion on the ‘right of return.’ If somehow Palestinian refugees could come back into the country and live comfortably without kicking out Israelis from their homes, I would be all for that.”
But this platform plank “has nothing to do with being anti-Israel. What it is anti is the Israeli government. There needs to be made a distinction,” she said. “The problem is that many Jews decide somebody is anti-Semitic because they disagree with Israeli policy…. I as a Jew feel it necessary to speak out against Israeli policy so the world knows not all Jews think alike.”
Weill also denies that a vote for the Greens is a “wasted vote.” “In a democracy, people should be able to vote their hopes, not their fears,” she said.
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