JustASC

We’re working on a story for Thursday about the NJ gubernatorial elections and the issues Jews care about. One thing we’ve been asking people to respond to is the idea (expressed here by Matt Brooks, head of the Republican Jewish Coalition) that for many Jews the election will be a chance to express their disapproval of Obama’s Mideast policies.

In a conference call with Jon Corzine this morning, I asked him if the election was a referendum on Obama. His reply: 

To you and readers I’ll say the same thing I do when others bring that question: Isn’t it great that President Obama supports your candidacy and visits here to advocate it. The voters of NJ are ultimately going to decide who is going to serve their state the best in the coming four years, who is going to get us out stronger from the economic recession, who represents their values and how we  deliver healthcare and provide for a strong educational system.

Many [in the] Jewish community know full well we’ve done more on corporate tax reform and changing the  economic environment to make it more attractive to businesses to come to NJ …

But I think that at the end of the day this vote wil be taken by all communities more based on what they think an individual will do for their families, their communites, their lives here in the state of New Jersey…

In response to my question about whether he’ll pay the price among those who disapprove of Obama’s Mideast policies:

At the margin there may be some who believe that the president is not standing as strong with Israel as they would like to see and they might want to send a message. I think there will be some voters who may want to use that, use the ’no’ vote as a way to send a signal but I don’t think that is very large bloc and I know there are mixed views within the Jewish community about the president’s activities and actions — vocal groups on both sides.

No one can doubt for a moment that both when I was U.S.  senator and within the bounds of what I have the capacity to do as a governor I have been absolutely supportive of Israel’s right to peace with security and will continue to stand in every possible way with Israel as our best ally.

And you know we’ve expanded the number of dollars we have in Israel Bonds, you know about the Iranian divestiture, we speak out against the anti-Semitism at every opportunity we can and promoting an agenda that is very consistent with the vast majority of Jewish citizens in the state. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 12:06 pm and is filed under JustASC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.