by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

August 14, 2008

As he works diligently on behalf of John McCain, Fred Zeidman expects the Arizona senator to break records.

“I believe he is going to get unprecedented Jewish support,” said the vice chair of Jewish outreach at the Republican National Committee. “Hopefully, 40 percent.”

If Jews do support the presumptive Republican candidate at that level, it would top the 24 percent of the Jewish vote George W. Bush received in 2004, not to mention the 39 percent that Ronald Reagan won in 1980.

“Am I happy about this number? No, not necessarily,” said Zeidman, a Houston venture capitalist and former top fund-raiser for President Bush in the Jewish community. “But I think it’s a great number for our community.”

Like NJ Obama advocate Doni Remba (see related story), Zeidman believes the key issue for Jews is his candidate’s stance on Israel.

“The comparison between Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama is night and day. Do I know that Sen. Obama will be bad for Israel? I don’t have any idea, and that’s what concerns me,” said Zeidman. “I don’t have any doubt on where John McCain stands.”

In addition to his support for the GOP, Zeidman has been a leader of the Anti-Defamation League’s Southwest Region, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston, and the American Jewish Committee.

He began a close relationship with Bush in the 1970s “when we were single guys in Houston. We knew each other before we got into politics,” he recalled in a telephone interview.

Zeidman helped Bush’s successful campaign for Texas governor in 1994, then served as his director of Jewish outreach in two presidential campaigns.

This time he is sharing the stewardship of the RNC’s 2008 Victory Jewish Coalition with Eric Cantor, the Jewish Republican congressman from Virginia who is reported to be on McCain’s short list of potential running mates.

Zeidman said he “doesn’t have any feel for” whether Cantor would lure Jewish voters away from the Democrats.

“Joe Lieberman proved that you don’t win elections by putting someone who is Jewish on the ticket. Congressman Cantor has been a tremendous supporter of issues important to the Jewish community. But he is very conservative. Will people look at his conservative policies and not follow him? Could be.”

And as optimistic as he may be about McCain’s chances, Zeidman said he is still realistic about the challenges Republicans face in trying to crack the hard core of Jewish loyalty to the Democrats.

“A lot of the Jewish vote focuses on social issues which the Democrats have been much more in line with,” he said. “There has been this unwarranted fear of Republican administrations and who they might put in place to dictate on some of the social issues.”

And, if Congress remains in Democratic hands, as he predicts (“I wish it weren’t,” he quickly added), then, he believes, “a great system of checks and balances” will allow Democrats to block much of a Republican president’s legislative agenda.

“It is going to appear very unlikely that social issues that are truly feared by the bulk of the Jewish population would ever be implemented,” he said.

“Just like Israel shouldn’t be the only issue, the Supreme Court and abortion shouldn’t be the only issue. They are all important issues, and they all need to be weighed,” he argued. “Foreign policy, domestic policy, prayer in school — all these things.”

States in play

Zeidman’s admiration for McCain began in the early days of the current election cycle.

“I was very close to three of the candidates — Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, and John McCain,” he said. “I had always felt that I could have supported any one of them, but McCain was the most prepared and most experienced to be president. As strongly as I believe the other two men were firm in their support of Israel, the only man with a 20-year documented history was McCain.

“Our focus is on states that are in play — Florida, Ohio, Michigan,” Zeidman said. “I think every Jew in America needs to hear John McCain’s message. I know New Jersey pretty well, and I would love to think McCain has a chance there. But you have a heavily Democratic state, historically.”

Does Obama’s being black make a difference to Jewish voters?

“I can’t really speak to that,” he said. “I would love to think that in America it wouldn’t. Do I believe, as a realist, do I think we are a race-free nation? Not at all. Do I think it affects the election? Sure — positively and negatively,” he said, predicting that Obama’s candidacy will bring unprecedented numbers of African-Americans to the polls. “But I’ve got to believe, unfortunately, there are people in this country to whom race would matter.”

Zeidman, a senior director of governmental affairs at the Washington, DC, lobbying firm of Greenberg Traurig, disputes the Democrats’ contention that McCain’s election would be tantamount to a third term for President Bush.

“I don’t see McCain being labeled as Bush Three,” he said. “To the extent that the agenda of the president has been successful and Sen. McCain is following him in those footsteps, he is following the right thing.”

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