by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

August 28, 2008

As she waited for the opening gavel of the Democratic National Convention, June Fischer said she was “ecstatic. I am wearing a button that says ‘Barack Obama’ in Hebrew, and everybody wants one.”

It is the 10th time that Fischer, a Scotch Plains resident, has served as a delegate. This year she is a superdelegate, but that is not the only reason she considers the 2008 gathering in Denver as something special. She has been a close friend of Obama’s choice for running mate, Joseph Biden, for 30 years.

They first met when Biden visited New Jersey as a freshman senator from Delaware in 1978. Ten years later, she joined his first presidential campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire and got to know his family as well. “I know his mother; his two brothers; his wonderful sister, Valerie; and his wife, Jill,” Fischer said.

After she heard the announcement of the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Fischer said, she “didn’t sleep the entire night it happened. I was running and hugging and kissing everybody, even the people I didn’t like.”

She said her friend is the best possible selection Obama could have made.

“The Obama-Biden ticket is phenomenal, particularly for New Jersey,” she told NJ Jewish News on a cell phone from Denver on Aug. 25. “In south Jersey, Joe is looked on as their third senator because of its proximity to Delaware.”

‘I love Democratic politics. I’ve been enthralled with this since I was a teenager.’

Fischer had been an eager Biden supporter earlier this year, when he still hoped to head the ticket, but, she said, “when his campaign fell by the wayside I switched to Hillary Clinton.”

Although the New York senator’s name will be placed in nomination at the convention, Fischer said she “will not vote for Hillary on my first ballot. I will cast my vote for Barack Obama. It was phenomenal having her as a candidate, but it’s over. Obama played by the rules, he won, and I am supporting him wholeheartedly.”

As she acknowledged that some Clinton supporters may feel alienated by Obama’s nomination, Fischer said that “other than the very strident ones, about 80 percent of the Hillary people are accepting Obama. Her campaign ran its course, and now it is time to move on.

“Consider the alternative,” she said.

‘Good for Israel’

Noting Republican candidate John McCain’s opposition to abortion rights and his pledge to appoint conservative judges, Fischer said that the possible future makeup of the United States Supreme Court “is probably as important as anything else, particularly for a woman.”

Apart from the court, she is concerned with the Bush administration’s “continuation of the war in Iraq, its poor economic policies, and a president who has been an embarrassment to the world. John McCain would be a continuation, and it is time for a whole new approach.”

Even before the convention began, Fischer was busy running from caucus to caucus, with an eye on attending women’s events and an evening sponsored by the National Jewish Democratic Council, one of her key interest groups inside the party.

Fischer said she was unconcerned about Obama’s relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

“Listen, there are rabbis who have said things I wish they wouldn’t have said. I don’t fault Obama for having a pastor who was a despicable person, but after having read his history, this pastor has also done some remarkable things.

“And I don’t believe Obama wouldn’t be good for Israel,” Fischer added. “Why would AIPAC give him such a high rating if it didn’t believe he was good for Israel?”

In addition to being an ardent party activist, Fischer works part-time as a constituent service representative in the office of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ). She chairs the Union County Board of Elections and serves on the board of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey.

“I love Democratic politics,” she said. “I’ve been enthralled with this since I was a teenager.”

As a high school student in Hillside in 1948, she was assigned to go to Newark to attend a speech by Henry Wallace, a former vice president and secretary of agriculture who ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket against Democrat Harry Truman and Republican Thomas Dewey.

The speech, she said, “mesmerized me.”

As a young adult a few years later, Fischer said, she “got busy getting married and having children.” Then a neighbor asked her to help on a campaign for a candidate for local office in Hillside. “I did, and I haven’t stopped,” she said.

She even ran for office herself. “As a favor to the party, I pretended to be a serious candidate for Congress.”

The year was 1986. Fischer ran in the Republican-dominated District 7. “My opponent, Matt Rinaldo, had $2.5 million dollars and I had $250,000; it was not exactly a level playing field,” she complained.

But she has no inclination to try again, declaring, “I’d rather be a kingmaker than a king.”

She jokingly calls her devotion to the Democrats a “genetic deficiency,” which she has passed down to her two daughters and at least two of her four grandchildren, if not her husband, Harold. “He gets peripherally involved” and “helps me when necessary,” Fischer said. “I couldn’t do it without his support.

“Politics has been a wonderful avocation for me,” she said. “I never made money on it, but I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

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