Coleman Republicans Wave Moderate GOP Flag
E.J. Kessler, Forward.com, October 31, 2003

Call them the "Norm Coleman Republicans."

A surprising number of Jews running for office in 2003 appear to be modeling themselves after the newly minted Minnesota senator and former mayor of St. Paul -- moderate, Jewish Republicans running on urban-friendly platforms.

In mayoral, city council and state senate races in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, these Jewish Republicans sound similar themes: They are pro-business and support lower taxes and smaller government, but remain socially moderate. Declining to call themselves "compassionate conservatives" on the model of President Bush, like Coleman they instead favor the label of "pragmatist" or even "libertarian-leaning."

Unlike New York City's Republican mayor, Michael Bloomberg, these candidates do not consider the Republican Party a flag of convenience. Though they part with the national GOP on social issues such as abortion, they share its philosophy of low taxes, limited government and fiscal restraint.

The most prominent of such candidates is Philadelphia mayoral contender Sam Katz, who is running a tight race in a rematch against incumbent Democrat John Street. Coleman has campaigned for Katz, who cites the Minnesotan as an inspiration for how he would govern in a bipartisan manner; both men are former Democrats.

Coleman "is definitely a role model of how you could work together in a community with varying political views, with an inclusive message," said Josh Yablon, a talent agent who is running for a New York City Council seat on Manhattan's Upper West Side on what he and some cohorts are billing as "the urban Republican platform."

Another Jewish candidate for New York City Council is also running under the "urban Republican" rubric: dentist Jay Golub, on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

In northern New Jersey's Bergen County, legally blind entrepreneur Barry Honig, owner of an executive search firm, is running for a state senate seat against veteran legislator Byron Baer, a Jewish Democrat. Honig, running on a platform of tort reform and tax relief for seniors, also fits the Coleman mold: Last week he was speaking about economic empowerment at the Urban

League chapter in Englewood, a north Jersey town with a large black population.

In Pittsburgh, an Orthodox Jewish real estate agent, Daniel A. Cohen, is bidding to represent the heavily Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

The trend of Jews running under a moderate Republican banner has been a long time in coming, some analysts say.

"It shouldn't be surprising," said Pennsylvania pollster G. Terry Madonna. "Many [Jews] are pro-business and socially liberal. Many Democrats are not pro-business. Breaking into the party machinery in cities and suburbs isn't easy. The Republican Party is a little more open and flexible."

Some see internal Democratic Party politics as the source of Jewish alienation from the party of Franklin Roosevelt.

"Those Jews who are staying in urban areas are fed up with the Latino and African American tribal politics [of the urban Democratic machines], which are not serving cities particularly well," said Joel Kotkin, a public policy fellow at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.

Kotkin cited large Jewish swing votes for moderate Republican mayors such as Rudolph Giuliani of New York and Richard Riordan of Los Angeles in the 1990s as presaging the Jewish candidates who would carry that banner forward.

Jewish Republican office-holders were a common, if minority, feature of the political landscape through much of the past century, but they became a rarity as the GOP began swerving rightward in the 1980s.

A surge of Jewish Republican office-seekers would come in the wake of a steadily evolving shift that began in the 1970s, when Jews began taking a prominent role as Republican theoreticians and policy-makers and continued more recently with a slow shift of Jewish opinion, particularly among younger and more affluent Jews.

The "Coleman Republicans," most of whom are running in heavily Jewish districts -- and several of whom are Orthodox or observant -- are not shy about leveraging issues of Jewish concern to further their candidacies.

Honig, for example, hit his opponent for what he described as less-than-full-throated opposition to rabble-rousers such as former New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka, who was fired from his state post for penning a poem widely regarded as antisemitic, and the pro-Palestinian protesters who tried to commandeer Rutgers University for a conference. "When things like Rutgers and Baraka come along, the community needs a strong voice," Honig said.

Yablon, for his part, scored his Democratic opponent, incumbent Councilwoman Gale Brewer, for organizing a bus to an October 26, 2002, antiwar rally in Washington, D.C., that featured pronounced anti-Israel agitation. "I was completely offended," Yablon said. "I'd never find myself in that kind of crowd."

It remains to be seen, however, just how many of the "Coleman Republicans" will gain office. Katz, who garnered the vast majority of Jewish votes in his initial race against Street in 1999, has faced an uphill struggle in the closing weeks of the current campaign because of circumstances beyond his control: Street, who is black, has seen his base energized by an FBI listening device that turned up in the ceiling of his office. While the feds have declared that the mayor is not a target of their investigation, Katz's campaign "has been flummoxed by the eavesdropping device," Madonna said. "The issues are all pushed out of the way."

Honig said that private polling shows him to be in "a dead heat" with Baer and that he plans to outspend his opponent by sinking more than $300,000 into the race.

Yablon, who is an Orthodox Jew, said an influx of Orthodox families into his district could put him over the top. Both he and Brewer lack name recognition, he said, and matching funds would allow their spending to be comparable.

Whatever the fate of this particular set of candidates, more "Coleman Republicans" are likely to step up to the plate, according to politics watchers.

"The very things the Republicans are extolling -- business ability, self-reliance," New York Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf said, "are the very things younger Jews have taken to heart."

What exactly is a moderate Republican? Someone who wants to give three weeks of unemployment benefits instead of abolishing them altogether? Someone who wants the city's bus sytem to stop running at 7 PM instead of going out of existence? Someone who thinks that Arab immigrants should be given two weeks to get out of the country instead of being put on a plane within 24 hours? Someone who thinks that Israel should be content with atomic bombs and does not need thermonuclear ones? Someone who thinks that the grocery strikers should all be fired instead of fired and arrested? Someone who is against firing all professors who don't support Israel but thinks they should be denied tenure instead? Some one who thinks that slavery had to come to end but that it was abolished too soon after extremists gained control of the abolitionist movement? Someone who is against abolishing freedom of the press and freedom of speech but merely thinks that anyone who is against Israel, capitalism, or gentrification should be prevented from practicing them?

What is a moderate Republican? According to the article it is...

"They are pro-business and support lower taxes and smaller government, but remain socially moderate. Declining to call themselves "compassionate conservatives" on the model of President Bush, like Coleman they instead favor the label of "pragmatist" or even "libertarian-leaning."

Excuse Meyer. He hasn't a clue.

It means roughly what I described above.

No. What you described was marxism/socialism., that is, someone who should thank the State they even have a job and are able to share a loaf of bread with 5 other families for the week, and if they disagree with the state they should either keep it to themselves or get shipped off to the gulog.

1. This is not socialism.
2. I did not list any of the things that you listed. I think you must have gotten them from some description of General Pinochet's free market state.

People who squash dissent, make their citizens dependent upon the State, and otherwise spead their State forced community upon the masses is marxism/socialism, exactly the kind of things you described when making your own definition of "moderate republican". Classic example of "if I define them in the way I really am then I can divide and conquer". Marxist takover methods page one.

Except that I did not list any of those things - what you have in mind seems to be Pinochet's state, which forced capitalism upon people who didn't want it. You don't seem to realize, or maybe don't want to realize, that capitalism is highly authoritarian.

Quite the opposite. Marxism/socialism is highly authoritarian. The USSR , the Soviet Bloc, China, North Korea, among others are fine historical examples of what happens when the Marxism/socialism "experiment" is brought to fruition.

Please explain how what you see as the tyranical nature of North Korea and the other nations you mention proves that capitalism is nonauthoritarian. Please explain as well how the attempts by the vicious regime of General Pinochet to force capitalism upon people who did not want it fits in with your view of capitalism as nonauthoritarian.

I lead the discussion. I don't follow orders, especially from the likes of you.

History has shown just what brutal regimes are borne under marxism/socialism. The death camps. The dissidents murdered. The gulogs. All in the name of marxism. All in the name of a "better society". All in the name of "From each accoridnt to his ability, to each according to his needs." Too many know the slavery and death that permiates from marxist society, and they have given us accounts of the cruelity behind the Iron Curtain, and we're not going to let you and people like you lead us down that path ever again. Marxism is the worst form of slavery. Try it and we'll kill you. Make no mistake about it.

The discussion is going nowhere. I would like to point out, however, that your last outburst had nothing to do with either the true nature of something called "moderate Republicanism" or with the supposed link between capitalism and freedom, which you seem to take on faith the way Pat Robertson takes the story of Adam and Eve.

My last post had everything to do with the marxist regime you would have us living under. Forget it! There's too many of us that would shoot you where you stand if you tried to push your socialist crap on us.

always fall back on mindless red-baiting and talk about Stalinist dictatorships and hope that people will be stupid enough to swallow this as an answer.

Stalism was just the end result of what happens under marxism/socialism. I know you hate it when people refer back to recent history and show what horrible regimes emerge from marxist "experiments", but I'm going to keep throwing it in your face. There is no reason for the people of the world to chance practicing marxist ideology ever again. Socialism is evil and you are more evil for supporting such totalitarianism knowing how these marxist "experiments' always turn out.

Aside from the fact that I endorsed no Stalinist dictatorships, I would like to point out how one fairly recent socialist "experiment" turned out - the elected government of Savador Allende was overthrown by fascists, backed up by the CIA, on 9/11/73. The massacre during the coup and the murders during the years of Pinochet's regime cost many more lives than were lost on 9/11/01. Terrorism, anyone?
By the way, by no means were all the people who supported Allende Marxists - many Catholics, anarchists, and ordinary workers fed up with being screwed over by capitalism and imperialism supported him wholeheartedly.

And the people thought Stalin and Mao were really swell guys, that is until they brought the hammer down on their heads.

Savador Allende would have done the same thing in time. It's what you marxist do. It's your history. You're all murderers.

Unsubstantiated allegations:
Allende would have acted just like Stalin, Mao.
All socialists are murderers.
The coup in Chile (with its murders) was necessary in order to prevent murder.
You are someone whose arguments should actually be taken seriously by people who follow this message board.