Aristotle Inc., a small company on Capitol Hill that markets software, sells a computer program that allows campaign committees to search through voter data for Jewish-sounding surnames.

And Political Resources Inc., a Vermont-based broker of direct mail lists for campaigns and other political professionals, offers 83 “ethnic and religious” donor lists, 40 percent of which target Jews.

In fact, there are 34 Jewish lists to choose from, with names ranging from “Cream of the Crop Jewish Contributors” to “Generous Jewish Givers.” Collectively, they include the names of some 1.8 million Jewish donors.

Welcome to the quest for what is perhaps the hottest commodity in the political marketplace: the well-heeled Jewish contributor.

Consider these statistics:

According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks the flow of money in the campaign system, pro-Israel interests have contributed $41.3 million in individual, PAC (political action committee) and soft money contributions to federal candidates and party committees over the past decade.

Of that amount, more than two-thirds - $28.6 million - has gone to Democrats, while the other $12.7 million has gone to Republicans.

Sources within the Democratic Party estimate that contributions from Jews make up 50 percent of the donations the party receives from individuals each election cycle, though neither party will admit publicly that it tracks donations via religion or ethnicity.

Research by University of Akron political scientist John Green, an expert on religion and politics, revealed that in the 2000 presidential primary, Democratic candidates Al Gore and Bill Bradley raised a staggering 21 percent of their contributions from Jews.

In dollar terms, that means $13 million of the $62 million raised by the two presidential contenders came from the Jewish community - a stunning revelation considering that Jewish voters accounted for just 4 percent of voters in the 2000 elections.

It’s no wonder then, looking toward the Gore-less horizon of 2004, that political pros will be working to reap the benefits of the nation’s politically minded Jewish benefactors.

Will the money flow to the likes of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), an Orthodox Jew and relatively conservative Democrat who ran on the Democratic ticket with Gore in 2000 and announced Jan. 13 that he will seek the presidential nomination?

Or will Jews place their bets on a Vietnam veteran from Boston, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a liberal multi-millionaire who would rather not tap into his ketchup heiress wife’s fortune if he can help it?

How will a long-time lawmaker like House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) or a relative unknown like former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean fare in the money chase among Jews as they chase their own presidential ambitions?

Or will more Jews invest in a sitting Republican president who has shown unbending support for Israel and is leading the country through its gravest international crises in recent history?

Political Tectonics

“The Republican Party is aggressively reaching out and trying to bring the Jewish community into the party,” insists Matt Brooks, a spokesman for the Washington-based Republican Jewish Coalition.

In fact, Brooks says the GOP is “confident [that in 2004] we’ll do better nationally among Jewish voters than we did in 2000.”

Democratic presidential candidates typically fare well with Jewish voters. Bill Clinton won about 80 percent of the Jewish vote in 1992 and garnered similar support in 1996.

On the other hand, Republican candidates’ popularity among Jewish voters has fluctuated considerably over the years. Dwight Eisenhower won the highest percentage of support from Jews in 1956, garnering 40 percent of their vote. And Ronald Reagan did well in 1980, when he won with 39 percent support among Jews.

In 2000, George W. Bush garnered only 19 percent of the Jewish vote.

Nonetheless, experts believe Bush has shored up support among Jews in the past two years and some readers of political tea leaves believe the 2002 mid-term elections signal that a wholesale realignment is under way.

“This was a great election for us,” Brooks said, singling out elections in Minnesota, where Norm Coleman, a Jewish Republican, was elected to the Senate; and Hawaii, where voters chose as their governor a 49-year-old pro-choice Jewish Republican named Linda Lingle.

Brooks admits he doesn’t expect to see a rush of Jews flocking to change their voter registration affiliations, but he does believe that the shifting political landscape will deliver more Jewish votes and money to the GOP.

And while Republicans - who already hold a significant fund-raising advantage over Democrats - might not be reaping the lion’s share of Jewish money, they aren’t suffering either.

According to Green’s research, Jews comprised 2.5 percent of all Republican primary donors in the 2000 presidential campaign, donating $3.75 million of some $150 million raised.

Pointing to 2002 as a watermark, Brooks notes that his group had a banner fund-raising year, raising in excess of $300,000 for Coleman and fellow freshman Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), “close to that” amount for Rep. John Thune (R-S.D.) and a “good chunk” for former Rep. Jim Talent (D-Mo.), who defeated Sen. Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.).

While the House of Representatives only hosts one Jewish Republican lawmaker, Virginia’s Eric Cantor, Brooks said he would “suspect that by 2004 and 2006, Eric will have a lot more [Jewish] colleagues” in the GOP.

Wooing Jewish voters

If there is a shift at hand, it is anything but accidental.

GOP operatives have been calculating ways to win over Jewish allegiance to the conservative side for years.

GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who admitted to a crowd at United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Philadelphia last fall that he is no longer “embarrassed” to admit that he’s a Jew and a Republican, has been coaching Republicans for years on how to make the party appear to be more attractive and friendly to the nation’s diverse Jewish community.

And influential lobbyists like Jack Abramoff, a partner in the Miami-based law firm Greenberg Traurig, have been meeting with dozens of influential Jews who traditionally supported Democrats but want to find out how they can express their support for Bush and pro-Israel lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Beyond that, some Jews who actively participate in the political process are eager to point out that the wholesale characterization of the Jewish community as die-hard Democrats simply isn’t correct.

Last April, New Jersey real estate agent Jerry Gontownik, a 2000 Gore supporter and the son of Holocaust survivors, told the Washington Post he supported President Bush because he was the “best hope for the future of Western civilization.”

That said, it’s difficult to ascertain whether donations from Jews to the GOP are actually on the rise.

A glance at campaign finance records from the 2002 elections, for instance, shows an increase among fund-raising totals by Jewish groups with a Republican slant.

For example, the Republican Jewish Coalition PAC, an arm of Brooks’ group, gave $123,400 in direct contributions to Republican candidates last year - up from just $9,000 in the 2000 campaign cycle.

At the same time, Jewish-identified groups that support both Republican and Democratic candidates are still sending most of their funds to liberal candidates and politicians.

For example, the Friends of Israel PAC gave $81,000 to Democratic candidates last year and only $9,000 to Republicans. The Women’s Alliance for Israel PAC gave $103,000 to Democrats and $51,500 to Republicans, while the Women’s Pro-Israel PAC contributed $25,550 to Democrats and $12,850 to Republicans.

While the giving patterns of individual donors - who are responsible for the vast majority of Jewish political money in the system - are more difficult to track, a number of prominent Jewish businessman are giving fat checks to GOP candidates, even if they are not getting very much attention because of it.

While the press focused on Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers creator Haim Saban’s contributions to the Democratic party last year - along with his wife Cheryl, Saban gave more than $8.9 million to Democrats last year - former Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus was writing out checks to the GOP.

In the 2002 campaign cycle alone, Marcus gave more than $385,000 to Republican candidates and party organizations in Georgia and nationally, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Among his largest gifts were $50,000 and $250,000 soft money contributions to the Republican National Committee’s National State Elections Committee.

Meanwhile, his former company’s political action committee, which raises money from Home Depot employees on a voluntary basis, made some $195,500 in donations to Republican candidates and another $93,500 to Democrats.

Another wealthy Atlantan, Clyde Rodbell, the Jewish CEO of Apex Supply, made more than $13,000 in contributions, according to FEC data, with much of it going directly to GOP candidates and party organizations.

“I don’t think the [Jewish] community has ever seen a transformation such as this,” Brooks said. “This is just scratching the surface to where we’re heading.”

Democrats react

Some Democrats are nervous.

“I think that Bush is making inroads in the Jewish community,” said Simon Rosenberg, a powerful and respected leader within the New Democrat Network, a centrist group whose most notable members have included Clinton, Gore and Lieberman.

“I think it’s a whole host of things. I don’t think Jews are single issue voters,” Rosenberg explained. “I think they care about Israel and foreign policy, but they care about the economy and health care and other issues, too.

“How significant the [Republican] gains are we’re only going to know in 2004.”

Moreover, Rosenberg contends, the Bush equation - which centers on his strength and popularity - demands that the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004 will have to have a “powerful dimension in likability and leadership.”

But Rosenberg and other Democrats tend to believe that most Jews will continue to maintain their allegiance - financial and otherwise - to the Democratic Party because of what they see as the GOP-controlled Congress’s “right-wing agenda.”

“Republicans will pursue their right-wing agenda, whether it’s school vouchers, whether it’s an extreme agenda on abortion, whether it’s pushing the school prayer issue,” Martin Frost (D-Texas), the second most senior Jewish Democrat in the House, said in a recent interview.

The Israel agenda

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, an Orthodox Jew who advises the party’s top officials on political trends and issues, believes that “those folks who try for their own political purposes to make Israel into a partisan issue are doing a disservice.”

“When we talk about the Israel agenda, there’s no question that both parties are fundamentally pro-Israel, with some individual exceptions on both sides of the aisle,” Mellman said. But as for a wholesale realignment of the Jewish community, he’s simply not buying it.

“It’s a good theory. There just isn’t any evidence for it,” Mellman said.

But the 2002 elections proved that Jewish Democrats will not support just any brand of liberal Democrat.

In Georgia and Alabama in particular, Jewish donors proudly flexed their muscles, helping to fill the war chests of two pro-Israel African Americans - both Democrats - to defeat African-American incumbent Reps. Cynthia McKinney and Ike Hilliard after they displayed hostility toward Israel.

In fact, financial support from out-of-state Jews became a heated and divisive issue in Hilliard’s race, where the ultimate winner, Harvard-educated lawyer Artur Davis, was blasted in an anonymous flier for the donations he had received from Jews.

And McKinney’s father, Billy, didn’t help her cause when he blamed his daughter’s troubles on “the J-E-W-S” when polls showed her trailing the ultimate winner, Denise Majette.

But the question for 2004, Democrats say, isn’t simply whether Jews will continue to support Democrats, but rather which Democrats will get their support.

Hooray for Hollywood?

Former Minority Leader Gephardt, who relinquished his post to California Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) this year, won’t wield the same level of influence in Congress any more, but he has important and powerful Jewish friends in Hollywood, a bastion for wealthy liberals.

Last election cycle, for example, Gephardt raked in campaign funds from the Sabans, Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Barbra Streisand and others.

But Streisand, one of the Democratic Party’s most consistent and generous donors, is also fond of a number of senators, including John Kerry.

Kerry - who has raised $8.6 million over the past two years - received a $1,000 donation from the Funny Girl last year and another $1,000 from Paramount Pictures executive Sherry Lansing, who is also Jewish.

In fact, Kerry, who was named the B’nai B’rith Council of Greater Boston’s “Man of the Year” in 1986 and received a “Congressional Leadership Award” from the American Jewish Committee in 2000, is a prodigious fund-raiser in the Jewish community.

And while Lieberman has clearly irritated - if not alienated - some of Hollywood’s finest by unabashedly speaking out against sex and violence in the entertainment industry, strategists and Democratic Party fund-raisers believe he may have the best fund-raising potential of any Democratic candidate.

Lieberman helped attract an unprecedented level of support in 2000 from Jews, who responded to his candidacy with an infusion of campaign cash.

In September of 2000, according to the Los Angeles Times, Lieberman raised $12 million at Democratic National Committee events - more than twice the $5.4 million that his counterpart, Dick Cheney, helped to drum up among Republicans.

As Marvin Lender of Lender’s Bagels told the Times, “I did wake up that morning when Joe was [named] and said, ÔI’m not going to sit on my hands and be happy for him.’ I’m an actions-results type of person, so I started to fund-raise.”

At last count, Lieberman had about $700,000 left in his re-election account, which will hardly make a dent in the millions more he will have to raise for a serious presidential bid.

But while Lieberman’s widespread popularity quotient is debatable, recent evidence suggests he still has fund-raising appeal aplenty within the Jewish community.

When Maryland gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a Democrat, was running out of cash on the campaign trail last year, Jewish philanthropist Howard Friedman heeded the call.

Friedman and Lieberman held a fund-raising event that pulled in $750,000 for Townsend - the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy - who eventually lost to Rep. Robert Ehrlich (R-Md.).

Less clear is how lower-profile Democratic candidates such as North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and Dean will fare.

With his youthful good looks and a long list of trial lawyer friends around the country, Edwards, 49, would probably be able to raise a good share of funds among Jewish donors.

Dean, who tossed his hat into the ring late last year, might suffer from his relative obscurity, but his wife, a Jewish physician, could help him make inroads among Jewish donors.

And retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who commanded NATO forces in Kosovo, could also draw Jewish money. Clark is the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant who was raised as a Christian after his mother remarried but has been exploring his Jewish roots.

Wherever Jewish dollars go in 2004, the fact is that Democrats can’t survive without them.

Final tallies for fund-raising in the 2002 mid-term elections aren’t available yet, but in the last presidential election in 2000, the Democratic Party raised $520.4 million, while the Republican Party raked in a stunning $715.7 million.

Considering that Jews give somewhere between 20 to 50 percent of the political contributions raised by Democrats, it’s clear that the party simply cannot afford to lose the Jewish community’s financial support.

Following the money

¥ Pro-Israel interests gave $28.6 million to Democrats over the last decade and $12.7 million to Republicans.

¥ In the 2000 presidential primary, Democratic candidates Al Gore and Bill Bradley got 21 percent ($13 million) of their contributions from Jews.

¥ Republican primary candidates in 2000 got 2.5 percent ($3.75 million) of their contributions from Jewish donors.

 ¥ In September 2000, Joe Lieberman raised $12 million at Democratic National Committee events; Dick Cheney raised $5.4 million at GOP events.

Lieberman Throws His Kippah into the Ring

By James D. Besser
Washington Correspondent

Is the United States ready for its first Jewish president? Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who formally announced his candidacy Jan. 13, is about to find out.

“I think the American people are too smart and too aware of how tough the times are to judge a candidate for president on anything other than his record, ability and ideas and values for America’s future,” Lieberman said.

As Al Gore’s vice presidential partner in the 2000 race, Lieberman proved both his mettle as a campaigner and the appeal of his on-the-sleeve faith.

“The Jewish factor is a zero; it’s a non-factor,” said Gilbert Kahn, a Kean University political scientist and longtime observer of the Jewish political scene. “The Gore-Lieberman ticket got 500,000 more votes than Bush-Cheney; that means a preponderance of the American people are not concerned about a Jewish president or vice president.”

Exit polls showed that Lieberman, 60, was a big plus for the ticket, not a liability. The only groups that publicly complained about his “God talk” were Jewish ones.

Running for the presidency and the vice presidency are different kettles of gefilte fish, but Lieberman enters the 2004 race with some formidable assets, starting with fund raising.

“Fund raising is going to be a big problem for the other candidates,” said Allan J. Lichtman, a presidential historian and expert in political prognostication.

The winner of the Democratic sweepstakes will need more than $100 million; Lieberman is ahead of his Democratic rivals and should benefit from his extensive Jewish connections.

Lieberman also enjoys higher name recognition than many potential rivals, thanks to his 2000 run, his leading role in creating the Department of Homeland Security and his high-visibility crusade against offensive electronic media.

And much to the surprise of many analysts, Lieberman has developed a political persona that has proved appealing to a broad spectrum of Americans.

Lieberman is widely respected for his national security expertise. That could be a big plus in the primary fight, and if Bush’s war against terrorism falters, it could also make Lieberman a more attractive opponent in the general election.

Still, some analysts believe Lieberman will be tarnished by his connection to Gore, and by extension to a Clinton-Gore administration that many Americans - even Democrats - seem to want to forget.

“One reason Gore didn’t run is that he knew the Democratic leadership wasn’t supporting him,” Lichtman said. “Lieberman is closely identified with Gore, so some of that taint rubs off on him.”

But a bigger problem may be a shift back to the left in a party that is still shell-shocked over its big losses in November.

Lieberman, who represents the conservative wing of his party, is closely allied with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a group Clinton helped create and which many liberals see as an effort to remake the Democratic Party as “GOP-lite.”

But Lieberman’s moderate-conservative positions could pay big dividends with Southern voters, both in the primaries and the general election.

“The last two Democrats to win the presidency were governors from Arkansas and Georgia,” said Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), a leading member of the Jewish delegation in Congress. “Joe Lieberman, because of his strong focus on religion and values, has done very well in a region the Democrats have to do better in to win the presidency.”

Faith-based campaigning?

A harder-to-analyze issue is Lieberman’s Judaism and his demonstrated willingness to bring his faith into the campaign process.

Judaism doesn’t promote the kinds of public displays of piety and observance that have become common in the born-again Christian world, says political scientist Gilbert Kahn. So while he is committed to a rigorous Judaism in his own life, Lieberman packaged himself to voters in a much more generic, Judeo-Christian package.

Still, few observers expect Lieberman to tone down his enthusiastic faith on the campaign trail; Orthodox Judaism is too much a part of who he is.

“So much of the religious talk we see in politics these days is an acting job,” said one Jewish political activist. “That’s not true with Joe; it’s genuine, it’s a central part of who he is and for better or worse it’s going to be part of his campaign.”

Lieberman will undoubtedly win strong but not universal support from Jewish Democrats. Jewish social liberals are “unlikely to support Lieberman in the primaries,” said University of Akron political scientist John Green. “But they may get behind him if he prevails.”

The symbolic power of his groundbreaking candidacy may also draw some Jewish Republicans and independents to him.

But Bush may have some big advantages with pro-Israel hawks.

The president has offered unprecedented support for the hardline government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon while casting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat into the diplomatic wilderness.

During a recent Middle East swing, Lieberman was clearly trying to demonstrate that while he remains a deeply committed supporter of Israel, if elected he would not put Israel’s needs first.

In meetings with Israeli officials he warned them to expect new U.S. pressure on settlements after the expected U.S. attack on Iraq, and repeated his support for Palestinian statehood.

He also referred to the “desperate humanitarian conditions” among West Bank Palestinians.

Benjamin Ginsberg, the Johns Hopkins University political scientist, says Lieberman’s statements are a conscious effort to preposition himself for inevitable questions on the campaign trail.

“He will be asked over and over again: Will he put Israel’s interests over America’s? He has to make statements that he can point to later on that show his long record of putting American interests first,” said Ginsberg.

That could lead to a fascinating political paradox in which many Orthodox Jews and pro-Israel hardliners who vehemently opposed past land-for-peace negotiations and who regard Palestinian statehood as a mortal danger to Israel may spurn the first Jew to run for the presidency.

“I think grassroots Jews will be very concerned about him endorsing a Palestinian state,” said Morton Klein, president of the hardline Zionist Organization of America. “I think that will hurt his chances in 2004.”