c. 1998 Religion News Service
(Rabbi Rudin is the National Interreligious Affairs Director of the
American Jewish Committee.)
UNDATED _ The surprising results of the 1998 elections illustrate once more how the religiously and racially diverse American electorate continues to confound political pundits.
ITEM: In Election Day exit polls in the West, South, and Midwest, voters put”morals and ethics”as their first or second major concern. Only in the Northeast did morals and ethics slump to fourth place. Yet, in all parts of the country the”Clinton/Lewinsky matter”came in dead last as an election issue.
Hello! Doesn’t a White House sex scandal qualify as morals and ethics? Apparently not, and clearly, the stern preaching by self-righteous politicians and journalists failed to convince most Americans that the behavior of Bill and Monica was a central campaign issue.
ITEM: Southern Baptists are the largest religious group in Alabama and South Carolina and that denomination’s leadership publicly opposed establishing state lotteries as a source for education funds. In addition, the incumbent Republican governors of those states, Fob James and David Beasley, campaigned against the lotteries, but both were defeated.
Obviously, many Alabama and South Carolina Southern Baptists didn’t follow the official position of their church. Color me not surprised that religious leaders were unable to”deliver”the votes of their constituents.
ITEM: In 1994 Republican Jeb Bush was defeated for the governorship of Florida. In his race against Lawton Chiles, many of Bush’s religious right positions, including Bible reading and prayer in the public schools, played poorly among black and Jewish voters.
I vividly remember participating in a Florida interreligious conference with Bush shortly after his defeat. At that meeting Jews and Christians affirmed the separation of church and state and strongly opposed the presence of religious symbols and practices in public school classrooms.
Bush said the conference had a profound impact upon him. In this year’s successful gubernatorial race, the former president’s son showed he had learned his lesson well and his inclusive campaign made clear that he did not seek to impose his personal moral views upon the general society.
Welcome to the real America, Governor-elect Bush! You’ve discovered there are folks in Florida from many religions and racial groups. And you’ve also discovered that you can’t win elections without their support.
ITEM: California’s 46th Congressional district (Orange County) is a quintessential example of America’s changing demography. GOP arch-conservative Bob Dornan had represented the district for many years until 1996 when he was narrowly defeated by Democrat Loretta Sanchez. Her victory confirmed the increasing number of Hispanic voters in the formerly almost all-white district.
Although Dornan charged election fraud, he failed to overturn the result.
Sanchez and Dornan met this year in a re-match, and incredibly, Dornan, an Irish-American, claimed that because of his strong anti-abortion stand, he was the”only real Latino”in the race. Dornan fell into the same trap that has often plagued many other politicians who believe that groups like Hispanics, women, Jews, blacks, Catholics, the elderly, and gays are”one-issue”voters.
Dornan was convinced that being against abortion was the key to winning Hispanic votes. Wrong. Like all other Americans, Hispanics bring a bundle of issues into the voting booth, not just one. Appealing to a single issue will no longer work in today’s pluralistic America. Unlike 1996, this time it wasn’t even close: Sanchez defeated Dornan by 17 percentage points.
ITEM: During his eighteen years as U.S. Senator from New York, Alphonse D’Amato, a Roman Catholic, strenuously worked in behalf of Israel, Soviet Jewry, Holocaust survivors, and other issues important to the Jewish community. And even though D’Amato’s unsuccessful opponents had all been Jews, he had always attracted a high number of Jewish votes. Indeed, Jews were seen as D’Amato’s perpetual margin of victory because he attracted so few black and Hispanic votes.
This year he faced still another Jewish opponent, Charles Schumer, and once again it appeared that D’Amato would win. But D’Amato’s numbers among Jewish voters went into a free fall when he called Schumer a”putzhead,”a Yiddish vulgarism. And I am certain there would have been an equally negative reaction in the Italian-American community if Schumer had called his opponent a”wophead.” Did D’Amato assume his long support of Jewish causes somehow entitled him to deride his opponent with an”insider’s”term of contempt? The use of ugly religious or racial terms has negative consequences in today’s America and D’Amato paid an exceedingly high price to learn that lesson.
Oh yes, Schumer defeated D’Amato by nearly ten percentage points, and won 76 percent of the Jewish vote, a far higher figure than D’Amato’s previous opponents.
DEA END RUDIN
