HARRISBURG, Pa. – For Rona Kaufman, the signs are everywhere that more Jews feel abandoned by the Democratic Party and may vote for Republican Donald Trump.
It's in her Facebook feed. It's in the discomfort she observed during a question-and-answer at a recent Democratic Party campaign event in Pittsburgh. It's in her own family.
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“The family that is my generation and older generations, I don’t think anybody is voting for Harris, and we’ve never voted Republican, ever," Kaufman, 49, said, referring to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. “My sister has a Trump sign outside her house, and that is a huge shift.”
How big a shift? Surveys continue to find that most Jewish voters still support the Democratic ticket, and Kaufman acknowledges that she's an exception.
Still, any shift could have enormous implications in Pennsylvania, where tens of thousands of votes decided the past two presidential elections. Many Jewish voters say the 2024 presidential election is like no other in memory, coming amid the growing fallout from Hamas’ brutal attack on Israelis last year.
Jews represent a sliver of the voting-age population in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the so-called blue wall of states that Democrats have come to rely on in recent presidential elections. In a close election, they are a big enough constituency that the campaigns of Harris and Trump see the potential for any slippage to swing a close contest.
That has forced Harris to walk a line between traditional Democratic constituencies with strong feelings about the war in Gaza, both Jews and Arab Americans — balancing support for Israel with outrage over the deaths of Israeli and Palestinian civilians and destruction in the region. The Biden administration has been pressuring Israel to end its attacks, which continued last week with the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by Israeli troops.
Trump has looked to exploit the opening among Jewish voters especially, saying Harris “ doesn't like ” Jewish people, Jews who don't vote for him “need their head examined ” and that he’ll be the “ best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.”
In the past, surveys have shown that Jews overwhelmingly vote Democratic. A Pew Research Center poll released last month found that about two-thirds of Jewish voters back Harris. In 2020, about 7 in 10 Jewish voters supported President Joe Biden, according to AP VoteCast.
The question is whether that has changed, as Jews now see Israel's survival in a new light as its war with Hamas widens to Hezbollah and possibly Iran.
That has put a new focus on the relationship between Israel and the U.S., which continues to provide military aid. And many Jews say rising acts of antisemitism in the United States and anti-Israel protests sweeping across cities and college campuses — including in Philadelphia — have made them feel unsafe.
In Pennsylvania, still fresh in many minds is a gunman absorbed by white supremacist ideology murdering 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.
As Pennsylvania plays a central role in the election, many say they've never seen such outreach from campaigns as they have now.
From Trump on down, Republicans are attempting to win over Jewish voters by highlighting a Democratic Party torn between its traditional and unconditional support for Israel and a growing faction that has accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza, called for Israel to unconditionally stop attacking Hamas, and demanded that the U.S. end its military support for Israel.
For some Jews who typically vote Democratic, that has resonated.
“I think that there are folks who are reluctant Trump voters who feel scared as Jews in this country,” said Jeremy Kazzaz, a Pittsburgh resident and Harris supporter.
Kazzaz, however, said Harris has a long record of fighting antisemitism that is relatively unknown to many voters.
He pointed out that the Biden administration tapped her husband, Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, to lead a task force to develop a strategy to fight antisemitism well before Hamas attacked Israel. Emhoff has been a key surrogate, campaigning in front of Jewish audiences in the Philadelphia suburbs and speaking at the groundbreaking of a new complex replacing Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.
Still, where Harris' supporters see strong support of Israel — for instance, the Biden administration sent a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel, along with the troops needed to operate it — others see conditional support.
That includes Biden urging Israel not to hit Iran’s nuclear program or oil fields. At the same time, Biden has stressed his administration’s support for Israel and, in her remarks on the anniversary of Hamas' attack, Harris said she'll “always ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself and that I will always work to ensure the safety and security of the Jewish people here and around the world.”
Steve Rosenberg, of Philadelphia, who voted for Trump in 2016 and then Biden in 2020, will vote for Trump in 2024. In part, Rosenberg criticized Biden’s extending sanctions waivers to Iran, contending that it provided the Islamic Republic with the cash to finance a war against Israel.
“The question is, ‘Who is better off today than four years ago?’” Rosenberg said. “And the answer is Iran and the mullahs and their proxies, and it's because Biden and Kamala Harris have capitulated to Iran.”
Biden administration officials have said they were extending Trump-era waivers that gave Iran access to money restricted for humanitarian supplies and that was vetted to ensure the cash could only be used for food, medicine, medical equipment and agricultural goods. Iran hawks contend that the waivers can allow Iran to free up domestic revenue it would have otherwise spent on humanitarian goods to fund proxies like Hamas.
The U.S., meanwhile, has imposed other new sanctions on Iran this year.
Kaufman, a self-described progressive who lives in Pittsburgh's heavily Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood, never thought she would vote for Trump.
But now, she expects Trump will continue a hardline stance against Iran — which she calls an imminent threat to democracy, human rights and western civilization — and worries that Harris will appease Iran and pander to the party's left wing.
Jews with very strong connections to Israel — her parents were born there and her daughter just finished a two-year eight-month mandatory service with the Israeli army — are similarly conflicted over supporting Harris, Kaufman said. “I’m saying it out loud everywhere, but most people aren't saying it out loud.”
Many Jews who support Harris, however, say they see Trump as a threat to democracy.
That's important, they say, because minorities — including Jews — have reason to fear persecution under dictators.
They can unfurl a list of comments by Trump that they see as threatening: using the military against domestic enemies, peddling dual-loyalty tropes about Jews, setting up Jews as scapegoats if he loses and, in the days after Hamas' attack, criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while praising Hezbollah as “very smart.”
Emhoff called Trump a “known antisemite.”
Some see Trump's efforts on Jan. 6, 2021, to stay in power as a threat. Many are wary of his affinity for dictators, and bring up his dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort with far-right activist Nick Fuentes and rapper Ye, two men known for spewing antisemitic rhetoric.
"That’s the conversation that I’m having with Jews," said Rabbi Beth Janus of Philadelphia.
Janus said Jews she knows are excited that a woman could be president and that she's married to a Jewish man. Conversely, Trump's support for Israel is transactional, she said.
“When it serves his needs, his objectives, he supports Israel,” Janus said. “But if it didn’t, then he wouldn't support Israel.”
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This story has been corrected to delete an erroneous reference to lifting Trump-era sanctions on Iran and replaces it with the Biden administration extending Trump-era sanctions waivers.
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Follow Marc Levy at twitter.com/timelywriter.