- WASHINGTON -- Participants
in this month's Congressional Black Caucus conference say the defeat of
two black House members in bitter primaries not only suggests a widening
rift with Jewish Democrats, but trouble within the Democratic Party itself.
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- "People were talking retaliation," said Ron
Walters, the director of the African American Leadership Institute at the
University of Maryland, of last week's CBC events in Washington. "They
were saying [presidential hopeful] Sen. Joe Lieberman is dead in the water,
and so on and so forth."
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- The anger is emanating from reports that several outside
Jewish special interest groups took a particular interest in defeating
Reps. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., and Earl Hilliard, D-Ala., by fueling the
campaigns of their respective Democratic primary opponents with thousands
of dollars and an interest in seeing the incumbents defeated for their
long-standing support of Palestinians.
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- Both incumbents lost in stunning defeats.
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- McKinney blamed the Jewish lobby and the Democratic Party
for her Aug. 20 primary loss by 16 percentage points to Judge Denise Majette,
who is also black. The five-termer had sparked the ire of the Jewish community
with her outreach to Arabs, particularly after the Sept. 11 attacks, and
her support of Palestinians in light of terrorist bombings in Israel. She
received ample financial support in her campaign from Arab groups.
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- Hilliard, too, is a fervent supporter of Palestinians,
and lost in June 56-44 percent to opponent Artur Davis, who is also black
and was supported heavily by Jewish special interest dollars.
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- Walters said their defeats were payback from the wealthy
Jewish lobby.
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- "When you unseat two black candidates, it's not
a freak thing, it's a strategy. It took black candidates by surprise, and
it's made them very angry," he said. "Why the leadership of the
party didn't do anything, that's the big mystery."
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- Political observers say McKinney was the only one to
blame for her own defeat. She alienated the Democratic Jewish community
after Sept. 11 when she slammed former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for
returning a $10 million check to a Saudi prince who had linked the attacks
to America's Mideast policy. McKinney wrote the prince a letter criticizing
Giuliani and asking for the money back to give to poor black communities.
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- Others say McKinney just didn't speak to black voters
in her district anymore, while Republican voters who could vote in the
primary crossed lines en masse to help defeat her.
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- "There is a wide variety of reasons as to why that
defeat might have happened," said John Norton, spokesman for the Democratic
National Committee. Norton said the party does not get involved in primaries,
but in this case, "We would never pin it [defeat] on a group of outsiders
who are wed to a particular issue."
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- Despite the building case against McKinney, political
analysts agree that Jews, though traditionally loyal to the Democratic
Party, have been moving further to the right since President Bush took
office. The president's support of Israel, combined with his "compassionate
conservatism," has done a lot to soften their attitudes against Republicans
in the last year.
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- "Jews are clearly moving in a conservative direction,
particularly at city and state levels," said Murray Friedman, head
of the Center for Jewish History at Temple University and author of What
Went Wrong: The Creation and Collapse of the Black-Jewish Alliance.
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- Jewish-black relations have been "waxing and waning"
since the '60s, he said, and tensions uncovered in the Hilliard and McKinney
races "are just a continuation of that."
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- Friedman said past anti-Semitic rhetoric against Jews
by visible members of the black community like the Rev. Al Sharpton and
the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and the fact there was no clear support for Israel
by black members on recent resolutions in Congress, have exacerbated this
growing rift between the two traditional allies.
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- "It's not helpful to have this rift out in the open
-- this spells trouble for the Democratic Party," said Rich Galen,
who is Jewish and a Republican strategist. He says if black voters follow
through with plans to retaliate against the party for not doing more to
save McKinney and Hilliard's seats, it could be disastrous. At the same
time, he said, Democratic Jews may be wondering where the party was when
black lawmakers were making statements against Israel.
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- "It all ends up spelling trouble for Democrats,"
he added.
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- Walters said the party has gone on double duty to quell
the anger among blacks, who are by a vast majority Democrats. He doesn't
buy that McKinney had lost support among the black voters in her district,
but blames Republicans and Jewish outsiders, and a lack of support from
the party.
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- "I just don't know why the Democratic leadership
didn't step up and wrestle this to the ground," he complained.
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- A handful of CBC members have approached the leadership,
not to blame them for their members' losses, but to request meetings, even
a retreat, to help ease the growing tensions between the Jewish and black
factions within the party, staff members said Tuesday.
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- Fred Turner, a spokesman for Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla.,
said his boss "has been talking to his colleagues, both black and
Jewish, to make things better. We have to remind people that there is quite
a bit of shared history between the two groups."
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- Eric Smith, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Dick
Gephardt, who met recently with CBC members on the matter, said there was
definite agreement to clear up the tensions that exist. "He acknowledges
that it would be good to continue the discussion."
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- Associated Press. All rights reserved. Copyright ©
2002 Standard & Poor's FOX News Network, LLC 2002. All rights reserved.
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