LAS VEGAS, Nevada — The annual leadership meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition kicked off Wednesday amid speculation that more Jews could vote for former President Donald Trump over concerns about Israel and antisemitism.
The gathering, which typically draws hundreds of donors and activists, as well as politicians and candidates, is being held in September this year, rather than in the winter, to have the biggest possible impact at the start of the fall campaign season.
American Jews vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party, and align themselves with the political left. (Jews in other countries, including Israel, tend to favor more conservative candidates, though the community is politically diverse.)
Trump has done well among Jewish voters, despite attempts by Democrats and the media to associate him with antisemitism. He won 24% of the Jewish vote in 2016, but 30.5% in 2020, according to exit polls — the highest percentage for any Republican candidate since 1988.
Trump did well because of his strong support for Israel, which enjoyed four years of peace during his presidency. He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and negotiated the Abraham Accords with several neighboring Arab states. (He is expected to address the gathering in Las Vegas by satellite.)
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, in contrast, have seen violence and war erupt in the Middle East, as they have tried to appease Iran and to restore funding to the Palestinians that Trump had cut over concerns about terrorism.
The explosion of antisemitism on college campuses and in major Democrat-run cities is also a problem for the Democratic ticket.
That led to a “small slip” of Jewish Democrats toward voting for Trump, the Republican nominee, earlier this summer.
But at least some of those Democrats decided to stick with the party after Harris — who is married to a Jew, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff — replaced Biden at the top of the ticket.
On the first night of the Republican Jewish Coalition, speakers sounded an optimistic tone about Trump’s prospects among Jewish voters, especially in swing states like Pennsylvania, whose Jewish Democratic governor was passed over as Harris’s running mate because of objections from anti-Israel activists within the Democratic Party.
Reporters, however, were fixated on the issue of right-wing commentary online, where antisemitism has surfaced among a small but vocal group. They challenged Republican politicians and officials in press gaggles to “disavow” this or that comment.
If Democrats can make the case that antisemitism and the bogeyman of “Christian nationalism” lurk within Republican ranks, they may be able to keep Jewish voters inside the left-wing corral — however uneasily.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.