Haaretz:
By Jennifer Siegel, The Forward
As the Republican Party coalesces behind presidential contender John McCain, Jewish bigwigs in the party are vying for influence in the campaign.
Currently leading the way is the House's only Jewish Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia - a rising party star who currently serves as chief deputy whip - who is raising funds for McCain and the Republican National Committee as the chair of the GOP's 2008 Victory Jewish Coalition. The Jewish outreach effort is being co-chaired by Fred Zeidman, a Houston-based venture capitalist and perennial party heavyweight who chairs the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and serves on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
One alleged casualty of the Cantor-Zeidman leadership team is New York developer Mark Broxmeyer, national chairman of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. According to a person familiar with the campaign, Broxmeyer - a member of McCain's national finance committee who previously had headed up McCain's Jewish outreach - was 'pushed aside' to make way for Cantor and Zeidman; a press release put out by the McCain campaign late last month announced that Broxmeyer would chair a Jewish advisory committee to the campaign.
While some longtime McCain backers have seen their stars rise within the campaign, other Republican heavyweights who previously backed McCain's rivals have been making up for lost time with the Arizona senator, including St. Louis businessman Sam Fox, who was originally a supporter of Mitt Romney, and New York real estate developer George Klein, a major backer of Rudy Giuliani.
Much of the current jockeying underscores the typical competition for influence that occurs among deep-pocketed party insiders. At the same time, it reflects some long-simmering tensions between Jewish factions of the Republican Party, including the RJC - which was founded in 1985 and bills itself as "the sole voice of Jewish Republicans to Republican decision makers and the Jewish community" - and the Republican board members of various nonpartisan pro-Israel organizations and political action committees. During the 2004 campaign, several Washington insiders told the Forward, the RJC competed with board members from the nonpartisan American Israel Public Affairs Committee for influence within the Bush operation, with the campaign ultimately choosing Aipac activist Michael Lebovitz as its head of outreach to Jewish voters. While no official liaison has been named as of yet in the McCain campaign, one New York GOP operative not aligned with either camp said he believed that the same sense of competition has begun to tinge the 2008 race.
"There's a lot of elbowing going on right now to determine who's going to be in charge of McCain's Jewish campaign - the RJC or Aipac," the Republican operative said. [link]
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