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October 17, 2003/Tishri 21 5764, Vol. 56, No. 4
Jews prepare for the 'governator'
TOM TUGEND
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
What's a Jew to do when the Republican son of a Nazi Party member defeats the Democratic incumbent to become governor of the nation's most populous state?
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, say jubilant Republicans, hoping that California Jews will flock to support the state's new governor-elect, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"It used to be in California that we were afraid to speak out in a roomful of Jews, but now we're standing up and speaking up," the ecstatic chairman of the Southern California chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Bruce Bialosky, said at Schwarzenegger's victory party on Oct. 7. "Why, even the rabbis are changing their sermons!"
Bialosky's enthusiasm was shared by Jewish Republicans across the state Oct. 7, minutes after Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, conceded his loss in the recall election, and the Republican action-movie star was chosen as his successor.
"This is akin to the Reagan revolution," proclaimed attorney Sheldon Sloan, one of Schwarzenegger's earliest Jewish backers. "We're going to make big inroads into the Democratic hold on Jewish voters."
That analysis was not shared by most Democrats or political analysts, however, who predicted that there would not be any fundamental changes in the state's political culture - or in the Jewish tendency to vote Democratic.
In a quick, informal election-night survey, experts and party activists weighed in on whether Jewish influence in Sacramento would wane under the new governor.
"I doubt it," Republican pollster Arnold Steinberg says. "There are so many Jews in the entertainment industry and on the west side" of Los Angeles "who know Arnold, and he will be reaching out to the Jewish community fairly quickly."
The president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, John Fishel, said a Schwarzenegger administration's real impact on California Jewish communities might be in economic terms, especially if deep budget cuts lower state support for Jewish and other social welfare agencies.
Jewish voters apparently were little influenced by charges that the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger, whose estranged father joined the Nazi Party during World War II, harbored admiration for Hitler when he was younger.
Schwarzenegger was largely estranged from his father, and repeatedly has disavowed any support for his father's political views.
The actor also has long supported the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance, both as a donor and as a speaker on behalf of tolerance.
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