Damon Winter/The New York Times
Barack Obama speaking Friday at a town-hall-style meeting with veterans at the American Legion Post 490 in Houston.
By NEELA BANERJEE Published: March 1, 2008 Correction Appended
As he battles for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama is trying to strengthen his support among Jewish voters and in doing so, is navigating one of the more treacherous paths of Democratic politics.
^^^^ CB: That has a sort of anti-Semitic ring to it . "one of the more treacherous paths of Democratic politics." ??
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The Caucus The challenge of meeting the concerns of the Jewish electorate, a cornerstone of the Democratic base, was evident Tuesday when Mr. Obama was asked at the Democratic debate in Cleveland about Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has endorsed him.
Mr. Obama called Mr. Farrakhan an anti-Semite and denounced his support, but was pressed to go further by his rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, an experienced hand at Democratic politics who herself has been on the defensive with Jewish voters after an encounter in 2000 with Suha Arafat, the wife of the Palestinian leader.
Mr. Obama has also faced criticism over remarks he made about the suffering of Palestinians - remarks he says were incorrectly reported - and about who is advising him on foreign affairs. And he has had to beat back false tales, spread in viral e-mail messages, that he is a Muslim who attended a madrassa in Indonesia as a boy and was sworn into office on the Koran. In fact, he is a Christian who was sworn in on a Bible.
Winning the trust of Jewish Democratic voters is all the more difficult for Mr. Obama because of the tenuous relations between blacks and Jews.
^^^^ CB: "Black" should be capitaliized like "Jews". "Black" is a nationality , not a skin color. It replaced "Negro".
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He addressed that very issue at the Cleveland debate when he used the answer to the Farrakhan question to call for a renewal of the ties between blacks and Jews.
But other issues he faces arise from his newness to national politics. While his positions hew to mainstream Democratic views, some critics have expressed concerns that they are not heartfelt.
“His record is relatively sparse, so I want to look at the totality of influences that might bear on Senator Obama,” said Ed Lasky, news editor of the online magazine, American Thinker, whose criticisms of Mr. Obama for aligning himself with allegedly anti-Israel advocates have been widely circulated among Jewish voters.
Mr. Obama said on Thursday that some questions about his commitment to Israel and the Middle East are being provoked by Mrs. Clinton and her advisers, as well as other rivals.
“Those concerns have been continually stoked, whether through these e-mails that suggest that I’m a Muslim and attended madrassas and was sworn in with my hand on the Koran and scurrilous e-mails that were untrue,” Mr. Obama said. “Or whether it was an article that was in Newsweek recently indicating the degree to which Clinton supporters had questioned my positions on Israel.
“I think it’s very clear why there have been problems,” he added. “It’s been part of a series of political strategies not all necessarily, by the way, by the Clinton administration.”
Campaign advisers said they approached Jewish voters the way they did others, confident that once they knew more about Mr. Obama, they would be reassured. At the same time, they acknowledged that many Jewish voters were “vigilant” in testing candidates for president, particularly on Israel.
“The Jewish community, rightfully so, is a sensitive and anxious community and has many historical reasons for that,” said Representative Robert Wexler of Florida, a top adviser to Mr. Obama on Israel. Campaign officials said they were surprised, however, by the penetration of the viral e-mail messages, which were background static in the campaign until they began flooding the inboxes of Jewish voters right before nominating contests.
The e-mail messages have not gone unchallenged. Jewish supporters of Mr. Obama have sent thousands of their own e-mail messages, and some have started an online petition for other Jews who support his candidacy.
The campaign in recent days has moved to shore up Jewish support, with Mr. Obama speaking last Sunday to an influential group of Jewish leaders in Cleveland and addressing their questions about Israel, Mr. Farrakhan and even his church in Chicago, whose pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., has been viewed with suspicion.
“Nobody has ever been able to point to statements that I made or positions that I’ve taken that are contrary to the long-term security interests in Israel and in any way diminish the special relationship we have with that country,” Mr. Obama told reporters Thursday in Texas. “My job is just to keep on getting the information out and this is part of the political process.”
Jews make up about 1.7 percent of the adult population, but they are a stronghold of the Democratic base and important to the party’s fund-raising.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 5, 2008 Because of an editing error, a front-page article on Saturday about Barack Obama’s efforts to court Jewish voters misstated the year he was sworn in as a United States senator and the date’s relationship to a trip he took to Israel. Mr. Obama took office in January 2005, not 2006; he traveled to Israel in January 2006, not “weeks after he was sworn in.”