McMahon Campaign Hits Grimm For Taking Jewish Money

By David Freedlander
July 29, 2010 | 4:52 p.m

Congressman Mike McMahon Mike Grimm, a G.O.P challenger to Democrat Mike McMahon's Congressional seat, took in over $200,000 in his last filing.

But in an effort to show that Grimm lacks support among voters in the district, which covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, the McMahon campaign compiled a list of Jewish donors to Grimm and provided it to The Politicker.

The file, labeled "Grimm Jewish Money Q2," for the second quarter fundraising period, shows a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home.

"Where is Grimm's money coming from," said Jennifer Nelson, McMahon's campaign spokeman. "There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees."

As a point of comparison, the campaign also provided in-district and out-of-district fundraising totals from McMahon and Grimm's G.O.P primary opponent, Michael Allegretti. However, they did not provide an out-of-district campaign filing from Grimm, but only a file of Jewish donors to him.

Nelson said that the list was compiled by the campaign's finance director, Debra Solomon and that she did not know exactly how the finance team knew who was Jewish and who was not.

"She herself is Jewish so she knows a lot of people in that community," Nelson said.

Nelson stressed that the point of compiling the list was not to show that Grimm had a lot of Jewish support, but that he had little support in the district.

"I don't think ethnicity matters. When people look at who is funding his campaign it's not people who have a direct vested interest [in the district.]"

The campaign also wanted to point out that Grimm benefited greatly from his endorsement by Rudy Giuliani, and made a separate column to denote donors who have to the former mayor's presidential or Senate campaigns. Only five appear to have done so.

Grimm recently went to a religious service led by Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, a Kabbalahist who is known as a rabbi to the rich and famous. Several of his followers, including Haim Revah, whose company owns the Lipstick Building and Ilan Bracha of Prudential Douglas Elliman, donated to Grimm.

McMahon meanwhile has been trying to make his own in-roads into the Jewish community. A source said that he is scheduled to meet next week with several major Jewish donors.

Reached by phone, Grimm, who is part-Italian, part-German, said he was proud of his Jewish support and said he was disturbed to hear that the McMahon campaign compiled a separate list of his Jewish donors.

"The fact that a U.S. Congressman would separate out any group by religion or even by ethnicity is nothing short of outrageous," he said. "This goes beyond politics."

I know that those of us on the left get accused a lot of playing the race card to demonize our opponents, or crying 'racism' or 'anti semitism' to the point of being meaningless, but this sort of poloticking (by anyone) is really odious. If McMahon wanted to show that Grimm lacked support amongst voters in the district, could he not have done it without using the term "Jewish money"? What does the religious or ethnic background of supporters matter? If they're outside the district and ineligable to vote, then fine -- why bring the fact that they're Jewish into it? I think this is shameful, and a desperate attempt at dividing people in order to gain votes.

Link to source: http://www.observer.com/2010/politics/mcmahon-campaign-hits-grimm-taking-jewish-money

alland wrote:why bring the fact that they're Jewish into it? I think this is shameful, and a desperate attempt at dividing people in order to gain votes.

No, I agree. It is completely irrelevant that they are Jewish. Similarly our right wing newspaper The Daily Mail does it all the time. For example if a woman is sent to prison for a violent crime, they will point out that she is a lesbian, or that she has six children all by different fathers, or that she once had an abortion, or they will put a picture of her black boyfriend as though any of these things are relevant to the act she is convicted for. If a similar woman goes to prison and she is married, has children fathered only by her white husband, her father is a Church of England minister and she had never been divorced, they wouldn't talk about her background.

The racism and class prejudice within such an article is covert, but it is still there. They know where the line is drawn and they know that they can get away with saying so much without actually saying anything.

I could not agree more, and I see it a lot in what I consider mainstream press -- not just those who are blatantly right-wing. It's what us on the left here in Canada call "crypto fascism".

The left wing press does it too, but where the right wants the perpetrator to seem more of a callous villain than they perhaps actually are, the left wing press is sometimes too eager to show the perpetrator to be more of a victim than the person they attacked.

Using my example above, a left wing paper might point out that she had a strict upbringing... or that she never went to school (of course not her fault, the teachers were not sensitive to her needs)... or that she wanted to join the army as a teenager and work as an IT specialist because she was good with computers, but she never got around to going to the recruitment office (again, not her fault of course she never had the time being unemployed)... or that her parents were poor and both had to work.

I don't know where this idea of painting the perpetrator of a crime as the victim came from, but it is just as bad.

Yep, agreement on all counts. I could give a shit less what someone's religion is. But you see, if someone on the right fielded a candidate for president and he picked an conservative atheist for his running mate, the screeching from the far right would be deafening.

Basically, each side will eat it's own in certain situations, too.