Florida Dems chair Nikki Fried says many Jews have started to ‘question the Democratic Party’

(JTA) — Nikki Fried, the Jewish chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, told Jewish canvassers in her state that the party was losing Jewish voters because of the robust Republican response to pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.

Fried’s ostensible pep talk to canvassers seeking to reach undecided Jewish voters, coming Wednesday evening in a Zoom call organized by Florida Jewish Democrats, was unusual in her candid expressions of concern that Republicans have made gains with a constituency that has traditionally voted overwhelmingly Democratic.

A narrative of Jews who identified as progressive or left-leaning feeling alienated by the left since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, is widely established, and Republicans have sought to peel away Jewish votes because of it. Fried’s comments represent a rare acknowledgment by Democrats of a potential impact at the ballot box.

Fried said doubts about Democrats have spread beyond “Republican Jewish friends” who have historically been the “outliers” in a constituency that has long been reliably Democratic.

“What has happened since then in American politics has made a lot of our Jewish brothers and sisters start to question the Democratic Party,” she said.

“I hear a lot about the Squad,” she said, referring to a small grouping of progressive Democrats who are stridently critical of Israel. “I hear a lot about Kamala Harris’s policies, you know, what Joe Biden has or has not done.”

Some right-leaning Jews support Donald Trump, the former president and Republican candidate, because of his record on Israel. But Fried said part of what is turning the state’s Jews toward Republicans seems to be how the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, handled campus protests that roiled the nation last spring, dismantling pro-Palestinian encampments and threatening to expel protest leaders. (DeSantis has taken a generally heavy hand to higher education in the state, targeting the teaching of progressive ideals at public universities.)

“You hear, of course, you heard during the campus protests, ‘Oh, thank God Ron DeSantis was governor,’” she said. “I mean, how many times have each of us probably heard that over the course of the last year? And so we are losing some of our Jewish voters.”

Fried said she raised the campus issue with Harris when President Joe Biden was still the nominee and she had a meeting with Harris in Jacksonville, telling the vice president that Jews felt ignored by the Biden administration.

“I said, ‘You know, Madam Vice President, the Jewish community at this point’ — this was during the rise of the campus protests — I said, ‘The Jewish community doesn’t feel seen and heard at this moment,’” she recalled.

At the time, Biden expressed sympathy for the protesters in what many understood as a bid to stem fears that he would hemorrhage votes among Arab Americans and younger Democrats who were more inclined to be critical of Israel.

“We see a lot of support for the campus protesters,” Fried said she told Harris. She said she described to Harris “Jewish students on campuses being attacked or harassed or made to feel intimidated as they walk through campuses,” a complaint that emerged at dozens of campuses across the country.

“We just didn’t feel like she was seeing us — or not her, but Joe was not seeing us, and not, you know, helping us to be secure,” Fried recalled. “And she was shocked, actually, that that was the opinion that I was giving to her. But she also said, ‘I hear you and I see you,’ and within 48 hours, and whether or not that was my lobbying or not, but within 48 hours was Joe’s big speech about the campus protests.”

Fried earned a reputation for outspoken combativeness when she served in DeSantis’ first cabinet as agriculture commissioner, one of four cabinet posts that are directly elected under Florida’s constitution. She often confronted DeSantis and when she lost her primary bid to challenge him as governor, she ran for and won the position as state party chief.

Polls of national Jewish voter sentiment suggest that Jews as a whole plan to vote Democratic at a similar high rate as in the past. But Fried said the Jewish Democratic vote in Florida was eroding and had been doing so since before Oct. 7, noting that in 2018, DeSantis in his first run for governor defeated Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee, by just 33,000 votes, which she attributed to DeSantis’ more pro-Israel platform.

“We lost in 2018 around 6% of the Jewish vote, more so than we typically have, from Andrew Gillum to Ron DeSantis, because people believed that Ron was going to be better on Israel,” she said, citing local polling. “And that 6% was equivalent to about 34,000 votes.”

Since then, Florida as a whole has moved more reliably to the right, and an influx of Jewish residents from other states during the pandemic brought many who sought a more right-leaning approach to public health measures. DeSantis minimized school closures and other disruptions that were widespread in states led by liberal governors, including New York. Among those moving to the state during this period were Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s Jewish daughter and son-in-law.

Fried said Jewish Democrats, when they canvass Jewish voters, are encountering misinformation and belief in wild rumors, such as that Harris has a relationship with Iran’s leadership.

“It’s just heartbreaking for so many of you on this call that there has been these rumors, there’s been these conversations, and we don’t have everybody with us, and I don’t truly understand that,” she said.

Both she and the other speakers on the call, including Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Jewish Democrat, said canvassers should tout the robust support for Israel the Biden-Harris administration has shown since Oct. 7.

One of the canvassers said he was hearing that Harris was ready to use aid as leverage to get Israel to commit to a ceasefire. “No, she would not do that,” Wasserman Schulz said, her tone sharp.

Fried stepped in, arguing that Harris was solidly pro-Israel while Trump was erratic and susceptible to corruption.

“It’s really, really important for you to take that answer to anybody who in the Jewish community still may be on the fence, Kamala is going to stand and hold the line to make sure that Israel is defended,” she said.

In keeping with the Harris’ campaign’s emphasis in the waning days of the campaign, Fried also urged canvassers to highlight Trump’s flirtation with and equivocations about antisemitic extremists, listing Trump’s equivocations about the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, the extremists among his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump’s reported admiration for generals who were loyal to Hitler. She also noted that DeSantis lashed out at calls on him to condemn Neo-Nazi marchers in Florida in 2022.

“You can’t on the one hand support Jewish causes like the state of Israel, but then don’t protect us in our own state,” she said.

Around the same time on Wednesday evening, the Jewish Democratic Council of America held an online rally featuring top Jewish Democrats, among them New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the majority leader, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.

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