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WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (AP) — Rachel Weinberg calls herself a religious Jew first, then a proud American. She said she has only one choice for president: Donald Trump.
“I don't like everything he says,” the 72-year-old retired preschool teacher from Michigan said after volunteer canvassers for the Republican Jewish Coalition knocked on her door Sunday. “But I vote for Israel. It is our life. I support Israel. Trump supports Israel with his mouth and his actions.”
Weinberg's home in West Bloomfield, in vote-rich Oakland County, was among more than 20 that the Republican Jewish Coalition was visiting that morning. She has voted for Trump in previous elections as well.
The door-to-door outreach to Jewish voters with a history of backing Republicans is part of a new effort the group is undertaking this year in five presidential battleground states in hopes of boosting Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election. Although surveys show that Jews vote decidedly Democratic, the Republican Jewish Coalition is hoping that the door-knocking will peel off enough votes to make a difference in an election year when the war between Israel and Hamas has stoked debate and provoked division.
About 7 in 10 Jewish voters nationally backed Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, while about 3 in 10 backed Trump that year, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of the electorate. A Pew Research Center poll released last month found that about two-thirds of Jewish voters back Harris.
Biden carried Michigan in 2020 by fewer than 155,000 votes out of roughly 5.5 million cast. Although Jewish voters account for only 2% of the state's voters, the 15,000 new Jewish Republican voters the coalition has identified since the 2020 election — out of roughly 120,000 Jewish voters in the state — could make an impact in what is shaping up to be a very close race, said Sam Markstein, an RJC spokesperson.
The Republican Jewish Coalition's targeting is very specific in Michigan, as it is in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Here, its work is centered in Oakland County, the state's second most-populous county, with 1.3 million people just northwest of Detroit.
It's particularly focusing on the upper middle-class suburbs of Farmington Hills, Oak Park, Southfield and West Bloomfield — the township with the state's largest Jewish population, where Israeli flags hang in some front windows.
Biden defeated Trump in 2020, 66% to 33%, in the West Bloomfield Township precinct where 82-year-old David Cuttner and 22-year-old Noam Nedivi were canvassing for the coalition on Sunday. The margin was not far off the national trend.
The coalition's robust effort is aimed at chipping away at Democrats' advantages among this voting bloc. “This includes direct mail, social, digital, all hyper-targeted to the Jewish community. And it’s going to be a full thrust, the largest investment ever to turn out Jewish voters for Republicans," Markstein said.
The Republican Jewish Coalition has purchased $15 million in advertising in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. But it's the $5 million it has committed to door-to-door outreach that is new for this election, chiefly its investment in voter data aimed at more efficiently identifying potential Trump supporters.
Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a statement that Jewish voters are a key part of a winning Democratic coalition.
“Kamala Harris shares the views and values of the majority of American Jews, while Donald Trump threatens and denigrates us, trafficks in antisemitic rhetoric, aligns with dangerous extremists, and aspires to be a dictator on day one,” Soifer said.
Tensions have been high since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 people hostage. More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the subsequent fighting, according to Gaza health officials.
Republicans were more likely than Democrats to be supportive of Israel, while Democrats were more likely to be critical, a survey by the Pearson Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found in September.
The fighting has intensified the focus on the relationship between Israel and the U.S., which has provided at least $17.9 billion in military aid since the war began. And many Jews say rising acts of antisemitism in the United States and anti-Israel protests in cities and college campuses have made them feel unsafe. Nedivi, who was canvassing Sunday, said he had been a victim of antisemitism at the Michigan college he attends.
Zeke Aharonov had an alternative message for his fellow observant Jews after standing in a line of more than 200 people to cast his early vote at the West Bloomfield library Sunday.
“As Jews, it is our duty to be attentive to fascism and to fight it,” the 26-year-old cybersecurity tech said as he left the library. “And our way of fighting fascism is to vote against Donald Trump.”
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Poling reporter Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed to this report from Washington.