Republicans had thought that after eight years of rancor between the Obama administration and the Israeli government, 2016 would be the year American Jews began to abandon the Democratic Party.

But the conservatives who worked for years to win over Jewish voters now say Donald Trump is driving them away.


“Without question, I think there were probably more Jews willing to jump over to the Republican aisle, precisely because of the Iran deal and the Republican Party’s staunch opposition to it,” said Noam Neusner, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush who also served as a Bush White House Jewish liaison and worked for Jeb Bush. “But I don’t think the opportunity exists anymore, largely because Trump is just anathema to many Jews, including Jewish conservatives.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this in 2016. While nearly every campaign cycle sees largely unfounded speculation that the Republican Party is poised to pick up more Jewish votes, over the past four years, poll numbers gave Republicans reason to believe that more Jewish voters were poised to join their ranks.

A Gallup poll released in January 2015 found that 29 percent of American Jews identified as Republican, up from 22 percent in 2008, while 61 percent called themselves Democrats, down from 71 percent in 2008. And a Pew study from November 2014 found that while 87 percent of Jewish voters who participated in the 2006 midterms voted for Democrats, only 66 percent voted Democratic in 2014.

But conservatives with close ties to the American Jewish community, including those who’ve worked to bring them over to the GOP, say Trump is the wrong candidate to bring Jewish voters into the fold.

From the Anti-Defamation League to the conservative Emergency Committee for Israel, Jewish community leaders say Trump’s divisive language, inconsistencies on Israel policy and sluggish response to anti-Semitism from within his base of supporters is reversing any progress the GOP had made in attracting Jewish voters. Even inside the Republican Jewish Coalition, some of the GOP’s most generous donors are backing away from their party’s presumptive nominee.

“He espouses things that are offensive to my Jewish sensibilities and values, like precluding an entire religious group from entering the country, like demeaning women, like demeaning minorities, like demeaning ethnic groups, like demeaning the disabled, like belittling war veterans,” said a prominent Jewish Republican donor who will not raise money or vote for Trump. “So I just find him to be an offensive individual. … He knows nothing about foreign policy, but that hasn’t stopped him from talking about it.”

The Anti-Defamation League, which has Jewish roots but protests prejudice more broadly, has been deeply critical of Trump, redirecting donations they have previously received from him into anti-bullying and anti-bias efforts. On Tuesday, the group criticized Trump again, this time over a white supremacist Trump delegate whom the campaign later disavowed.

“Maybe not since George Wallace have we seen a candidate who has so welcomed all these radical elements into the fold,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the ADL, as he also stressed that as a 501(c)(3), the organization does not endorse candidates and that those “radical” views are not broadly shared by the candidate’s supporters.

No one interviewed by POLITICO accused Trump of anti-Semitism, but multiple people pointed to his most extreme supporters — and his unwillingness, at times, to condemn them — as sources of concern for Jewish voters across the political spectrum. Trump has also faced criticism for being slow to condemn the Ku Klux Klan.

Asked whether all of that should give Jewish voters pause, Greenblatt replied, “yeah,” noting the anti-Semitic online abuse from self-described Trump supporters that a journalist (who is also a POLITICO magazine writer) faced after writing a profile of Melania Trump that the candidate’s wife criticized. Trump refused to condemn the vitriol from those supporters when asked about it directly on CNN.

“The kind of anti-Semitic invective they used was so frightening,” Greenblatt said. “To his credit, Mr. Trump, after we did a statement, ... he called out anti-Semitism, which was great. We’d like to see him speak out in loud and clear and unambiguous ways against all forms of prejudice with the same level of energy he brings to the campaign trail.”

Michael Goldfarb, who co-founded the conservative Emergency Committee for Israel, said that while Trump’s more moderate stances on some domestic issues might appeal to typically liberal Jewish voters, his reluctance to distance himself from his most bigoted supporters is disqualifying in many Jewish circles.

“He’s a squish on the social issues and a squish on the fiscal issues, so he solves some of the problems the party has typically had bringing liberal Jews into the fold,” Goldfarb said. “On the other hand, his most rabid supporters enjoy photoshopping Jewish reporters into concentration camp scenes and ranting about Jewish control of the media and the banks, so it probably ends up a wash. Trump’s energized the anti-Semites and he shows no interest in disabusing them of the idea that he’s their man. ... Until and unless he does, he probably underperforms with the Jews.”

Concerns among many people in the American Jewish community fall into three main categories: uncertainty over where Trump stands on Israel and whether he’d be “neutral” in Israeli-Palestinian interactions, as he once said he would be before reversing himself; Trump’s denigration of fellow minority groups from Muslims to Mexicans; and support for Trump from white supremacists, anti-Semites and other fringe movements in American politics.

“If anything, he’ll increase Jewish preference for the Democratic candidate,” said Steven M. Cohen, a research professor of Jewish social policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, who is well versed in Jewish demography. “He probably was the worst choice from the Republican side and he gets defeated by any Democrat, Clinton or Sanders.”

For the Trump campaign, a continued inability to win over Jewish voters would hurt in swing states such as Florida and Ohio, and, more significantly unless the rift is repaired, it could shut him out from some of the GOP’s top donors and bundlers, many of whom are also Jewish (megadonor Sheldon Adelson, who has been vocal in his support of Trump, is the major exception).

For conservatives who’ve been working for years to win over Jewish voters, it’s all the more frustrating because they thought this cycle would be a better opportunity. The Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran was deeply divisive in the Jewish community amid fears for Israel’s security — and it pitted some particularly vocal pro-Israel Democrats against the Obama administration.

“We’ve gone through eight years with a president who sought to degrade the U.S.-Israel partnership and succeeded. We went through eight years of a president who personally attacked the elected leader of the Jewish state,” said Neusner, now a consultant at 30 Point Strategies. “All the Republican Party would have had to do was nominate a credible conservative Republican, of which there were several good choices. But we chose none of them.”

People around Trump bristle at the suggestions that he is soft on combating bigotry or not sufficiently pro-Israel, and certainly Republican Jewish rejection of Trump is not uniform, even if more centrist Jewish opposition to him largely is.

“He has never in 13 years made any comment to me that could be construed as anti-Semitic,” said David Friedman, a New York-based lawyer and Orthodox Jew whom Trump has also referred to as an adviser on Israel. “There is not a scintilla of tolerance in him for anti-Semitism. Obviously, he’s not an anti-Semite, but he also has no tolerance for anti-Semitism.”

Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump converted to Judaism and is raising an observant Jewish family, and her husband, Jared Kushner, is also influential in some corners of the Jewish community. And there are signs Trump is interested in doing some Jewish outreach. Friedman plans to help him on that front, and Morton Klein, the head of the Zionist Organization of America, said he had a meeting at Trump Tower last month with Jason Greenblatt, a lawyer who works for Trump and whom Trump recently said is an adviser on Israel.

“Trump has not been consistent in his showing of support for Israel, though lately that’s begun to change,” Klein said, noting his confab with Jason Greenblatt, who is also Orthodox, and calling it a good meeting and a positive step forward.

Klein has close ties to Adelson, the Republican megadonor who is perhaps the most prominent Jewish Republican to back Trump. Klein said he shared some details of his Trump Tower conversation with donors, though he declined to name them. But Trump did confirm, to the Adelson-owned paper Israel Hayom, that he is planning to visit the country “soon.”

Some members of the influential Republican Jewish Coalition board, most significantly Adelson, have said — with varying degrees of reluctance — that they will support Trump as the nominee. The organization released a brief statement congratulating Trump, before quickly pivoting to criticizing Hillary Clinton and adding: “Along with the Presidential race, the RJC will be working hard to hold on to our majorities in the Senate and the House. It is critical that these majorities be preserved.”

But plenty of other RJC board members are planning to stay out of the presidential race altogether, focusing instead only on down-ballot races, and many in the Jewish Republican donor community see any overtures to them — fellow members of Trump’s party — as too little, too late.

Paul Singer, a very prominent GOP megadonor who often gives to pro-Israel and Republican causes, has made it clear that he could not back Trump or Clinton.

Meantime, the prominent Jewish Republican donor interviewed by POLITICO expressed unwillingness to give not just to Trump, but to any Republicans supporting the nominee.

“It causes me to question support of Republicans more broadly, particularly ones willing to fall in line with this candidate simply because he’s the party’s candidate,” this source said.