Weprin vs. Turner

From here:

Representative Peter King, Republican of New York, said the election was going well for Mr. Turner. Mr. King attributed Mr. Turner’s strength to disenchantment with Mr. Obama’s stance on Israel.  “You don’t turn your back on an ally, as he has done,” Mr. King said.

Former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who crossed party lines to endorse Mr. Turner, said that Mr. Obama “threw Israel under the bus.” And Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a leader of the Orthdox Jewish community, said voters in the Congressional race were “sick and tired of the policies of the Obama administration.”

Seems that Brooklyn is shlongging Weprin.

With 338 of the 512 precincts reporting, Weprin has 21,661 votes (47%) and Turner has 24,501 (53%).

Jerry Skurnik, a political consultant who is not involved in the race, projected that only about 10 percent of the district’s 343,000 registered voters would participate in the election.

Well, so far that 50% higher than what Skurnik thought.

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Excuses

Following up further on the Weprin-Turner race I have been blogging about, there's this from John Podhoretz:

Sorry excuses can’t conceal truth

If and when the news comes tonight that a conservative Republican has won the special congressional election in a Brooklyn-Queens district with three times as many registered Democrats as Republicans, you’ll hear excuses pour forth from liberal blogs, commentators and political experts.

...Objection No. 1: The Democrat, David Weprin, is a lousy candidate. He is. And the quality of a candidate matters...Something more is going on here than Weprin’s inarticulate bumbling.

Objection No. 2: Israel played an outsized role. Yes, President Obama’s behavior toward the Jewish state gave Turner an opening to tell the district’s Zionist voters to send him a message. That makes the race an outlier that offers little in the way of guidance about 2012...but the Jewish voter is another matter...because of his generous political donations...And the Jewish vote can make a difference in two key swing stakes, Florida and Pennsylvania. Obama won both in 2008, but is doing badly in recent polls. If he loses both, he loses the election. Even if he loses just one, he probably goes down to defeat as well...If, say, a third of the Jews who voted for Obama in either state in 2008 decided to vote against him in 2012 -- or not to vote at all -- that could be game, set and match for the president.

Objection No. 3: Special elections don’t mean much nationwide. True...But then there’s that killer detail in polling done over the weekend by the Democratic firm PPP. It found Obama with an approval rating of 31 percent -- in a district he carried with 55 percent in 2008.  That horrific number can’t all be due to Israel. Surely the economy is also playing a large role...In other words, NY-9 is a weird conventionally Democratic semi-swing district. And if PPP’s polling is to be believed, the bottom has fallen out for Obama there.

...even if professional pundits tell you to look away from this car crash because there’s nothing more to see here, Obama is in far worse trouble than even the bad national polls over the last month have suggested.

All true.

But if David does get in, the message will still nevertheless have been sent to Obama and a better Israel supporter, and now, even more beholden to a pro-Israel and even pro-Yesha position, will be in.

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If Weprin Is With Soros, Then I'm Not With Weprin. But Is He?

In previous expressions of mine about the Congressional race in New York for District 9 in Brooklyn and Queens, David Weprin seemed to be the better choice based on a better commitment ot Israel as well as specifically the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.  And, yes, loylaty is a value of mine and I do know David since before his Bar Mitzvah.

In the NY Post, as I was alerted by a senior Republican Party contact, it is reported that Weprin is the recipient of big-bucks - more than a half-million bucks:-

Are DC’s donkeys scared? Uh, ya think?

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent $483,500; the Democratic Super PAC House Majority, another national group (funded by radical lefty moneyman George Soros), rushed in with another $100,000 --

I would, of course, go along partially with this thinking: as regards Soros

The electorate of the 9th district needs to know that casting their votes for Weprin is approval for Obama and his hostile to Israel agenda and for Soros and his support for Palestinian causes and his mission to destroy America, Israel and the West.

To my mind, though, it would be more of a leverage to have within the Democratic Party a potential anti-Obama member although, true, I am not sure of Weprin's backbone on this.

It took me some time but I finally found this source which identifies House Majority PAC as the 'guilty party'. This source notes that that PAC received $75,000 of Soros money.

Now, it would seem to be convoluted and quite distanced to associate Weprin, who is of course viewed as belonging to the very liberal wing of the Democratic Party, to that money but nevertheless to actually be connected with Soros?  The link is, at present, indirect.  That news above is just a bit misleading. 

As noted here:

The Democratic super PAC House Majority PAC has also bought advertising time in the district as well.

"Has also".  In other words, for their own ideological reasons and perhaps, I am not sure, because Weprin aksed for it and identifies with their own ideological slant.

I know, and we all know, that politics is politics and a lot passes under the ethical wire during a hotly contested election campaign. Nevertheless, this phrasing - "another national group (funded by radical lefty moneyman George Soros), rushed in with another $100,000" - does not directly support a claim that Weprin received Soros money and is not exactly the whole truth.

You can look at this election as one of internal American politics, as one on American foreign policy and as combined. If so, much has to be taken into account. Including Israel.

As I noted here, Weprin

....opposes President Barack Obama’s position that Israel go back to its pre-1967 boundaries. “On this issue, I feel [Obama’s] very wrong,” Weprin told the seniors at the center at 71-25 Main St., saying that Israel’s security “would be in danger” if it went to its original borders. “I hope to be a strong voice … speaking out when the president is wrong.” “I don’t think you can find a member of the House that has a stronger record on Israel than I do,” Weprin said.

In his Jewish Press piece, Weprin wrote:

An issue especially close to my heart is Israel. I have led a number of missions there and also traveled as part of a delegation during the Lebanon War in 2006 to help raise soldiers' morale and transfer food and clothes to shelters. We actually came under rocket attack ourselves while helping out.

As a Democrat, I was very outspoken against President Obama's suggestion that Israel use pre-1967 borders to come to an agreement with Palestinian negotiators. One of the missions I've led to Israel was to Beitar Illit, a city of over 40,000 people. I have seen first hand the communities that would be displaced if Israel would return to pre-Six-Day War borders.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, when he endorsed my candidacy for Congress a few weeks ago, stated clearly and unequivocally that the best way to send a message to President Obama in disagreement with his Mideast policies is through me, not a new member of the Republican majority whose criticism would be dismissed as partisan politics.

I believe Jerusalem is and will always be the capital of Israel. I believe Israelis want peace and are ready now, as they have been for years, to negotiate with a willing partner - but I am unsure that such a partner exists.

It is in America's interest to have Israel as a secure ally in the region, and I will be passionate about explaining that to those in Washington who are uninformed or have been fed lies by Israel's enemies.

Back in July, this is how Weprin was talking:

Democratic Congressional candidate David Weprin criticized President Barack Obama over his Middle East policy and defended his own record in support of the state of Israel.  He accused the president of striving to seem impartial in the long-running dispute between Israelis and Palestinians, especially during Obama’s speech earlier this year in which he called for a return to the pre-1967 borders for Israel.

“I think it was done to send a message to the Arab world that ‘I am trying to be fair,’ that kind of thing,” he said. “I don’t think you can equate the two because it’s not a question of being neutral. It’s a question of Israel is the only ally we have had for so many years. I don’ t think it is a moral equivalent.”

Weprin said that he thought it was untenable for Israel to retreat to its pre-67 borders, noting that the country has had those boundaries for more years than it had its previous borders...“I wouldn’t want to give credence to some of the adjoining countries that haven’t even officially recognized the state of Israel,” he said. ”Israel voluntarily gave back the land and what happened right after that? There were Kaytusha rockets being shot from the very homes that they gave up on Greater Israel...I thought it was outrageous the way he treated Prime Minister Netanyahu when he was at the White House,” he said...if Weprin were to win, he would be the only Orthodox Jew in Congress, and he hit back over the notion that he was not a strong supporter of Israel or that he would be unwilling to challenge the leader of his party.

And this:

Weprin added, “I don’t think we should be going back to the pre-’67 boundaries. It’s clearly been part of Israel for many, many years.” That’s a distinct break from President Obama’s position, but one many Democrats — especially those from New York — have also made.

So, where does all this information leave me?

I would wish that David announce that the politics of George Soros are not his politics and his outlook is certainly not his. I do not need a strong supporter of Israel in Congress who might be influenced by the radical anti-Zionism that is at the base of Soros' thinking, which has been, for all intents and purposes, almost anti-Semitic.

I do think Weprin is a better candidate for Israel and that the fact that many of the opposition from within the more Orthodox Jewish constituency is centered on his pro-gay marriage vote indicates for me a less-than-enthusiastic orientation to judge Weprin over his Israel position, I am reserving any pro-expressions of support until he clarifies those Soros links.

If the Soros money item and Weprin's pro-gay say is what makes you decide, so be it. But there are other considerations.


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