Can JD Vance Win Over Skeptical Jewish Voters?
New York Times · LC · trust 44/100
The vice president is attempting to unite conservative Jews with their antagonists in one coalition, as one appearance in Nevada on Monday showed. Some are uneasy about it.
Listen · 11:10 min Share full article Vice President JD Vance at the White House in July. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times By Yair Rosenberg and Theodore Schleifer
This story was reported from the ballrooms and the hallways of The Venetian Casino and Resort in Las Vegas.
Many Jewish conservatives had major reservations about Mr. Vance, which had only escalated in recent months as Mr. Vance became the public face of the administration’s diplomatic efforts with Iran, Israel’s sworn enemy. So his appearance at the group’s biannual conference in Las Vegas, where he would face one of the Republican factions most skeptical of him, his ambitions and associations, would be a risk.
The outreach by Mr. Vance’s allies, described by two people with knowledge of it who were granted anonymity to discuss private communications, reflected a delicate balancing act. An all-but-certain presidential candidate next year, Mr. Vance is trying to hold together a coalition that has been bitterly divided over antisemitism, the place of Jews in American politics, and the U.S.-Israel relationship before the Republican primary contest takes off in earnest next year.
In closed-door remarks on the fifth floor of a Vegas Strip casino, the vice president defended his relationships with divisive influencers, noted parallels between his Catholic faith and Judaism, and called for rewriting the playbook for how Republicans make the case for the U.S.-Israel alliance, according to audio of his question-and-answer session obtained by The Times.
Mr. Vance flew to Las Vegas from Michigan, where he called Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee and an outspoken critic of Israel, “very, very evil” at a rally for Dr. El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, former Representative Mike Rogers.
The vice president’s stop in Las Vegas was widely understood, including by members of the coalition’s board, as an attempt to smooth things over with an influential community that remains one of the holdouts in the Republican donor class and commentariat. Even before he addressed the group on Monday evening, the tension was palpable in the room.
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