As President Bush and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton swept the Republican and Democratic primaries in Illinois and Michigan, Jews celebrated the outcome of another vote Tuesday: the defeat of Rep. Gus Savage (D-Ill.).
The six-term black congressman was considered the most vocal anti-white, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel member of Congress. He was defeated by a 2-1 margin by Mel Reynolds, a community activist and former Rhodes scholar who had lost two previous attempts to unseat Savage.
Congressional redistricting is one of the factors cited for the victory by Reynolds, who lost his two previous challenges to Savage by narrow margins. Reynolds’ name recognition also increased when he was slightly injured by flying glass last week when someone shot at his car.
Reynolds, who is also black, is a supporter of Israel and even spent more than two months in Israel where he worked on Kibbutz Yagur.
Savage cited this support for Israel in charging that his opponent’s campaigns were financed by Jewish money.
ActionPac, a new organization that provides pro-Israel activists to congressional campaigns, brought in some 50 young activists who campaigned for Reynolds in the suburban portion of his district during the three days leading up to the vote.
During the campaign, Savage charged that Jews were contributing to a genocide against blacks. He said the primary would turn on “how you feel about Jews rather than how you feel about blacks.”
DAMAGE TO BLACK-JEWISH RELATIONS
Even in his concession speech Tuesday night, Savage said, “We have lost to the white racist press and to the racist reactionary Jewish misleaders.”
In a statement Wednesday, Maynard Wishner, chairman of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, said, “Damage has been done to the fabric of intergroup relations in general and black-Jewish relations in particular by the inflammatory rhetoric of Gus Savage.”
Wishner said that “while we ourselves neither endorse nor oppose any candidates, it is reassuring indeed to see the electorate, reportedly in all sections of the 2nd District, has rejected the politics of divisiveness.”
Winning the Democratic primary for Reynolds is tantamount to clinching the November election, as it is for Rep. Sidney Yates, the dean of Jewish members of Congress. Yates, who has served in Congress, except for one term, since 1949, won 64 percent of the vote against two challengers.
But one congressional supporter of Israel was defeated in the Illinois Democratic primary. Sen. Alan Dixon suffered a stunning defeat to Carol Braun, the 44-year-old Cook County recorder of deeds, who, if successful in November, would become the first black woman senator.
Both Braun, who has visited Israel, and her Republican opponent, Richard Williamson, a former White House and State Department official in the Reagan and Bush administrations, are also considered supporters of Israel.
Williamson was one of 40 former government officials who recently signed an advertisement urging President Bush to provide Israel with guarantees for $10 billion in loans.
Braun’s upset victory came after she entered the race because Dixon had voted to confirm Clarence Thomas as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
BUCHANAN SOUNDLY DEFEATED
The race had been considered a contest mainly between Dixon and a third candidate, Albert Hofeld, a Jewish lawyer who poured more than $4 million of his own money into a television advertisement blitz.
But Braun, heavily supported by feminist groups, received 38 percent of the vote, compared to 35 percent for Dixon and 27 percent for Hofeld.
The three ran fairly evenly among Jewish voters, with Hofeld doing slightly better in one heavily Jewish suburban district, although most Jews were not aware he was Jewish.
In the Democratic presidential primaries, Clinton received 52 percent of the vote in Illinois and 51 percent in Michigan.
Former California Gov. Jerry Brown received 27 percent of the vote in Michigan, putting him in second place, and 15 percent in Illinois, where he placed third.
Former Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts received 26 percent in Illinois, where he finished second, and 17 percent in Michigan, where he was third.
In the Republican primaries, Bush won 76 percent of the vote in Illinois and 67 percent in Michigan. This showing appears to spell the doom of his chief rival, conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan, who received 25 percent in Michigan and 22 percent in Illinois.
Louisiana state Rep. David Duke, a former neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader who was not on the ballot in Illinois, received only 3 percent of the vote in Michigan.
In Illinois, exit polls in heavily Jewish areas of Chicago and its suburbs found that Jews were evenly divided between Clinton and Tsongas. The same was true a week earlier in Florida, which was also won easily by Clinton.
DEFECTION FROM BUSH SUPPORTERS
In Michigan, many of the Jewish voters were confused because this was the state’s first formal presidential primaries, and some of the rules for Democrats were complex.
Jewish voters there were lukewarm about the candidates in both parties. Five percent in each party voted uncommitted.
Many Jews who had voted for Bush four years ago were outraged because of his refusal to provide Israel with loan guarantees.
The Detroit Jewish News found that some who were afraid of a good showing by either Buchanan, who has been called anti-Semitic, or Duke, voted for Bush.
“I don’t want to see a Buchanan come out so well that in 1996 someone like him comes out too strong,” one Jewish Republican was quoted as saying.
But the newspaper found that others no longer considered either Duke or Buchanan a threat and so voted for a Democratic candidate.
(Contributing to this report were Joseph Aaron of JUF News in Chicago and Kimberly Lifton and Amy Mehler of the Detroit Jewish News.)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
